ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a seeming contrast. A number of authors have identified a “Christian tradition” which has had a disproportionate influence on the growth of animal advocacy in the United Kingdom. The evangelicals’ response was that the present nature of the world is not normal, so it cannot be normative. The cause of its abnormality is human sin. It is therefore egregious wickedness to exacerbate suffering that we have caused in the first place. The Noahic covenant implicitly accepts that predator animals will eat prey, and it extends human diet to include animal flesh. In the Noahic covenant, blood must be drained from an animal before he/she is butchered. Even as permission is given to eat flesh, a barrier is erected against the cruel “excesses of cannibal ferocity in eating flesh of living animals.” Details of the diet of pre-twentieth century evangelicals are scarce, and their dietary non-conformity is often complex.
