As I write this letter, I have 60 reports sealed and ready to post. However, I have held posting because I am worried, I keep asking myself, is this the right direction for CVAUK, if not can we learn from this experience? So instead of throwing these reports into the bin I am including this letter.

The major ingredient of the enclosed report (PDFfile) is anger, our anger and frustration when we receive replies from angry anthropocentric Christians. Why do so many Christians reject our plea for mercy and compassion towards animals by quoting isolated passages out of the Bible? Why do they proclaim that God does not care about the suffering mankind inflicts on the rest of God’s creation? What is the difference between their faith and ours, the God they worship and our God? I believe these are very important questions that need to be answered and understood, if we are to become effective within the church.

In an attempt to answer these questions I must share my faith and my God with you. My faith is based on the following statement ‘Faith is not belief without proof but trust without reservation’. To have faith in God you must therefore know Him enough to be prepared to place your ‘eternity’ into His hands, knowing that for ‘all time’ He will look after you. My God is someone very special, a God I can trust without reservation, and that knowledge gives me the joy and peace that defies all understanding.

So what are those all important attributes of my God that enables me to trust Him without reservation? Through the Bible I discovered that He is:

• Holy Morally pure, perfect, free from sin.

• Divine Above the nature of man, extremely good.

• Love Great affection and devotion.

• Just Acting according to what is right, fair, impartial.

When I gave my life to Jesus, I put my trust in a God who, by His very nature, is extremely good, morally pure and acts with impartial justice and love, a God who is perfect in every way. I would be very foolish to put all my trust in a God who said He loved me but showed total indifference to the suffering of others, yet many Christians go out of their way to convince me that this is the God I worship!

Most Christians would agree that the God I have described is also their God, So why, if we worship the same God, do we arrive at different answers to moral questions concerning our compassion and mercy towards Gods other creatures? I believe the answer depends on how we view ; ourselves, the Bible and self interest, taking each in turn:

• Creation caring Christians consider themselves a part of creation, that to be made in God’s image carries responsibilities towards all of God’s creation, either as Stewards or Servant Kings.
• Anthropocentric Christians will claim that being made in God’s image puts them above creation which was designed to serve mankind alone, giving him/her the right to use and abuse it.

• Creation caring Christians will use the Bible to discover God’s attributes and then use that knowledge to become God’s Ambassadors, by applying as far as humanly possible, God’s moral attributes of justice, goodness and mercy.
• Anthropocentric Christians will use the Bible as a ‘manual of moral absolutes’ to be used, when necessary, to excuse their immoral treatment of God’s creation.

• Creation Caring Christians are prepared to sacrifice themselves. I quote:
There is a similarity between the campaign to end slavery and that for animal rights - both are entirely altruistic in that those who fight them stand to gain nothing if they succeed. They are born out of a desire for a better, more equitable, more just world where relieving the suffering of others is an end in itself. Both are noble, both are born of the finer aspects of the human spirit and both are opposed by bigotry, spite, ignorance and self interest.
• Anthropocentric Christians will guard vested interests by rigidly following a selfish Gospel, were dominion means domination and whose philosophy is more aligned to the teachings of Aristotle and a militant Rome than the compassionate teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally their are the vast majority of Christians who, satisfied with the status quo, are either oblivious to, or wilfully blind to, the destruction, violence and cruelty, imposed on both mankind (the poor & hungry), the environment and the rest of God’s creatures, by their overindulgent lifestyle. Our main hope however, lies in reaching the hearts and minds of these Christians, who care, but usually in a very limited way, their care does not extend beyond their immediate fellow Christians, their church or local community.

How do we reconcile these opposing attitudes? We must act in love not anger, losing our tempers and alienating ourselves will not solve the problem. It is up to us to overcome our anger and frustration by proclaiming a creation caring gospel to both the church and the secular world, in love, we must encourage not condemn. I truly believe that the hierarchy of the church is slowly moving away from anthropocentrism and towards a creation gospel, most churches have now published creation caring declarations and are considering the introduction of doctrine and liturgy that will embrace all of God’s creation. We must welcome this move towards a creation caring church, and be instrumental in encouraging its adoption throughout Christendom, eventually isolating those anthropocentric Christians who refuse to change.

I would like to thank our Patron Fr Derek Reeve, for his timely comments about our ‘Christmas for all Creation’ campaign, he wrote ‘My problem is that I am not happy about washing our dirty linen in public and I don't feel that the press is the proper place for us to be taking the churches to task for their attitudes to the animal creation and the environment generally’ (full text on the back page of report). It was Fr Derek’s comments that encouraged me to review our campaign and write this letter.

I therefore propose that ‘when dealing with the secular press, we avoid criticising the church and only proclaim a creation caring Gospel to the secular world’. This censorship will not apply to the Christian press.

I would like to add the above proviso to our ‘Code of Practice’ but as these thoughts are my personal opinions, I welcome guidance from our patrons and constructive comments from our members.       #