The Lost Meaning(s) of the Seventh Day

1. The Lost Meaning(s) of the Seventh Day Victoria Conference February 29, 2012 sktonstad@llu.edu

2. 3. Sabbath and Non-Human Creation

3. Resources • Richard Bauckham,. The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010). • Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (New York: Avon Books, 1977; 2nd ed. 1996). • Ellen Davis, Scripture, Culture and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

4. Resources • Norman Habel, The Land Is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995). • Norman Habel, ed., Readings from the Perspective of the Earth. The Earth Bible 1. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000). • Norman Habel, ed., Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008).

5. Creation andNon-Human Creation • And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.“ (1:22) • God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it“ (1:28) • Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (2:3)

6. Cascade of Blessings • God’s first blessing in the Bible is a blessing on non-human creation. • The blessing on human creation follows the pattern established by God’s blessing on non-human creation. • The blessing of the Sabbath is a blessing on all creation.

7. Under God’s Blessing • Legitimacy • Rights • Interdependence • Sabbath

8. Plight of Non-Human Creation For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now (Rom 8:19-22)

9. God and Non-Human Creation • God has given non-human creation a bill of rights. • God’s blessing has not been rescinded; God’s ear is still attentive to the pleading of non-human creation. • God – and non-human creation – has expectations of ‘the children of God.’

10. Sabbath and Ecology

11. Sabbath and Plenitude • “Without the Sabbath quiet, history becomes the self-destruction of humanity.” - Moltmann, God in Creation, 277. • “Landed people are tempted to create a sabbathlesssociety in which land is never rested, debts are never canceled, slaves are never released, nothing is changed from the way it now is and has always been.” Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 60.

12. World Meat Consumption per capita, year 2000 • United States 269.3 lbs • Denmark 252.6 lbs • Spain 250.6 lbs • Australia 242.9 lbs • New Zealand 235.2 lbs FAO

13. World Meat Consumption per capita, year 2000 • Bangladesh 6.8 lbs • Burundi 7.9 lbs • Rwanda 9.7 lbs • India 10.0 lbs • Malawi 10.1 lbs FAO

14. World Meat Consumption 2000(per capita in lbs)

15. Trends in Farm Units Raising Pork 1979-2008

16. Greenhouse Gas Production in Megatons CO2 Per Year

17. Meat Consumption and CO2

18. Ethics and Food Production Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

19. Swine of the Times:Mass Confinement “About 80 million of the 95 million hogs slaughtered each year in America, according to the National Pork Producers Council, are intensively reared in mass-confinement farms, never once in their time on earth feeling soil or sunshine.”Scully, Dominion, p 29.

20. Swineofthe Times:Machines “Genetically designed by machines, inseminated by machines, fed by machines, monitored, herded, electrocuted, stabbed, cleaned, cut, and packaged by machines – themselves treated like machines ‘from birth to bacon’ – these creatures, when eaten, have hardly ever been touched by human hands.”Scully, Dominion, p 29.

21. Swine of the Times: Abuse “We keep walking. Sores, tumors, cysts, bruises, torn ears, swollen legs everywhere. Roaring, groaning, tail biting …frenzied chewing on bars and chains …stereotypical rooting and nest building with imaginary straw.”Scully, Dominion, 268

22. Swine of the Times:Despair “When they have conquered ‘the stress gene,’ maybe the Ph.D.’s and the guys in white coats can find us a cure for the despair gene, too.” Scully, Dominion, 268

23. Swine of the Times:Negation “Factory farming isn’t just killing. It is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature. It is not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to them.” -Scully, Dominion, 289

24. Fractures • This separation of the soul from the body and from the world is no disease of the fringe, no aberration, but a fracture that runs through the mentality of institutional religion like a geologic fault. And this rift in the mentality of religion continues to characterize the modern mind, no matter how secular or religious it becomes. Berry, The Unsettling of America, 108.

25. Ecology Crisis as Loss of Story • “The Christian cannot speak of the ‘environment’ or ‘environmental issues,’ for creation cannot be reduced to the environment. If creation is loosed from the narrative framework of the Bible, we are left with absolutely no warrants to care for the created order.” Kathryn Greene-McCreight

26. Retrieval of the Story • “The message of ecologists is far more powerful when framed in terms of the biblical narrative: the waters we pollute and the land we poison were created by the One who made, reconciles, and redeems us.” Kathryn Greene-McCreight

27. Ethics and Non-Human Creation • “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way in which its animals are treated.” Mohandas K. Gandhi

28. Re-sensitization • ...as long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace... There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is. - Isaac BashevisSinger (1904-1991)

29. The Slaughterer Barely three months had passed since Yoineh Meir had become a slaughterer, but the time seemed to stretch endlessly. He felt as though he were immersed in blood and lymph. His ears were beset by the squawking of hens; the crowing of roosters; the gobbling of geese; the mooing and bleating of calves and goats; wings fluttered; claws tapped on the floor. The bodies refused to know any justification or excuse – every body resisted in its own fashion, tried to escape, and seemed to argue with the Creator to its last breath. Isaac BashevisSinger, The CollectedStories, 209.

30. Human and Non-Human Health • “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” –Albert Einstein

31. Call to Mercy • “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain. -Paul and Linda McCartney

32. Ecotheology in Australia(Long, Long Ago) “But when the selfishness of taking the life of animals to gratify a perverted taste was presented to me by a Catholic woman, kneeling at my feet, I felt ashamed and distressed. I saw it in a new light, and I said, I will no longer patronize the butchers. I will no longer have the flesh of corpses on my table.”Ellen G. White, Letter 73A to Dr. and Mrs. Maxson, August 30., 1896.

33. Act of Resistance • The choice of a non-meat diet is an act of resistance against the predatory and ecologically unsustainable treatment of non-human creation and the earth. • This choice has a narratival structure – anchored in God’s intent at Creation and all creation’s hope in the eschaton.

34. Conclusion Care of human creation cannot be separated from the care of non-human creation and the earth.

35. Trends in Meat Consumption1950-2004 (per capita in lbs)