Summary: English Congregational minister cum animal rights writer Pastor Dr. John Stiles (1782 –1849) claims to be against all forms of animal cruelty. He believes that animal can suffer, and do suffer immensely because of humans (Stiles 1839:6-7). He warns that God will at length visit the oppressors of animals with due vengeance (Stiles 1839:196-197). Stiles, however, contends that humans can use animals and even take their lives for food, if they deem it necessary for their sustenance, provided that they do it with responsibility, reverence and care (Stiles 1839:186, 192-193). He’s just opposed to the luxuries of animal-flesh-eating (Stiles 1839:178). Pastor Stiles and his colleagues’ two-faced stance concerning animals stems from their misinterpretation of “dominion” in Genesis 1:26, 28 as surrogate lordship/stewardship instead of powerless servanthood.
1. The (R)SPCA Essay
In 1837, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) sponsored an essay competition, with a prize of £100, for the best essay encouraging greater kindness to animals. Pastor Dr. John Styles won the competition with his essay “The Animal Creation: Its Claims on Our Humanity Stated and Enforced”, an early work on animal rights published in 1839.
2. Animals Can and Do Suffer Immensely
According to the essay, Pastor Stiles is opposed to cockfighting, bull-baiting, hunting, vivisection, and animal cruelty in animal farms, slaughterhouses, kitchens…. (Stiles 1839). He points out that animals are not only capable of suffering (Stiles 1839:6), but often actually suffer” (Stiles 1839:7) most intensely from pains “which the poor dumb animal itself cannot tell” (Stiles 1839:6). He advocates that “bruised meat, white veal, crimped salmon, crimped cod, and the other delicacies which are known to have undergone a cruel process, should be rejected, and a strict surveillance over the domestic kitchen should be constantly exercised" (Stiles 1839:277).
3. God Will Avenge Oppressed Animals
Styles based his arguments on Christian principles from the Bible:- “The lives of his creatures are dear in the sight of God, and that the caprice or passion which treats them with injustice and severity, is abhorrent to his nature” (Stiles 1839:196). Citing the story of Balaam’s donkey in Numbers 22, Stile emphasizes that the injured suffering children in Nature's universal family are not forgotten by their beneficent Parent, nor will their wrongs remain unredressed. God Almighty will at length visit their oppressors with merited vengeance (Stiles 1839:196-197).
4. Humanity = a Lordly Delegate of God’s Power?
Although Stiles criticizes the luxuries of meat-eating:- “Where necessity ends, inhumanity begins” (Stiles 1839:178), he is not a vegetarian/vegan. For he believes that “life is in our hands; we may subdue it to our use, we may take it when the animal is necessary for our sustenance” (ibid.). He is adamant that “the whole world” is “under the dominion of enlightened man, the Lord and Governor of all” (Stiles 1839:244), that the human species is “the lordly delegate of his [God’s] power”, to whose “supreme dominion” all creatures are subject (Stiles 1839:186).
5. Use and Kill Animals Reverentially?
In Stiles’s mind, “dominion” means that God “commits domestic and laborious animals” to “man” (Stiles 1839:193), and even wild animals for his use (ibid.), provided that he manifests “the divine solicitude for the well-being of the animal creation” (Stiles 1839:192) and “a reverential regard” for God (Stiles 1839:186). In other words, Pastor Stiles thinks that humans can use animals and even take their lives for food, if they deem it necessary for their sustenance, provided that they do it with responsibility, reverence and care.
But the problem is: Animal flesh is NOT necessary for humans’ sustenance, and how could there be anything caring about killing someone who does not want to die? (The American Dietetic Association (2009), the British Dietetic Association (n.d.) and the NHS (2002) have all categorically stated that a vegan diet is healthy, safe and nutritionally adequate for all stages of life, including pregnancy, lactation and infancy.)
It turns out that Pastor Stiles’s paradoxical attitude towards animals is not an isolated phenomenon, but a trait shared by many “animal friendly” theologians before him, e.g., John Calvin (1509 –1564), John Wesley (1703-1791), John Styles (1782 –1849), C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) Karl Barth (1886-1968), Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676), Stephen Webb (1961-2016), William Scully (1959), and Bishop Dr. Michael Rennie Stead (1969–).
6. Misconception of “Dominion” as Lordship
The source of Pastor Stiles and his colleagues’ hypocritical stance regarding animals comes from their misinterpretation of “dominion” in Genesis 1:26, 28 as stewardship or surrogate lordship with certain divinely ordained privileges, though not necessarily absolute dictatorship according to them.
7. “Dominion” as Authorityless Servanthood
In reality, “dominion” in Genesis 1:26, 28 means neither lordship nor despotism nor even stewardship, but servanthood bereft of power and authority. ירדו (yirdu), the ancient biblical Hebrew word in consonantal form for "dominion" in the verse concerned, refers to either רָדָה (radah) (to tread down, subjugate, rule) or יָרַד (yarad) (to lower oneself, to descend) (cf. Chaim and Laura 2015). IMO, “dominion” can only mean the latter, because, firstly, it is in the spirit of the Jesus who said that He has come to serve, NOT to be served (Mark 10:45); secondly, the instruction is immediately followed by a vegan diet prescribed by God to humans (Genesis 1:29); thirdly, in Genesis 2:15, humans are particularly assigned to be just a humble caretaker of the garden.
8. Conclusion
To "have dominion over animals" in Genesis 1 therefore signifies that God commands humanity to lower themselves and wait upon other animals as a powerless servant rather than a surrogate of God on earth (Chen 2024). The mistranslation/misinterpretation of one word in the Bible often has real grave consequences, as in the current case, leading to the tragic death of trillions of innocent creatures every year.
Source:
Styles, John (1839). The Animal Creation: Its Claims on our Humanity. London: Thomas Ward and Co. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_animal_creation_its_claims_on_our_hu/Jn8EAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
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