A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics

by Paul Waldau, Kimberley Christine Patton

Overview

A Communion of Subjects is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of the conceptualization of animals in world religions. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including Thomas Berry (cultural history), Wendy Doniger (study of myth), Elizabeth Lawrence (veterinary medicine, ritual studies), Marc Bekoff (cognitive ethology), Marc Hauser (behavioral science), Steven Wise (animals and law), Peter Singer (animals and ethics), and Jane Goodall (primatology) consider how major religious traditions have incorporated animals into their belief systems, myths, rituals, and art. Their findings offer profound insights into humans' relationships with animals and a deeper understanding of the social and ecological web in which we all live.

Contributors examine Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, African religions, traditions from ancient Egypt and early China, and Native American, indigenous Tibetan, and Australian Aboriginal traditions, among others. They explore issues such as animal consciousness, suffering, sacrifice, and stewardship in innovative methodological ways. They also address contemporary challenges relating to law, biotechnology, social justice, and the environment. By grappling with the nature and ideological features of various religious views, the contributors cast religious teachings and practices in a new light. They reveal how we either intentionally or inadvertently marginalize "others," whether they are human or otherwise, reflecting on the ways in which we assign value to living beings.

Though it is an ancient concern, the topic of "Religion and Animals" has yet to be systematically studied by modern scholars. This groundbreaking collection takes the first steps toward a meaningful analysis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231136433
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/20/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	720
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kimberley C. Patton (PhD, Religion, Harvard) is Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity (Oxford, 2009), which and won the 2010 American Academy of Religion Book Award for Excellence in Religious Studies in the Analytical-Descriptive category, and The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils: Modern Marine Pollution and the Ancient Cathartic Ocean (Columbia, 2006) and the editor of (with Benjamin Ray) A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age (California, 2000), (with John Stratton Hawley) Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination (Princeton, 2005), and (with Paul Waldau) A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (Columbia, 2006).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Essay Abstracts
Heritage of Volume - Mary Evelyn Tucker
Prologue - Loneliness and Presence - Thomas Berry
Introduction - Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton
Part I
Part II

What People are Saying About This

Matthew Calarco

This groundbreaking volume contains an impressive number of useful and thought-provoking articles organized in an accessible and helpful manner. It will serve as a terrific teaching tool in introductory and cross-disciplinary courses. The editors, who are themselves leading figures in the field, have skillfully blended the essays such that all of the major discourses (religion, science, art, law, ethics, environmentalism) surrounding "the animal question" are addressed. This is a volume that I and several other instructors will find immensely valuable.

J. M. Coetzee

An outstanding collection, ranging over most aspects of the lives of animals in the human world. The essays on the place of animals in religious traditions are particularly authoritative, but all the contributions are thoughtful, well-informed, and enlightening.

Barbara Darling-Smith

A Communion of Subjects is an impressive achievement that enriches religious studies by its thoroughness and diversity of perspectives.

Josephine Donovan

A Communion of Subjects is a rich collection that reveals the surprising extent to which religious and ethical traditions worldwide have recognized animals as living subjects, not objects for human exploitation. Supported by meticulous scholarship, this pioneering volume of over fifty articles covers a vast range of traditions from African mythology to Confucianism, making it a monumental contribution to both religious studies and animal studies, an indispensable resource for all interested in and concerned about the moral and cultural status of animals in human society.

Editorial Reviews

Unique, compassionate, and far-reaching

— Frederick M. Smith

religious Studies Review

A Communion of Subjects delivers a wealth of resources for stirring the conscience and stoking the imagination.

— Matthew Halteman

Christian Century

This substantial contribution opens up a broad field and will clearly be inspiration to further work on animals and religion. It is very much welcome.

— Ingvild Sælid Gilhus

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Unique, compassionate, and far-reaching

Religious Studies Review - Frederick M. Smith

A Communion of Subjects delivers a wealth of resources for stirring the conscience and stoking the imagination.

Christian Century - Matthew Halteman

Unique, compassionate, and far-reaching

Frederick M. Smith

This substantial contribution opens up a broad field and will clearly be inspiration to further work on animals and religion. It is very much welcome.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion - Ingvild Sælid Gilhus