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Nomad Podcast

Is Christianity Good News for Animals? (N142)

Nomad Podcast

Tim Nash

Christianity, Faithshift, Deconstruction, Christianmysticism, Religion & Spirituality, Christianspirituality, Progressivechristian, Christian, Religion, Emergingchurch

4.7 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2017

⏱️ 122 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We recently travelled to the Creature Conference in London, where we spent the day pondering the question 'Is Christianity Good News for Animals?'. Animal welfare used to be seen as an important expression of the gospel for leaders such as Spurgeon, Wesley, C. S. Lewis and many others. But more recently it seems to have dropped off the Church's agenda. So we asked theological ethicists Prof. David Clough, and Christian leaders Tony Campolo, Steve Chalke, Ruth Valerio, and founder of the animal welfare charity Sarx, Darrel Booth, why we've lost sight of this, and how Christianity can again become good news for animals. 

“I think we need to understand the image of God as not some kind of divine stamp that gives us authorisation for exploiting other creatures without measure, but an awesome and high responsibility to think seriously about what it would mean to bring God to the rest of creation in our dealings with them.” - David Clough

Interview starts at 7m 9s

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Nomad, Christian community, mission and the future of the church.

0:16.3

Welcome back to Nomad podcast. Back in London again. Here we are again.

0:21.3

We seem to be coming to London with fresh regularity.

0:24.7

We're only here...

0:25.6

When did we come to see Justin Welby?

0:26.7

It was only about a month ago.

0:27.6

A couple of weeks ago.

0:27.9

Yeah, yeah.

0:28.3

Well, it feels like a couple of weeks ago.

0:30.4

We're here at the Creature Conference. And I think this is possibly the first conference we've sort of been involved with other than Greenbelt, I think.

0:40.0

Yeah, definitely.

0:41.9

And it's organised by an organisation called Sarks, who we'll be hearing more about later.

0:46.2

It's all about Christianity and animal welfare.

0:48.2

And what does Sarks mean, Tim?

0:49.7

Flesh.

0:50.4

Oh.

0:50.9

So it's a reference to the fact that we're all flesh, humans and animals, and that God cares for all flesh.

0:56.5

Very good.

0:56.9

It's interesting, isn't it?

0:57.7

Yeah.

0:58.7

I rarely see conferences that interest me.

1:01.7

I often find them a little bit sort of churchy and a little bit kind of inward focused.

...

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