Southern Baptists divert approximately four million dollars from missions every year to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Since the inauguration of ERLC president Russell Moore, that four million dollars has given Southern Baptists the return of a strong advocacy for a Mosque to be built in New Jersey, a softening tone on homosexuality, a partnership with George Soros’ amnesty-focused Evangelical Immigration Table, and an incoming United States President who thinks the ERLC president is a “very nasty guy.”
But there’s something else that four million dollars a year has been buying Southern Baptists – a hardcore push for animal rights activism.
Have you heard about the Southern Baptist agenda for animal rights? You probably haven’t, unless you have been reading Pulpit & Pen, which has covered the story from the beginning. And while the word secretive is in the title of this article, the truth is that the agenda is only secretive because the Christian press has chosen not to cover it (secular outlets have, however) and the vast regiment of Southern Baptist cavalier servente blogs are too busy with obsequious fawning over Russell Moore’s whimsical mastery of social media to care. In fact, even though the ERLC has quietly gone about partnering with the animal liberation movement, it’s nonetheless been publicized widely by their secular humanist comrades as a major coup for their crusade (for more links and research regarding the ERLC partnership with animal rights activists, click here).
To make a long story much shorter, the ERLC’s resident feminist and animal rights activist, Karen Swallow Prior, helped create the Every Living Thing document (she was the chief author); an ecumenical declaration of “animal welfare” which was made in partnership with the radical Humane Society (again, click the links provided above for more thorough research and background info). Pertinent to this article, however, is the book that was produced from that ecumenical animal rights diatribe, which you can now find at Amazon.
Now, keep in mind as I apprise you of its contents, that this book is a product co-created by the ERLC and the foreword (about one-third of the original content of the book) was written by ERLC research fellow, Karen Swallow Prior, promoted and endorsed by ERLC president, Russell Moore.
First, you’ll note the subtitle of the book. The book invokes Pope Francis on the cover, and does so under the auspices of a “Christian leader.”
You’ll find repeated – almost incessant – references to the Pope as a Christian believer and an example for us to follow. Even more concerning, you’ll find material in this book promoted as “Christian” from the Mormon Church, Seventh Day Adventists, and others (more on that in a moment).
Russell Moore once said that animal welfare is a “gospel issue.” If that is the case, one cannot tell from the ERLC-inspired and produced work, Every Living Thing, that conflates cults with authentic christianity and tramples the gospel in the process. In as clear language as I can possibly use, this ERLC-inspired and produced work leaves the reader with the explicit impression that Catholics, Mormons and others are fellow genuine believers in Jesus Christ. This book is not gospel-centered; it is anti-gospel.
Note the uses of material from sub-christian sects, as published in the book.
And as well as citing the work of cultists, the book also uses material from liberal, mainstream denominations that deny the inerrancy of Scripture, the sanctity of human life, and traditional marriage. Also note the mystic “contemplative prayer” below.
In terms of the book’s fetid liberalism, it begins with a bang of leftist malodor. Here’s the first line under the second foreword (Prior’s is the first):
Christianity, as understood and interpreted by my faith tradition, has always had a strong sense of the non-human. Before the dis-enchanted world of the secular Enlightenment came to dominate the developed Western world, it was taken for granted that non-human spiritual beings were all around us.1
In the second paragraph under the foreword, the Pope is looked to as the prime Christian example and is called “Holy Father” repeatedly.
The Holy Father— a product of the developing world— radically affirms a traditional, pre-modern, enchanted view of the world— one which is thoroughly aware of the non-human powers in our world. 2
In very specific terms within the foreword, a functional post-millennial view of a vegan utopia is painted as our present ambition, to create and end-times paradigm in which people stop eating meat and doing “violence” to animals. The foreword, as well as the rest of the book, oozes Marxist philosophy, mourning the “secular consumerism of the west” as the evil nemesis of animal liberation.
Continuing the Marxist ideology, the foreword contends…
There is much which needs to be done for the Church to fully reflect our teachings on the value of God’s creation, and the overwhelming changes which need to take place may seem overwhelming. But resisting the sin social structure of factory farms is a good place to start, and the pages which follow will no doubt lead to reader to consider other important ideas as well (emphasis mine).
