One cannot get to animal rights by trampling on human rights.

In God's eyes, all creatures have value whether we find them cuddly, affectionate, beautiful or otherwise. Our own perspective-in a way-is neither here nor there. Theology, at its best, can help to liberate us from our own anthropocentric limitations.

We can't change the world for animals without changing our ideas about animals. We have to move from the idea that animals are things, tools, machines, commodities, resources here for our use to the idea that as sentient beings they have their own inherent value and dignity.

It took Christians many years to realize that we cannot love God and also keep humans as slaves. It has taken even longer for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and also regard women as second-class humans. Now is the time for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and hate the Creator's nonhuman creatures.

Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ...Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.

Although Christianity has a poor record on animals (as it does, it must be said, on the treatment of slaves, women, children, and gays), it is also the case that Christian theology, when creatively and critically handled, can provide a strong basis for animal rights.

Looking back through the mists of time, I recall some distinctly religious experiences in my teens--when I was only fourteen years old to be precise. These experiences opened my mind to the idea of a Creator and that caring for other living things was a Christian duty. My parents were not strongly religious at the time and when I announced at that youthful age that I wanted to be a priest, it not unnaturally provoked some incredulity, even mirth. In the same year, I became a vegetarian, which--for family and friends--was even more vexing.