Animals and Religion

Religion features animals everywhere, from the lion lying with the lamb in biblical prophecy, to the beasts that populate many myths, to beliefs in the transmigration between human and animal souls, to legislations and rituals for animal slaughter, to religious responses to animal suffering, to a range of positions on meat-eating and vegetarianism, and the list keeps going. “Animals and Religion” introduces you to the many different ways that the world’s religious traditions approach nunhuman beings — the creatures we call “animals.” We will address animals in the big “world religions” such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and the “Abrahamic” traditions, as well as in local and indigenous traditions and in secular spiritualities, from antiquity to today. We will conduct our inquiry under the shadow of species extinction, factory farming, and other forms of species-based oppression. The course will explore how religious traditions are obstacles as well as rich resources in contemporary thinking about the question of the animal and in the choices we make regarding fellow creatures.