On “Eating Animals”, book
Mainstream coverage in advance of Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals, officially out tomorrow.
and an earlier longer excerpt from the NYT
Of course daring to make this argument will get played as a trendy, new, UnChristian thing. Of course it is anything but. Ferrier (1903) on Tertullian (circa 200):
Tertullian, the most learned of all the Latin theologians, was bold enough to proclaim his convictions. The second century in which he lived needed it. It is not to be wondered at that the orthodox party of his time separated from him. His trenchant words which have come down to us are required by this Age also. The customs of the western Christian Churches have been a blot on the teaching of the Master and the Fathers. Westernised Christianity, in seeking to conquer the east, has too often only materialised the faith. And the failure of missionaries to win over the cultured of the east is through our gross western habits in living. For the man whose religion teaches him to hold all life sacred, is not [13] likely to be converted to a faith that deems no life sacred but man’s.
These things Tertullian taught—that flesh-eating was not conducive to the highest life, that it violated the written and unwritten moral law, that it debased man in intellect and heart, and that it closed the doors of the Inner Temple of his Intuition. Ferrier continues, “It is quite evident Tertullian had the same arguments to meet from the lovers of flesh-meats as we have to-day. And the fact that they tried to place Christ amongst the flesh-eaters and wine-bibbers in order to find an excuse for gratifying their own low tastes.…Thus [Tertullian] reproaches those who defended gross living, comparing them to Esau, the merely animal man; and that like him too they would even sell their birth-right for a mess of pottage, sacrificing their souls for the life of flesh. And then we have [Tertullian's] scathing indictment—”Your belly is your God, your liver is your temple, your paunch is your altar, the cook is your priest.…It is in the cooking pots that your love is inflamed—it is in the kitchen that your faith grows fervid—it is in the flesh dishes that all your hope lies hid.…Who is held in so much esteem with you as the frequent giver of dinners, as the sumptuous entertainer ?…Consistently do you men of flesh reject the things of the Spirit. But if your prophets are complacent toward such persons, they are not my prophets.”
For a contextual treatment of food and the belly in Paul consider this.
