Animal Theology / Edition 1

by Andrew Linzey

Overview

“What are we to say of a theology which has so proceeded on the basis of a moral neglet of God’s creatures?” asks Andrew Linzey. In Animal Theology, he seeks ways in which doctrine can help morally motivated Christians to perceive meaning in animal suffering.

In Linzey’s view, animal rights is synonymous with animal theology. Linzey argues that historical theology, creatively defined, must reject humanocentricity. Questioning the assumption that if theology is to speak on this issue, “it must only do so on the side of the oppressors,” Linzey investigates not only the abstractions of theory, but also the realities of hunting, animal experimentation, and genetic engineering. His is a pioneering, vital, and unequivocally Christian voice advocating on behalf of the countless creatures who share our world and our lives but cannot speak for themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252064678
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	01/01/1995
Edition description:	Univ of Illinois PR ed.
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Andrew Linzey is Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Honorary Research Fellow at St Stephen's House, Oxford and a member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford.  He is Professor of Animal Theology at the University of Winchester and Professor of Animal Ethics at the Graduate Theological Foundation, Indiana.

Editorial Reviews

"Linzey is Britain's foremost animal rights theologian, and his carefully constructed argument is a striking challenge to the way we live and think."—Walter Schwarz, The Tablet

"Combines a level of scholarship and thought with passion and imagination, sensitivity and humor that could well change the reader's way of looking at the world."—Bishop John Austin Baker, Church

"An excellent book. Clearly written, logically organized, and exhibits sound scholarship. What Christianity can offer to the animal rights debate more than anything else is what Linzey calls the 'generosity paradigm.'"—Daniel A. Dombrowski, author of Hartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights

From the Publisher

This disturbing volume, based on a series of lectures given to the theology faculty at Oxford University, argues that contemporary agribusiness, based on the commodification of animals, is immoral and theologically indefensible. No vegan polemic or anti-vivisectionist tract, Lindzey's is a carefully prepared and argued discussion of the theology of animal rights in which the author takes the community of faith to task for its blindness to the centrality, within the Christian tradition, of duty to animals. Particularly damning are the chapters on scientific experimentation, hunting for sport, meat-eating and genetic engineering. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly