Churches Asked to Consider Feelings of Animals

An organization founded by Ginnie Bee and directed by Michael Fox has been established here to apply religious principles to how humans treat animals.

The main concern of the International Network for Religion and Animals is “to move the major religions of the world to re-examine animal suffering,” said Bee, 74, a retired department store executive and a Roman Catholic. “We are asking religions to examine their own Scriptures (on the subject) that have largely been overlooked.

“Animals have souls. They have divinity.”

A Humane Society official, Fox, 48, writes the syndicated newspaper column, “Ask Your Animal Doctor.”

Variety of Faiths

The fledgling network, started last summer, so far has a mailing list of only several thousand. But its international advisory board represents the major world religions. A rabbi and a Hare Krishna member are on the U.S. board of directors, as well as people of the Methodist, Catholic, Anglican, Buddhist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ and Seventh-day Adventist faiths.

“I think we’re waking a sleeping giant,” Fox said of apparently growing interest in the network’s activities and the animal rights movement. “The general public is intensely turned on by it.”

But the tax-exempt, nonprofit network has drawn “ridicule from agribusiness” and opposition from the fur trade and vivisectionists, according to Fox.

And Fox, who holds a degree in veterinary medicine and doctorates in both medicine and animal behavior, has tangled with Pope John Paul II over biological experimentation.

Statement Draws Objection

Fox wrote the pontiff in August, taking exception to this remark made to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: “It is certain that animals are at the service of man and can hence be the object of experimentation.”

“It is my understanding that the word dominion from (the biblical Book of) Genesis does not necessarily mean that we have some God-given license to exploit animals as we choose,” Fox lectured the Pope in his letter. “The word dominion, which comes from the Latin domino , to rule over, is derived from the original word in Hebrew, rahe , which in literal translation speaks to compassionate stewardship and having regard for the life of the beast, rather than power and control over it.”

A recently published brochure introducing the International Network for Religion and Animals notes that religion “counsels the powerful to be merciful and kind to those weaker than themselves, and most of humankind is at least nominally religious.

Paradox Noted

“But there is a ghastly paradox: Far from showing mercy, humanity uses its dominion over other species to pen them in cruel, close confinement, to trap, club and harpoon them, to poison, mutilate and shock them in the name of science, to kill them by the billions, and even slowly to blind them in excruciating pain to test cosmetics.”

Fox, who said he is “a fairly recent vegetarian,” outlined two of the network’s immediate goals: to establish dialogue with a religious perspective with leaders, teachers and members of religious communities in order to “stop the suffering and denigration of animals,” and to form local chapters throughout the world.

“I left academia to help the animal kingdom,” Fox said during an interview in his cluttered third-floor office at the U.S. Humane Society building in downtown Washington. “I felt a sense of wonder for all of creation . . . and later, a sense of reverence. My curiosity as a scientist was stimulated, but I also wanted to heal” animals.

Institute Director

Fox was a professor of biology and psychology at Washington University in St. Louis before he became director of the Institute for the Study of Animal Problems here in 1976. He has also been scientific director for the U.S. Humane Society since 1980.

The native of Great Britain proudly showed a visitor the large collection of animal pictures that line his office walls. They include a photograph of a red fox he snapped in Alaska, and a small replica of a coyote on a cross.

Titled “Crucified Coyote,” the work was given to Fox by the artist, who created a life-size original, based on the poisoning of a coyote by sheep ranchers. The controversial work was placed in an art exhibit until gallery officials ordered it removed.

“This work is a reaction to certain Judeo-Christian concepts which inadvertently alienated humanity from the animals and the rest of nature,” Fox said, reading from a plaque attached to the replica of the coyote. “He died because of our sins.”

‘Understanding Your Dog’

Fox, of Anglican and Methodist background, said courses in animal rights philosophy are now catching on at colleges. Half a dozen books have been written on the subject, he added, including his own: “Returning to Eden.” Fox has written 28 other books for major publishers, including 11 children’s books on animals and several popular paperbacks such as “Understanding Your Dog,” and “Understanding Your Cat.”

His latest book, to be published by Schoken, is “Agricide.” He said its message is that “we are essentially abusing and poisoning the land and our powers of dominion.”

Fox is also a columnist for McCall’s magazine, and his article, “Do Animals Have Souls?” in the December, 1982, issue generated a whale of a response--most of it sympathetic.

The complex songs of humpback whales may be a “soul-expression phenomenon,” Fox wrote in a conclusion that flies in the face of the traditional Christian teaching that animals do not have souls.

At One With Whales

“Musicians, who have more keenly developed auditory senses than most of us, have managed to play along with such songs, and they report feeling a deep sense of oneness with the whales,” Fox wrote.

He added during the interview that since animals have “divinity and inherent value” they should “be treated with equal and fair consideration because there is no morally relevant difference between animals and humans. . . .

“That is part of the American Indian (religious) tradition, as well as of St. Francis (of Assisi, the patron of Catholic ecologists). . . . It’s in the Koran. . . . It’s an intuitive thing; we feel it.”

Fox, who frequently gives lectures accompanied by slide shows of the animal kingdom, is currently on a campaign to “reach into the departments of religion and theology at seminaries, universities and centers of religious studies.

“I want them to look at the holocaust of the animal kingdom and (apply) their Scriptures . . . to the ecological and spiritual crisis we have today.”

World Prayer Day

Fox also wants ministers to preach about the subject on World Prayer Day for Animals. Fox is seeking to promote the observance in conjunction with the existing Oct. 4 Feast Day of St. Francis. The 13th-Century founder of the Franciscan Order is known for his love of animals.

Bee, who has financed the start-up of the Network for Religion and Animals, said the group is not the kind to picket animal research labs or become militant.

“We’re not out here to say ‘this is our stand on vivisection,’ ” she said. “We want individual religions to take a stand on it. . . . We are asking each religion to move at its own pace.”

The network is also seeking dues-paying members, ranging from the “supporting” category of $1 to “patrons” at $1,000 or more. Organizations, as well as individuals, may join, Fox said, noting that a recent new member is the Assn. of Reformed Druids, “many of whom believe that animals have souls.”

Fox and Bee are sometimes kidded about the relationship between their names and their animal work.

“That’s terribly funny,” laughed Bee. “Ginnie Bee is how I’m known in the animal world. My legal name is Virginia Bourquardez, so you can see why I changed.”