Consuming Animal Creatures: The Christian Ethics of Eating Animals

Fellow Creatures: The Humean Case for Animal Ethics

In this article, I follow up on a suggestion made by Josephine Donovan that a Hume-inspired ethic of sympathy would be a better foundation for an animal ethic than more rationalistic approaches of both utilitarianism and deontology. I then expand on Donovan’s suggestion by further suggesting that Hume’s “sentiment of humanity” could easily be expanded to include other animals. Hume’s ethic of s...

The Place of Animals in Christian America

Since Henry Bergh organized the first American Society for the Prevention of Cruel­ ty to Animals in 1866, there have been na­ tionwide efforts to curb cruelty to ani­ mals. [ll The "Humane Society" and the "Band of Mercy" have joined this crusade, along with numerous other groups aimed toward sane specific act of cruelty. [2] Groups which indirectly advocate kindne~s to animal life are the Veg...

Teleology, Utilitarianism, and Christian Ethics

T AIM of this essay is to clarify the models of moral thinking and doing called teleology and deontology, to gain understanding of utilitarianism as a subcategory of the former, and to explore the relation both to utilitarianism and to teleology in general of certain Christian "consequentialist" modes of moral argument. This purpose arises out of a general and considerable unclarity in recent e...

Moral argument and Christian ethics.

The Bible's Role in Christian Ethics*

Biblical scholars and Christian ethicists have in the past frequently had little contact with each other's work. The former have been content to limit their focus to historical questions; whereas the latter have usually spoken to contemporary moral issues either with minimal reference to Scripture or with little concern for the technical and historical questions of biblical scholarship. Meanwhi...