This book offers an up-to-date examination of the nature and development of animal theology. It considers what animal theology is and how it challenges, and is challenged by, liberation and ecological theology. At the heart of the work is a critical engagement with the Brazilian ecotheologian Leonardo Boff. Clair Linzey addresses ideas that originate from the papal encyclical Laudato Si’ and considers how Pope Francis is developing an animal friendly tradition within Catholicism. Exploring new vistas in animal theology, this volume makes a valuable to contribution to debates on how religion should be concerned with animals and the environment. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know the current state of debate with animal theology and its effects on the wider Christian community.

Animal rights is animal theology. The author argues that historical theology, creatively defined, must reject humanocentricity. He questions the assumption that if theology is to speak on this issue, 'it must only do so on the side of the oppressors.' His theological query investigates not only the abstractions of theory, but also the realities of hunting, animal experimentation, and genetic engineering. He is an important, pioneering, Christian voice speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.

"I don't know why you're spending all your time on this. They're only animals--for heaven's sake " That was the reaction of one of Andrew Linzey's fellow students at King's College, London, when he was studying theology in the 1970s. Since then, the now Rev. Dr. Andrew Linzey has been arguing that animals aren't only anything, but rather that they matter to God, and should do so to us. In this collection of essays, Linzey counters with his customary wit, erudition, and insight, some contemporary (and perhaps surprising) challenges to animal rights--from ecotheologians, the Church, and politicians. He contends that far from the sometimes shallow judgments of those who think animals unworthy of theological consideration, the Christian tradition has a wellspring of sources and resources available to taking animals seriously. Instead of being marginal to the Christian experience, Linzey concludes, animals can take their rightful place alongside human beings as creatures of the same God. There is a long forgotten spiritual tradition that two children, both named Jesus, were born in Bethlehem to two sets of parents named Joseph and Mary. This tradition is supported by the different accounts of the nativity and life of Jesus Christ in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Although the Church chose to ignore this tradition, something of it survived in early Christian art and symbolism. The full tradition was preserved only in the literature of esoteric sects such as Gnosticism, which remained outside the official teachings of institutionalized Christianity.

The book is the first of its kind to draw together in conversation the views of the early Church, contemporary biblical and theological scholarship, and post-conciliar teachings. Steck develops a comprehensive, Catholic theology of animals based on an in-depth exploration of Catholicism's fundamental doctrines—trinitarian theology, Christology, pneumatology, eschatology, and soteriology. All God's Animals makes two central claims. First, we can hope that God will include animals of the present age in the kingdom inaugurated by Christ. Second, because of this inclusion, our responses to animals should be guided by the values of the kingdom. As Christians await the final liberation of all creation, they are to be witnesses to God’s kingdom by embodying its ideals in their relations with animal life. Because the kingdom's fullness is yet to come and because our world remains marked by the wounds of sin, however, Christian treatment of animals will at times require acts that are at odds with the kingdom’s ideals (for example, those causing suffering and death). Steck examines each of these ideas and explores all of their complexities.

Christian concern about how we treat animals has increased strikingly in recent years. More and more Christians are deciding that our attitudes toward animals must change. Here is a book that presents, for the first time, a comprehensive and well-argued theological case for the rights of animals, and offers a challenging critique of our existing insensitivity toward animal life. Everyone who cares about the rights of animals, particularly clergy and ministers who are constantly being asked for answers on the issue, will welcome this new and important book.

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter? In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships.