A Taste of Eden: Modern Christianity and Vegetarianism
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Jnl of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 58, No. 3, July 2007. f 2007 Cambridge University Press 461 doi:10.1017/S0022046906008906 Printed in the United Kingdom A Taste of Eden: Modern Christianity and Vegetarianism by SAMANTHA JANE CALVERT This article considers how the roots of modern vegetarianism, one of the fastest growing cultural trends in the UK and USA since the 1960s, can be found in Protestant sectarianism. Christian vegetarianism is shown to have developed in three main periods: the first during the first half of the nineteenth century and culminating in 1847 with the founding of the Vegetarian Society; the second starting in the 1890s; and the third in the 1960s. The article demonstrates that the main themes to be found in the arguments for Christian vegetarianism are humanitarianism, purity and reincarnation. It examines why these movements experienced only limited success in preaching a Christian vegetarian message and considers whether this work continues today in the work of groups of vegetarian Christians within the mainstream Churches. he growth of vegetarianism has been one of the most distinctive and widely influential cultural trends in the UK and USA since the 1960s T but the history of ‘modern vegetarianism’ has its roots in sectarian Protestantism. Vegetarianism is one of the many areas in which sectarian Protestants have made a contribution to British and American life that is out of proportion to their numbers. Despite slowing down a little in recent years, vegetarianism remains one of the fastest growing food trends in the UK. Levels of vegetarianism in the UK are currently at their highest ever with somewhere in the region of 7 per cent of adults claiming to be vegetarian.1 Vegetarian statistics are, however, something of a minefield as much depends on the exact question asked, and the level of actual vegetarianism (those eating no meat, fish or slaughterhouse GMCRO=Greater Manchester County Record Office; MCL=Manchester Central Library I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor, Professor Hugh McLeod, for his advice and support during the preparation of this paper, to the Editors and the anonymous reviewer of this JOURNAL for their helpful comments and suggestions for improvement and to Dr Nigel Scotland, who supervised my MA work at the University of Gloucestershire upon which this paper is based. All errors or omissions are, of course, my own. 1 Survey by The Food and Drink Federation, April 2003, cited by the Vegetarian Society UK: www.vegsoc.org 462 SAMANTHA JANE CALVERT by-products) is likely to be in the region of 5 per cent of the adult population of the UK. It is something of a paradox that whilst the modern vegetarian movement today has little connection with Christianity, the Vegetarian Society in Britain was founded by a group of Christians whose founding minister was a former Anglican clergyman, the somewhat inappropriately named Revd William Cowherd. Another Christian minister, the Revd John Todd Ferrier, wrote one of the fullest statements of the case for vegetarianism and founded a Christian-inspired sect that to this day makes vegetarianism a requirement for membership. The main themes to be found in arguments of the case for Christian vegetarianism are humanitarianism, purity and reincarnation. The humani- tarian argument stresses compassion towards all of God’s creation and, in particular, all sentient beings, and it interprets the central role of man in creation as one of safeguarding God’s creation rather than using it for his benefit in whatever way he sees fit. The purity strand has strong links to purity traditions in Gnostic and Cabbalistic thought. There is a strong sense that meat-eating prevents the soul from making a true connection with its creator and that the body should not be polluted with the flesh of animals if it is to be truly spiritual. The argument for purity was also closely linked in the nineteenth century with other campaigns for physical purity such as the anti- tobacco movement and teetotalism.2 Most religions that stress vegetarianism tend also to emphasise reincarnation. Reincarnation is also a theme of some of the Christian vegetarian sects, such as the Order of the Cross, although that order believes that human souls are usually, though not exclusively, reincarnated in human rather than animal form. There is no suggestion, however, that the Cowherdite Bible Christians believed in reincarnation. Christian vegetarianism in the UK appears to have developed in three main stages: the first beginning in the first half of the nineteenth century and culminating in 1847 with the founding of the Vegetarian Society; the second starting in the 1890s; and the third starting in the 1960s. At each stage vegetarianism has been influenced by other important social ideas, for vegetarianism, as Julia Twigg suggests, ‘rides upon the back of a series of other cultural movements’.3 However, the social location and religious connotations of vegetarianism have changed with each phase. I In its first phase vegetarianism was linked to northern artisan and lower middle-class radicalism; sectarian Protestantism in particular was crucial to 2 Julia Twigg, ‘The vegetarian movement in England: a study in the structure of its ideology’, unpubl PhD diss. London 1981, 88. 