Dominion over Wildlife?

Dominion over Wildlife? An Environmental-Theology of Human-Wildlife Relations (Wipf and Stock, 2009).

Dr. Philip J. Sampson recently reviewed my book in the June 2010 edition of Evangelicals Now a paper published in the United Kingdom.

Aside from the negative reviews by animal rights protest industry advocates on Amazon.com, this is the second published negative review by academics claiming to be Christian.

Dr. Sampson's review was quite brief so one wonders how he might have nuanced his stridently negative opinion of the book if he had more space.

Since his comments repeated several mistakes committed by another reviewer, I thought I would take the opportunity to correct some of them. I will also answer a few charges levelled against my views. It is okay for Dr. Sampson to disagree with my position, but I find it particularly disturbing that my ideas have been mischaracterized.

Accusation #1. Dr. Sampson accused me of lumping the various views of animal rights activists and thereby suggesting that I have done so inappropriately.

Response: In one sense, Dr. Sampson is entirely correct. I have dealt with the Christian animal rights movement in broad terms. However, all of them oppose fur harvesting and support vegetarianism which were the main ethical issues my book investigated. The upshot is that my lumping was entirely appropriate particularly in light of the fact that their arguments mirrored each other so closely..

Accusation #2. Dr. Sampson accused me of making disparaging remarks about vegetarianism.

Response. Guilty. But again Dr. Sampon failed to provide context for my criticism. I have no problem with people choosing vegetarianism as part of their freedom in Christ. But I demonstrate that those vegetarians who claim that Christ wants us to be vegetarians or that vegetarianism is more moral than a meat eating diet is patently false or at least highly questionable in light of the mountain of evidence my book provides.

Accusation #3. Dr. Sampson accused my position of being more in line with Roman Catholicism than Evangelicalism.

Response. Dr. Sampson needs to broaden his understanding of Evangelicalism. He could be very correct that my views conflict with the UK version of Evangelicalism but I suggest if he visits Evangelicals in the U.S. he would find my views are remarkably mainstream. Second, Evangelicals, at least in the U.S., believe that Scripture is the foundation for our faith. Since Dr. Sampson neglected to evaluate the three chapters where I detail the exegesis of scripture, one can only wonder it is better to be an Evangelical or Biblical?

Accusation #4. Dr. Sampson suggests that I have ignored the animal welfare concerns of Spurgeon and Wilberforce.

Response. Guilty. My book was not an historical survey of views on wildlife and animal treatment. Perhaps Dr. Sampson misunderstood that my text was a theological discussion not a review of Church history. Furthermore, I suspect Dr. Sampson has suffered from the Catholic tendency to read modern understandings back into older views. For example, it is one thing to suggest that Wilberforce and Spurgeon opposed cruelty to one's livestock (which I also oppose) and it is quite another to suggest that they would wholesale oppose hunting, fishing, and fur trapping. My book clearly distinguishes that our responsibilities to owned animals differ from our our responsibilities to animals that we don't own. What Dr. Sampson fails to understand,and might I add many animal rights activists, is that there is a difference between animal welfare and animal rights. My book supports the former and rejects and unbiblical, unethical, and anti-environmental to support the latter.

I am grateful that Dr. Sampson reviewed my book. I would appreciate hearing more about Spurgeon and Wilberforce and their views on animals. I doubt that they would concur with the animal rights nonsense pervading Christians today, but if I am wrong, it is understandable. None of us, perfectly accord with Scripture and the person of Christ. This is why Evangelicals believe in Semper Reformata, always reforming.

 

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Summary and Dr. Rakow's endorsement can be seen in the image of the back cover located below.

These are other questions are dealt with in Dominion over Wildlife: An Environmental-Theology of Human-Wildlife Relations.

Stephen Vantassel, Ph.D. (Theology) is uniquely qualified to address these questions because he is not only a trained theologian (and Dean of students at King's Evangelical Divinity School, Wales, UK) but is an expert in the field of wildlife damage management. He is intiimately familiar with the complex issues surrounding human-wildlife interactions as webmaster for the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management (http://icwdm.org) housed in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

For autographed copies, send a check for 26 dollars payable to

Stephen Vantassel
701 S. 55th St.
Lincoln, NE 68510

And he will ship the book postpaid to continental U.S.

The book, an adaptation of his doctoral disseration, is over 200 pages long and includes a scripture index. In it, Dr. Vantassel covers the history of the animal rights ideology, what the Old and New Testaments have to say about wildlife, ethical issues surrounding wildlife, scientific questions about wildlife, and the doctrine of shepherdism.

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Assistant Editor of The Evangelical Review of Society and Politics

http://www.evangelicalreview.com

King's Evangelical Divinity School