The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights
Norm Phelps

An animal rights activist for twenty years, Norm Phelps is the former Spiritual Outreach Director of The Fund for Animals, a founding member of the governing board of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV), and a contributing writer for Satya.

Why does religion matter when it comes to animal rights?
America is—and always has been—the most religious country outside the Muslim world. The influence of religion—especially Christianity—radiates throughout our society and shapes both our public and private morality to an extent that is unimaginable in Europe. No major social justice movement has ever succeeded in the United States without the support of at least a large segment of the Christian community, and none will in the foreseeable future.

Many of the leaders of the animal rights movement have a personal animus against religion, and I understand the reasons for this. But in allowing it to influence their advocacy, they are condemning animal rights to permanent exile on the margins of the public dialogue. If people feel they have to choose between their religion and animal rights, the vast majority will choose their religion. And the failure of the animal rights leadership to appreciate this is a major strategic failure. The huge exception here is PETA. In reaching out to the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities, they are setting an example that every secular animal protection organization should follow. Furthermore, religion has injected itself so far into the public policy arena that animal rights groups can no longer afford to tiptoe around it for fear of offending someone.

I am not suggesting that animal rights organizations promote religion, but that they promote animal rights as both a secular and a religious imperative.

What for you is the most challenging aspect of being an animal rights advocate and a religious practitioner?
Trying to encourage both camps to occupy the common ground they are often reluctant to acknowledge. All of the world’s major religions—in fact, all authentic religions, large and small—teach compassion as an absolute moral imperative. Compassion is the moral imperative that drives the animal rights movement. Religion and animal rights go together as naturally as religion and human rights. But too many in the religious community get so hung up on the self-serving, narcissistic notion of the unique worth of human beings that they lose sight of how desperately animals need our compassion. And true compassion is given freely to all who need it, not just to those of our own tribe. Tribalism—whether based on race, gender, nationality, species or whatever—is incompatible with genuine compassion, which excludes no one from its protection.

If you could say one thing to a religious practitioner who was skeptical about animal rights, what would it be?
Look into the heart of your religion’s teachings on compassion, and look into your own heart. Put aside your old habits and selfish appetites, and be honest with yourself. Animals are beings like us, sentient, conscious and fully able to experience suffering and joy. They love life and fear death. And yet every year we murder them by the billions for food that we do not need to live long, healthy lives. Can we honestly call this holocaust anything but evil? There is no way that people of faith can be true to the deepest values of their religion and still eat animal products.

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