蜜芽传媒

Good Morning

I鈥檓 not sure that anyone really had animal sentience as a major consideration before deciding how to vote in last year鈥檚 Brexit referendum. But animal welfare after Britain leaves the European Union has become the latest 鈥渨hat鈥檚 going to happen鈥� question to fall under the post-Brexit microscope.

Michael Gove suggested to Justin on this programme yesterday that animals have nothing to fear. Article 13, which currently protects animals via European legislation was just, Mr Gove suggested, a 鈥渄eclaratory principle鈥� We already, he added, in Britain offer some of the best protection to animals in the world. Animal sentience, their ability to feel, perceive or experience things subjectively, is taken very seriously.

It鈥檚 certainly true that any study of the history of animal welfare in religions, more generally, would not be encouraging in this regard. On the other hand, I remember Mary Beard, for example, in her recent TV series on the history of Rome explaining that it was exactly because Christians stopped sacrificing animals that the Romans took offence and persecuted them.

Today, an awareness both that what animals tell us about God and creation as well as what they reveal to us about ourselves may be trendy- but it鈥檚 not new. My friend John McManners, a retired priest in Durham, published Cuthbert and the animals to show how the Anglo-Saxon mission to 7th century Lindisfarne was illuminated and blessed by the stunning wildlife - and not in any sentimental way. And what about St Francis praying with the birds or St Columba of Iona telling his monks to look after the vulnerable crane?

I have been mesmerised, like many of you I expect, by the Blue Planet 2 series. In a recent Radio Times interview Sir David Attenborough spoke of the huge revelation to him in this series of what he describes as the 鈥渟ociology of the ocean鈥� or the way the species clearly communicate with each other. Animal sentience is no longer in doubt as species after species show remarkable levels of intellect, emotion and sheer determination to survive.

As we are increasingly held to account for our use and abuse of creation and of our previous ignorance of what our actions might have been doing to the oceans and the planet 鈥� this debate over the wellbeing of animals is a timely reminder that regardless of the politics 鈥� our stewardship of God鈥檚 creation has never been more important.

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