That’s right. “Factory farms” are “sinful.”
Each and every contributor to the book is more Marxist, progressive and leftist than the next. Just to give one example, consider Antonia Gorman, who wrote “Vegetarianism, Environmentalism, Animal Advocacy, Social Justice“4 and The Blood of Goats and Bulls: An Eco-Spiritual Response to the Sacrifice of Creation, a “constructive theology of salvation that brought together feminist, process, and ecological theologies with insights from the animal protection movement.”5 Wowser. That’s a lot of liberalism in one paragraph.
And yet, the book is replete with precisely that type of leftist cogitating.
Even more troubling is the book’s continued insistence that Mormons are fellow Christians, and it quotes the statements of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the theology pronounced by Joseph Smith as evidence that animals have eternal life and will be resurrected from the dead!
President Joseph Fielding Smith affirmed the long-held LDS position that Jesus died for the salvation of all God’s creatures, including animals. We have the assurance that through the sacrifice made on the cross all mankind and every other creature, even the earth itself, are redeemed from death and shall receive the resurrection and be restored to immortal life. [89] So we see that the Lord intends to save, not only the earth and the heavens, not only man who dwells upon the earth, but all things which he has created. The animals, the fishes of the sea, the fowls of the air, as well as man, are to be recreated, or renewed, through the resurrection, for they too are living souls (emphasis mine). 6
Keep in mind, these references are given by the authors of Every Living Thing to demonstrate and substantiate their view. This is what the Southern Baptist Convention is partnering with.
Likewise, Every Living Thing promotes the material of the Seventh Day Adventist sect (for an understanding of their theology and why they are a sub-Christian sect, click here) and their insistence that Christians be vegetarians.
The “dignity of created life” calls for a wholesome lifestyle that promotes a vegetarian diet Safeguarding God’s creation requires us to live a wholesome lifestyle that reaffirms “the dignity of created life.” In order to do this, says the church, we need to step off “the treadmill of unbridled consumerism,” avoid “tobacco, alcohol and other drugs that harm the body,” and “promote a simple vegetarian diet” (emphasis mine).7
Putting together this book along with the ERLC’s Karen Swallow Prior were other faith advisory leaders of the Humane Society, including Muhammad Hagmagid Ali (an Islamic Imam), Daniel Kroger (a Catholic priest), Daniel Wolpe (a Jewish Rabbi), and Anju Bhargava (a Hindu religious leader).
Do Southern Baptists know that they are siphoning four million dollars a year away from foreign missions to promote animal rights, veganism and a cessation of modern farming and medical research?
If not, share this article.
7. (2015-09-30). Every Living Thing: How Pope Francis, Evangelicals and other Christian Leaders are inspiring all of us to Care for Animals (Kindle Locations 2334-2337). The Humane Society of the United States. Kindle Edition.
6. (2015-09-30). Every Living Thing: How Pope Francis, Evangelicals and other Christian Leaders are inspiring all of us to Care for Animals (Kindle Locations 996-1000). The Humane Society of the United States. Kindle Edition.
5. (2015-09-30). Every Living Thing: How Pope Francis, Evangelicals and other Christian Leaders are inspiring all of us to Care for Animals (Kindle Locations 287-288). The Humane Society of the United States. Kindle Edition.
4. (2015-09-30). Every Living Thing: How Pope Francis, Evangelicals and other Christian Leaders are inspiring all of us to Care for Animals (Kindle Location 292). The Humane Society of the United States. Kindle Edition.
3. (2015-09-30). Every Living Thing: How Pope Francis, Evangelicals and other Christian Leaders are inspiring all of us to Care for Animals (Kindle Locations 144-147). The Humane Society of the United States. Kindle Edition.
2. (2015-09-30). Every Living Thing: How Pope Francis, Evangelicals and other Christian Leaders are inspiring all of us to Care for Animals (Kindle Locations 120-122). The Humane Society of the United States. Kindle Edition.
1. (2015-09-30). Every Living Thing: How Pope Francis, Evangelicals and other Christian Leaders are inspiring all of us to Care for Animals (Kindle Locations 115-117). The Humane Society of the United States. Kindle Edition.
