Spiritual Forum

New Documentary That Aims To Change Religious Misconceptions Around Eating Animals

By Alanna KetlerCE Staff WriterJuly 4, 2018
In Brief

The Facts:
The film's goal is to raise awareness towards a more compassionate lifestyle and treating animals with love, care and respect. It challenges traditional beliefs in regards to relationships between humans and our non-human furry friends.

Reflect On:
The fact that a lot of science and health experts are questioning whether or not the human gut was even designed to digest meat. Also, reflect on the fact that eating animals is destroying our planet.

A new short film titled, ANIMA: Animals. Faith. Compassion. aims to challenge traditional belief systems and misconceptions surrounding religion and whether or not we actually should be eating animals.

The film features interviews with 12 influencers from various religions, all of whom discuss the dire need for better animal welfare practices while busting myths surrounding how various religions condone the act of consuming animals. Leaders from a wide range of faiths including Christianity, Buddhism, Muslim, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Baha’i, the Brahma Kumaris movement, Judaism, Indigeneity and Jainism dissect the true teachings from their religious scriptures.

The film’s goal is to raise awareness towards a more compassionate lifestyle and treating animals with love, care and respect. It challenges traditional beliefs in regards to relationships between humans and our non-human furry friends. Considering 84 percent of the world’s population identifies as being religious, this film has the potential to have a huge impact on the number of animals that are slaughtered for consumption worldwide, and in turn, could have a huge impact on protecting our environment and planet. As it states on the website for this film,

“Our hope is that this film will help to forever change the way people interact with animals through understanding them as living, feeling, sentient and sacred beings.”

Check Out The Trailer @ 

https://vimeo.com/272785177

As mentioned in the trailer above, Reverend Dr. Gwynne Guibord, Founder and President of The Guibord Center addresses one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding Christianity and animal consumption when she says, “In the book of Genesis it is written ‘And God gave man dominion over the animals.’ That’s a mistranslation,” comments Dr. Guibord. “It should read: ‘And God gave man responsibility or stewardship.’ It shifts the whole notion of [the word].”

According to Jan Creamer, President of Animal Defenders International, “Millions of people across the world draw their beliefs and perceptions about the other species who share our planet, from their faith.”

“There has never been a more important time to challenge the misunderstandings which have, in the past, been used to justify exploitation of animals. As Dr. Lo Sprague says in ANIMA, every religion has compassion as part of its mandate. It is time to mobilize that,” she adds.

FFCcc We Need To Continue With The Mass Slaughter?ffffffffffcccf

Because of growing awareness in regards to health, environmental degradation,G and animal welfare, a large number of people have been shifting over to a plant-based diet. This is already a huge success, but there is still a long way to go. Luckily, many alternatives are becoming available, like clean-meat for example, where no animals need to be harmed and meat can be grown safely in a lab, also drastically reducing the environmental impact. This would potentially be a good stepping stone for the transition, but Rabbi Suzanna Singer, featured in the film, challenges this notion altogether, “Our belief in Judaism is that God never actually meant us to eat animals. In the Garden of Eden, God shows us the fruit of the trees, the grass in the fields and says, ‘You may have any of this to eat.’ But God never mentioned animals.”

There are vast arguments as to whether or not we should be consuming animals for our health, but from a compassionate stance, this film raises some very important questions that we should all consider. We can choose to live a compassionate life without harming other beings, this has the potential to have a huge impact on not only our physical, mental and spiritual health — but our entire planet as well, and all life on it.

Much Love