Theology and Vegetarianism

The latest issue of the New Yorker features a book review of Tristram Stuart’s The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times, a history of vegetarianism that covers theological and moral arguments about eating meat and the relationship between humans and animals.

Broadly speaking, though, for many centuries the debate centered on three questions, each of which was reflected in Newton’s dietary choices and the objections raised to them: there was the religious question, concerning the implications of Scripture for human alimentation; there were medical questions about the effect of eating meat on human health and character; and there was a philosophical debate about the proper relationship between man and other animals. There was no distinct category you could call moral, because all of them were, as they remain, intensely moral. Vegetarianism has always been less about why you should eat plants than about why you shouldn’t eat animals. And so arguments about vegetarianism, by drawing attention to rights that we claim for ourselves but deny to other animals, inevitably involve basic questions about what it is to be human.[...]

Steven Shapin's review of Stuart's book traces the discourse about eating meat, including interpretations of the Old Testament prohibitions against eating blood, the taint of vegetarianism as based in a pagan belief in metempsychosis (the transmigration of souls), the roots in Genesis of what is "natural" for human diet, strange ideas of how eating meats affects character ("The roast beef of Olde England was character-building food, stout fare for stouthearted men, while it was widely presumed that a vegetable diet made men weak, timorous, and effeminate."), and arguments in favor of vegetarianism connected to health and animal rights. Shapin's review also discusses some of the more modern ideas about environmental justifications for vegetarianism and animal suffering at the hands of factory farms that echo Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (which I wrote about briefly here).

Shapin quotes Paul McCartney, who said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian,” and points out how most people manage to justify meat-eating despite compelling arguments for vegetarianism and the evidence of cruelty that animals endure in the industrial agricultural system.

Stuart is of the opinion that vegetarians have long had the best of the intellectual arguments. If so, that just shows how little intellectual arguments matter to populations’ eating decisions. The number of vegetarians in developed countries is evidently on the increase, but the world’s per-capita consumption of meat rises relentlessly: in 1981, it was 62 pounds per year; in 2002, the figure stood at 87.5 pounds. In carnivorous America, it increased from 238.1 to 275.1 pounds.

I am astounded (and slightly nauseated) by that figure of over 275 lbs of annual meat consumption - that works out to about 3/4 of a pound of meat every day. (I tried to calculate my own annual meat consumption and guessed that the highest possible amount I consume in a year would be maybe 50 lbs, although 30-40 lbs is probably more likely.) Now, I fully realize that I am not the poster child for thoughtful meat-eating. I was a vegetarian for the first half of college primarily because I had friends who were vegetarians. My protein sources consisted of cheese and peanut butter for two entire years. Now I am considerably more educated about our food system and the benefits of vegetarianism or at least eating sustainably-raised meat, yet I eat meat that is the product of beak-less chickens and antibiotic-ridden cattle while being overwhelmed with liberal guilt. Oh well. Yet my entire family, including a very carnivorous husband and a hot dog-loving toddler, eats less than half of the national per-capita average, so we must be on the right track. And my thoughts about meat-eating are very much connected with my own theological leanings, primarily based in an attitude of humility about my place in creation and an instinctive repulsion to gluttony. Because I grew up around farm animals that we named and later ate, I don't think eating animals is wrong but I do believe causing them suffering is. And I agree with Shapin that the way (or even if) we think about animals and our food reveals much about what we think about being human.