990359 “Jesus Didn't Eat Animals, Christians Shouldn’t Either”

Washington Post - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights group, is invoking the name of Jesus in its campaign to stop the annual slaughter of billions of animals. Jesus, the Norfolk-based organization argues, was a vegetarian. And every Christian should be, too.

Following Jesus means "being filled with the knowledge of the Lord, which is a difficult order to fill," said Bruce G. Friedrich, PETA's campaigns coordinator. "One area where it's easy is at the dinner table, by not causing animals to live miserable, pitiful lives and to die bloody, violent deaths."

Friedrich knows that not everyone will buy the argument that Jesus refused to eat or serve meat. But he hopes a series of well-placed billboards, part of PETA's $1 million-a-year vegetarian campaign, will provoke discussion of Scripture-based eating.

The billboard message is simple: "Jesus was a vegetarian. Show respect for God's creatures--follow Him."

The first sign went up in December across from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. It pictures the famous statue of Jesus, with outstretched arms, overlooking Rio de Janeiro and was an effort, unsuccessful so far, to solicit the influential evangelist's support, Friedrich said.

In St. Louis in January, the image of a sweet-faced Jesus framed in an orange slice--perched next to an advertisement for Malacca gin--was placed along the motorcade route of Pope John Paul II, who was visiting.

Last week, the same image met participants at the Saskatchewan Pork Expo in Saskatoon.

L. Michael White, professor of classics and director of religious studies at the University of Texas at Austin, has not seen the billboards, but he read through PETA's Web site and calls its arguments "so thin they're pretty difficult to deal with."

"This is just another cause making bad use of Scripture," said White, principal historical adviser to last year's "From Jesus to Christ" series on PBS. "I'd say to them: You can't make the Bible do that."

Friedrich said PETA had hoped to place a billboard of the Rio Jesus along U.S. 29 between Charlottesville and Lynchburg, Va., next week to attract the attention of faculty and students going to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. But Keith Austin, of Lamar Advertising, said he told the group that his Roanoke- based company doesn't have any unused billboard space in the Lynchburg area and could not take the advertisement.

"We're turning it down right now because of limited inventory" and because the sign is potentially controversial, Austin said. "We don't want to do things that will be inciting in the community." But he said he wants to "remain open" to the future possibility of selling PETA space to advertise its message.

PETA, which Friedrich said has 600,000 members, had no problem leasing billboard space in Amarillo, Tex., the heart of cattle country and site of a high-profile lawsuit involving talk show host Oprah Winfrey. The sign of Jesus and the orange slice is expected to appear there Monday.

Texas cattlemen three years ago filed an $11 million lawsuit against Winfrey and one of her guests, Howard Lyman, of the Humane Society of the United States, accusing them of defaming the beef industry and causing a decline in beef sales. Last year, a federal court jury acquitted Winfrey and Lyman, a judgment now under appeal.

The planned sign in Amarillo is stirring the kind of controversy, and attention, Friedrich was hoping to get.

"Not even Jesus is sacred anymore," Lydia Villanueva, of Hereford's Promised Land Network, a religious agricultural support organization, told the Amarillo Globe-Press. "If we have to use Jesus Christ like Michael Jordan to make me feel beef is bad--that isn't right."

The Rev. Leroy T. Matthiesen, retired Catholic bishop of Amarillo, said there is no proof to back up PETA's assertion that Jesus was a vegetarian. "There are no indications [in the New Testament] of Christ being a vegetarian," he said. "I grew up on a farm eating fried chicken and vegetables."

But Friedrich and other animal lovers cite passages in the Bible to prove that God--from the Garden of Eden on--always meant for humans to be vegetarians.

PETA's argument is detailed on its Web site, www.jesusveg.com. The gist of it is that Jesus belonged to the Essenes, who some historians believe were one of several Jewish sects that abhorred animal sacrifice and were practicing vegetarians. Jesus's teachings about love and compassion extended to animals and culminated in his tantrum in the temple before his arrest and execution. He directed most of his ire at vendors in this "den of thieves" who were selling animals for sacrifice and consumption.

Furthermore, there is no mention in the New Testament of Jesus eating poultry, beef or lamb, even during the last meal with his disciples, where Scripture mentions only bread and wine.

The feeding of thousands with a few fishes and loaves of bread? Not true. Those miracles, PETA says, involved bread only. Fish were added to the story by Christians for whom the fish had become a symbol of their faith.

Religion professor White said he knows no biblical scholars who believe Jesus was a vegetarian. They assume Jesus ate meat because it was the practice of the time.

Lamb, for example, traditionally was part of the Passover meal and probably would have been included in the Last Supper. And the Gospels tell of numerous occasions when Jesus ate in people's homes without mentioning the menu.

"Silence" about the food consumed is no argument one way or the other, said White, who rarely eats red meat for dietary reasons and supports the humane treatment of animals. Advocates of the Jesus-as-vegetarian position "are reading backwards from their [contemporary] perspective."

Rynn Berry, one of those advocates and an adjunct professor of culinary history at New School University in New York City, has written the recently published "Food for the Gods: Vegetarianism and the World's Religions." He said he has "marshaled evidence" to provide a solid case that Jesus was a vegetarian.

"Am I looking [at the Bible] through vegetarian binoculars? Maybe, but someone needs to provide some balance," Berry said.

PETA was founded in 1980 and was located in Rockville until it moved to Norfolk three years ago. The largest animal rights organization in the world, it offers a broad range of programs "to protect animals and educate people on animal exploitation," Friedrich said.

In addition to billboards, PETA's vegetarian Jesus campaign will be visible in cities that host national denominational meetings. Participants in the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Atlanta in June and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in Washington in November will be greeted by PETA volunteers who regularly stage anti-meat demonstrations.

One volunteer dresses as Jesus, another as a cow or chicken. The Jesus figure holds a sign that reads: "Thou shalt not kill. Go Veg." The animal carries a placard that says, "Meat Is Murder."

Friedrich, a Catholic, also has sent letters to hundreds of Protestant and Catholic religious leaders, urging their support. Many, he said, have been sympathetic to the vegetarian cause even if they don't fully subscribe to that point of view.

Barbara A. Johnson, executive assistant to religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach, wrote a letter last year saying, "Dr. Robertson advocates a healthy diet, but he is not a vegetarian and does not promote a strict vegetarian diet."

Other responses have been kind but dismissive.

"We believe that it is important that animals be treated kindly, not cruelly," said a spokeswoman at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Minneapolis. "However, we do not believe that the killing of animals for food, if it is done humanely, is in any way against God's law."

Friedrich refuses to accept such views.

"It would be unthinkable," he said, "for the Prince of Peace to eat animals."

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