ABSTRACT

My young nose began to tingle as it caught the sweet, spicy aroma fl oating down the hallway that led to the church’s basement kitchen. Tonight was chili night at my church’s weekly Wednesday night Bible study and “fellowship dinner.” At ten years of age I especially looked forward to this night because I knew that, as opposed to the obligatory side salad on spaghetti night, the closest I would have to come to eating a vegetable would be in the form of a bread made of corn. When I left my Texas home many years later to study in North Carolina my new church did not have Wednesday night dinners, but it was not unheard of for the choir to be treated to takeout “fried chicken ’n biscuits” after a busy Sunday morning service. The idea that consuming meat might pose for Christians, as Karl Barth writes, an important problem that “is genuine and cannot be ignored”1 never crossed my mind during these early years. That it is still a non-issue for many Christians was proved to me most recently as I was driving home for a short family visit. I passed a large sign that read, “Man does not live on bread alone Deut. 8:3,” next to a portable meat smoker/grill in the parking lot of a local butcher shop.2 The previous chapter addressed the meaning of human dominion in the context of viewing animals as potential neighbors. This fi nal chapter explores whether this dominion grants humans a license to take the life of other animals. Are we justifi ed in killing those animals that we have responsibility for, care for, share covenant with, and draw near to, but ultimately have dominion over? In other words, can we consistently view other animals as both neighbors and food?3