3 Ibid. 59. MODERN CHRISTIANITY AND VEGETARIANISM 463 the development of the vegetarian movement. On Sunday 29 January 1809 the Revd William Cowherd of Christ Church, Salford, preached a sermon based on Genesis ix.3. With this sermon began Cowherd’s vegetarian ministry that eventually led to the co-founding, in 1847, with members of the Concordium,4 of the secular Vegetarian Society, one of the earliest such organisations in the world.5 William Cowherd was born on 16 December 1762 and ordained by the archbishop of York at Bishopthorpe on 5 July 1787. He was a teacher of classics at Beverley College in Yorkshire, and afterwards became curate at St John’s church, Manchester. The incumbent of St John’s was John Clowes (pronounced ‘Klooz’ by Clowes and his friends), a disciple and renowned scholar of the Swedish mystic Swedenborg. Clowes, however, contrived to remain within the established Church,6 and it was Cowherd who was to lead the establishment of a Swedenborgian church, the New Jerusalem chapel, in Peter Street, Manchester, in 1793. An ‘inveterate schismatic’,7 Cowherd left this church in 1800 to build Christ Church in King Street, Salford, for his Bible Christian sect. Whilst the evidence is somewhat confused, it appears that this church was known locally as ‘the Beefsteak Chapel’.8 The Cowherdite Bible Christians, who have no connection with the better known Bryanite Bible Christians of Methodism, held their final service at their Cross Lane chapel, Salford, on Sunday 11 December 1932, by which time the Church could no longer be considered truly ‘vegetarian’. Cowherd’s Bible Christians were influenced by his background in both the established and the Swedenborgian New Church, but Cowherd’s sect brought something distinctive to the mix. Julia Twigg suggests that the Bible Christians belong to an ‘older, non-orthodox tradition’, part of an ‘enduring, though submerged, religious strand that can be traced from at least the seventeenth century, and that is most clearly associated with the influence of Jacob Boehme’.9 4 The Alcott House Concordium, founded in 1838, was a community of utopian socialists influenced particularly by Owenites. 5 There was a forerunner to the Vegetarian Society, the British and Foreign Society for the Promotion of Humanity and Abstinence from Animal Food, which was founded in 1843 at Alcott House; its president was a Mrs S. C. Chichester. This society, unlike its successor, was short-lived. I am indebted to John Davis at www.ivu.org/history for this information. 6 This was not achieved without some difficulty, however. See Theodore Compton, The life and correspondence of the Rev. John Clowes, MA, 2nd edn, London–Bath 1882, 3. 7 D. Antrobus, A guiltless feast: the Salford Bible Christian Church and the rise of the modern vegetarian movement, Salford 1997, 52. 8 See P. J. Lineham, ‘The English Swedenborgians, 1770–1840: a study of the social dimensions of sectarianism’, unpubl PhD diss. Sussex 1978, 309; C. Hulbert, Memoirs of an eventful life, privately printed 1852, 155; and J. T. Slugg, Reminscences of Manchester fifty years ago, Manchester–London 1881, 192–3. 9 Twigg, ‘Vegetarian movement’, 78. 464 SAMANTHA JANE CALVERT Cowherd’s search for rationalism had much in common with the Deists. P. J. Lineham notes how Cowherd ‘sought an explanation of how Christ would visibly return to earth and decided that it was best explained by the effects of refracted light’.10 Cowherd’s Facts authentic in science and religion,11 which was published posthumously in 1818, interpreted Scripture using a variety of sources from his wide reading but his ‘new translation of the Bible’ was far from literal. ‘Gnosticism was implicit in much of Swedenborgianism’, according to Lineham,12 who concludes that the concept that ‘the flesh was evil was fully developed’ in Cowherdite theology.13 He notes that the Bible Christians ‘saw the death of Jesus as a symbol of the destruction of man’s body so that his spirit could be set free’.14 These beliefs influenced Cowherd’s teachings on vegetarianism and temperance. Lineham considers that Cowherd ‘thought that meat eating and the drinking of intoxicating liquor excited man’s animal nature and prevented him from recovering his infinite nature’.15 Dietary reform was primarily for man’s spiritual development. He also notes that Cowherd criticised other Swedenborgians for believing that ‘so long as a sinful brutal nature continues within us, it is still permitted’.16 In addition to these Gnostic elements, Cowherd clearly had a reverence for life, whether human or animal.