Animal Protection
The Admission of Protestant-Lutheran Church
Protestant-Lutheran Church
»What about church and animal protection? At this point, I have to be clear: When the history of our church is written one day, the topic of ‘church and animal protection’ during the 20th century will present just as black a chapter as the topic of ‘church and the burning of witches’ once did in the Middle Ages.« *
»In countless documents, the churches emphasize their “responsibility for peace,” which remains limited solely to people. In contrast, in the theatre of war in nature and in the criminality of industrialized animal torture the church never appears as a Samaritan. There it is priest and Levite. There it ignores it.« *
»Where does this forgetting of animals in the churches come from? Well, it is based on the fact that ethics, theological as well as philosophical, thinks it has to concern itself only with the behavior of people to people and to society.« *
»What we are experiencing today is a precisely calculated, cleverly developed and terrible, infernal game that degrades our animals meant for slaughter in factory farming into animal machines. The excesses of eggs, meat and butter that western prosperous societies produce in this way is paid for with the torture of animals that is unworthy of humans. In contrast to this atrocity that is practiced everywhere without punishment, Albert Schweitzer’s ethics of reverence before life reads like a message from another planet. And a church that remains silent in the face of all this is thus declaring the bankruptcy of its sermon of mercy!« *
* Prof. Dr. Theology. Dr. h. c. Erich Grässer former professor of New Testament theology at the University of Bonn / Germany
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