Conservative Christian Vegetarians?
Dominion:
The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully
Review by Rachelle
Annechino
Dominion is a
complex and moving inquiry into animal welfare issues from the point of view of an avowed
Christian conservative, Matthew Scully. Whether you’re a left wing progressive
who thinks “Christian conservative” always equals irrational, hateful venom of
the Jerry Falwell sort, a Reaganite who’s convinced that animal rights are the
exclusive province of liberal crackpot sentimentalists, or someone who sympathizes with
animal causes but questions the ethical formulations of key animal rights proponents such
as Peter Singer, this eloquently reasoned book is for you. You’ll probably
disagree with Scully on some points, sure, but respectfully. And why bother to read
a book if you expect to agree with everything in it?
Taking its title from Genesis – “And God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26) – the book reconstructs the
notion of dominion, often cited as an endorsement of human plunder, as a call to human
responsibility and stewardship. From the European hoof-and-mouth disaster of 2001,
through the incongruities of “canned” hunting, to the baroque cruelties of the
factory farming industry and of some animal research protocols, the book makes a
convincing case for, if not animal rights, than for just plain human mercy. Scully
acknowledges that nature can be brutal and that human survival requires the killing of, at
the very least, plants (and in fact one of my cats, the deceptively adorable one, is right
now giving me a look that suggests he’s imagining me one-quarter his size, covered in
feathers). But, Scully insists, “this does not… lay to rest the matter of
our own ethical conduct toward animals. The whole point of dominion is that the
animal world is not our moral example.”
And
honestly, is the animal world capable of instituting “mass-confinement hog
farming,” in which millions of pigs – who are at least as smart and sociable as
dogs – spend their entire lives indoors in spaces too small to allow them to even
turn around freely, in order to “sav[e] money on feed since [they] burn off
less energy and require fewer calories than free-range pigs”; dosed with massive
quantities of vaccines and antibiotics “to control the diseases borne of mass
confinement”; lying in their own waste, despite an innate aversion to fouling their
living spaces; without “even straw to lie on,” even though pigs naturally crave
roughage? You don’t have to be sentimental, Scully argues, nor must you profess
any kind of ideology about the place of animals in the natural order, to question the
morality of such practices.
Also notable
for its commentary on the work of other animal advocates, Dominion critiques Animal
Liberation, Peter Singer’s classic animal rights text, in addition to his other,
perhaps more controversial, writings on human ethics. Further disquiet, as well as
admiration, is expressed for the fascinating career of Temple Grandin, an autistic
scientist with an innate empathy for animals – whose thought processes she believes
are much like those of autistic individuals. One of the world’s foremost
designer/reformers of livestock handling systems, Grandin favors the reduction of animal
stress within the factory farming system, rather than the fundamental changes that Singer
and others propose.
Revealing
“something merciless, deeply disordered, and unworthy of humanity,” Dominion’s
original perspective will likely make you question your assumptions, whatever they may be
– what higher recommendation is there?
Resources:
Matthew Scully’s website
Animal
Liberation, by Peter Singer. A foundational animal rights text.
Writings
on an Ethical Life, by Peter Singer. Essays on human morality from the
controversial ethicist. Challenging, disturbing stuff.
The
Case for Animal Rights, by Tom Regan, takes a somewhat more absolutist, less
utilitarian view than Singer.
Thinking
in Pictures: And Other Reports From My Life with Autism, by Temple Grandin, touches
upon the author’s work with livestock handlers. Visual artists, reclusive
types, and people with social anxiety disorder will likely identify with Grandin’s
worldview – and even if you don’t identify, it’s an intriguing read.
The Great Ape Project advocates the protection
of the great apes from killing by humans except in self-defense, from enforced confinement
except for their own or human protection, and from torture.
The
Hidden Life of Dogs, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, examines the social life of dogs,
while The
Tribe of Tiger, also by Thomas, describes the culture of cats.
The
Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work and Ideas, edited by
Louis Fischer. The vegetarian and sometime “fruitarian.”
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