Loading ...PETA to Southern Baptists: Jesus Loves Chickens
flockwoodWe didn’t have much money when I was a kid — certainly not enough to waste it on one of those jumbo tubs of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Fortunately, we belonged to a church that believed in salvation, divine healing, the baptism in the Holy Ghost — and potlucks. Technically, any time two or three gather in Christ’s name and bring along homemade bean salad, pork and beans and meat loaf, it’s a potluck.
But to be a Spirit-filled finger-lickin’-good Sunday Pentecostal dinner on the grounds, there has to be at least one bucket of Col. Sanders’ regular and extra-crispy.
Partially or fully-hydrogenated chicken fat is one of the few vices that evangelicals can enjoy without feeling guilty. At least it used to be. A group of hectoring herbavores is working to change that. PETA says Southern Baptists should give up meat eating “for Jesus’ sake.”
These would-be poultry prohibitionists are targeting messengers (delegates) to the Southern Baptist Convention — which meets this week in Louisville.
Their press release is below:
mEDIA ALERT – MEDIA ALERT – MEDIA ALERT
‘JESUS’ TELLS BAPTISTS: ‘FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, GO VEGETARIAN’
Jesus and a ‘Chicken’ Seek Converts to Nonviolent Diet
What: PETA members—including one dressed as Jesus carrying a sign reading, “For Christ’s Sake, Go Vegetarian,” and another dressed as a chicken with a sign that says, “Jesus Loves Me Too”—will bring a pro-vegetarian message based on biblical teachings of compassion to people attending the Southern Baptist Convention in Louisville on Tuesday. Other members will hold signs reading, “Thou Shalt Not Kill. Go Vegetarian” and “Blessed Are the Merciful. Go Vegetarian.” They will also hand out leaflets that relate vegetarian living to Christian teachings.
What would Jesus eat? Today’s factory farms compete to produce the cheapest meat, with little or no concern for the suffering of animals. Animals on factory farms live miserable lives, deprived of all pleasure and everything that is natural and important to them. They are confined to cages and sheds that are so crowded that they can’t turn around or lie down comfortably (conditions that have been denounced by Pope Benedict XVI), and they are forced to stand in waste up to their hocks on filthy feedlots. At the slaughterhouse, animals are hung upside down and their throats are cut, often while they’re completely conscious. Many are still alive when they are skinned, hacked to pieces, or scalded to death in defeathering tanks.
“Factory farms and slaughterhouses are a source of constant violence and bloodshed, and they cruelly exploit God’s creatures,” says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. “For Christians, the peaceful message ‘God is love’ extends to animals too––and to embody His compassion, we must stop eating them.”
Where: Kentucky Exposition Center main entrance (gate 1), 937 Phillips Ln., Louisville
When: Tuesday, June 23, 12 noon
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
I grew up so far out in the country that we had to fry our own chicken. Which we did, in some quantity, and always for church dinners, where virtually every family would fry chicken and bring it. You got to sample how everyone else fried chicken as well as your own. Praise the Lord and pass the cornbread . . .
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:19 am
And, I’m sure the Baptists will be really really impressed that the Pope has denounced the torture of chickens. You wonder if the people who write these press releases have any subtlety of thought whatsoever.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
PETA does a lot of this to get attention, and dollars from those that have too much money and looking to give to a nutty cause. They also get goverment money by filling out some form and professing they are helping people to be healthy.
Truth be known they are only out for the money as a whole. There are some people who do believe this stuff, but they are spoiled little rich kids looking for a cause.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Well, Paul, I doubt that the rank and file who show up at these things are getting any money out of it. A few months ago, at the McDonald’s where I eat with the homeless people, PETA came and set up a big protest against the chicken sandwiches they sell there. Two shapely young women in bikinis sat out in what was then fairly cold weather in a tub of water dyed red to look like blood for several hours. I can’t imagine that they got paid to do it, and I can imagine that they got pretty cold doing it. So, that tells me that at least the rank and file believe in their cause. As far as PETA getting government money, I doubt it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:36 pm
It’s sobering to think how many animals are killed to support a vegetarian diet! Think of all the field mice, moles, snakes, other little creatures that nest and wriggle amid the corn. Granted, they don’t have big, sad, soulful eyes like a cow, but they are still animals. Our machines grind them to pulp while harvesting grain for a future “PETA Crunchy Granola Surprise.” (PETA bread, maybe?)
Robert Burns was right: the best-laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley. That poem was actually about accidentally plowing up a mouse nest.
Kosher meat, by the way, is orders of magnitude less cruel than what comes from the mass slaughterhouses. Price is higher, but for some, this will be a much better option.
Surely, the American diet can get somewhat away from current levels of meat consumption, but I don’t think vegetarianism is altogether the answer. And after all, we are carnivores by design.
PS–the Diocese of Newark is a hotbed of heresy.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Newark, that’s a whole lot of misinformation for one post! The vegetation is consumed by a vegetarian directly is but a tiny fraction of what a meat-eater indirectly eats, so much more vegetation being gathered to feed to the animals who are ultimately slaughtered! (Thus, far fewer field mice et al are sacrificed for a vegetarian’s diet than for a meat-eater’s.)
And animals ultimately killed in the “kosher” way are raised along the same nasty conditions as all the rest, which PETA describes above. It’s only the slaughter itself which is different.
As for being carnivores, the science just is not with you. Anthropoligists will tell you that it was only relatively recently when we started eating animals. Our teeth and jaws in no way resemble, for example, those of cats who are true carnivores. Our teeth and jaws are totally herbivorous. Our intestines are long like herbivores’ while carnivores’ are short. No known carnivores suffer or die from cholesterol buildup or heart disease. We’re just not meant to be eating this stuff.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Just thought this was relevant to the discussion, or maybe not…:
“Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine. All grain is ordained for the use of man and of beasts, to be the staff of life, not only for man but for the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and all wild animals that run or creep on the earth; And these hath God made for the use of man only in times of famine and excess of hunger.” (Doctrine & Covenants 89:12-15)
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
That “excess of hunger” part is a mighty big loophole. I’m getting real hungry now. Now who can find a scriptural admonishing against deep frying?
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Well Jose,
I’m not sure this suffice, since it is mainly priestly code, but Leviticus 3:16B-17 would seem to rule out deep frying….
“All fat is the LORD’s. 17 It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, in all your settlements: you must not eat any fat or any blood.”
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
You’re probably right Jose, but the first part of the section actually states, “not by way of commandment.” It is simply a health code. I think it’s up to us as individual members to determine what it means for each of us. There are a few “do nots,” the whole alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea thing, but most of it is written as guidelines.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:12 am
The Southern Baptists will never agree that the Bible forbids fried chicken, and southern Episcopalians like myself might have trouble with the doctrine, too. If fried donuts are included in the prohibition, you’ll lose the Methodists, too. I’m not sure what Presbyterians eat . . .
July 6th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I always thought the official bird of the Southern Baptist was the fried chicken.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Me, too, Kevin. This whole thing smacks of blasphemy to me.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Stunts like this are why PETA has become such a fringe group and lost all credibility. Most people don’t take PETA seriously because they of the goofiness of their stunts. Like criticizing President Obama for swatting a fly. Goofy. And dressing up as Jesus to honor Jesus is OK, but dressing up as Jesus to mock him and ridicule his followers is just offensive. Try dressing up as Mohammed in a Muslin country and they’d kill the demonstrators.