ABSTRACT
In modern Western societies, animal sacrifice is typically regarded as primitive, superstitious and barbaric, an uncivilized and unenlightened practice from which we have, thankfully, long since progressed. Sacrifice and associated religious slaughter methods have been attacked by many animal rights advocates, who regard them as inferior to modern slaughter practices. Christian attitudes to preChristian sacrificial practices have contributed to this negative assessment of animal sacrifice. Just as Christians have often defined themselves as people who do not follow food rules, so they have frequently categorized themselves as people who do not perform animal sacrifice. The outcome of these self-definitions has been a situation in which animals are eaten and their slaughter is a matter of religious indifference. Meat, when classified as one food among many, can be thought of without reference to the animals which become meat. Despite a long Christian history of meat abstention, it is striking how infrequently concern about the lives of animals has been invoked as the primary factor motivating such abstention. In this chapter, we shall take a closer look at sacrifice and Christian practice,
and especially at Christian practices of sacrifice. In some Christian contexts, animal sacrifice has been treated as a form of worship which can be directed towards either false gods or the Christian God. In any case, one important aim of this chapter is simply to present evidence of a Christian tradition of animal sacrifice, thereby disproving the widespread assumption that no such tradition exists. Jean-Louis Durand, for instance, accuses Christianity of ‘theological arrogance’ because it ‘excludes from the domain of the sacred’ the ‘death of animals, which in other religious cultures has religious significance’.1 In fact, Christians have sacrificed animals in order to express respect for life, praise God as giver of life, and highlight humans’ ambiguous kinship with animals. We shall examine this little-known tradition, and consider the significance of the history of sacrifice for a modern society in which sacrifice is rejected and mass animal slaughter accepted as normal.
