Animal Changes is the topic of the final episode of Season One of the N*EW* Thoughts podcast!
I open with a viral Donald Trump claim about immigrants eating pets and use it to explore how we dehumanize people by turning them into “animals.”
I then trace my own journey from a hunting childhood to a Christian conversion and tentative vegetarianism, share stories of my companion pets, and criticize careless hunting and factory farming.
The episode brings in thinkers—Derrida, Ken Stone, Carol J. Adams, Val Plumwood, and Martha Nussbaum—to discuss animal sentience, the predator–prey dynamic in the Bible, and the ethical implications of edibility and sacrifice.
I encourage us to treat sentient animals as beings with species-specific lives, call for more compassionate practices, and close the season by asking listeners to “rest from cruel dominion” and rethink our relationship to animals.
EXPLORE:
Read a preview of Tony’s essay, *The Bible Isn’t Edible.*
Read Tony’s sermon, *Rest From Cruel Dominion.*
Read *Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy* by Matthew Scully.
Read *The Animal That Therefore I Am* by Jacques Derrida.
Read *Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies* by Ken Stone.
Read *The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory* by Carol J. Adams.
Read *The Eye of the Crocodile* by Val Plumwood (edited by Lorraine Shannon).
Read *Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility* by Martha C. Nussbaum.
Read “Questions of Biblical Ambivalence and Authority Under A Tree Outside Delhi; Or, The Postcolonial And The Postmodern” in *Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections*, by Stephen D. Moore:
Read *Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel* by Theodore Jennings, Jr.