On Animals, Volume 2: Theological Ethics by David L. Clough (review)

This is the second instalment of David Clough's important two-volume project exploring the place of non-human animals in Christian theology and ethics. The first volume offered a systematic theology of animals; Volume 2 approaches animal ethics by means of "a review of what we are doing to [non-human animals] … alongside a Christian ethical analysis informed by the theological account of animals developed in Volume I" (xii).

After an opening methodological chapter, most of the book is concerned with practical ethical topics. Chapter 2, on food, establishes the structure also used for subsequent chapters. It begins with an extensive survey of the ways humans use other animals for food, followed by a Christian ethical analysis. While Clough deems intensive farming particularly problematic, his conclusions go beyond this to advocate a vegan diet on theological grounds.

Subsequent chapters consider the use of other animals for clothing, labor, research, and sport, as well as companion animals and wild animals. Findings include the rejection of most animal-based clothing and textiles (ch. 3), powerful criticisms of animal research (ch. 5) and the use of animals for sport and entertainment (ch. 6), a guarded endorsement of some uses of animal labor (ch. 4), a positive—though not uncritical—assessment of the keeping of companion animals (ch. 7), and cautious support of zoos for their role in conservation (ch. 8).

A real strength of the book is the comprehensive survey of human uses of other animals in chapters 2–8. These are based on a truly extensive engagement with scientific literature, juxtaposed with vivid and powerfully engaging first-person accounts of visits to sites such as farms and abattoirs.

The book combines passionate moral commitment with argumentative rigor. Some of the material presented is deeply disturbing: the chapter on sport and entertainment, for example, details some truly shocking examples of the historical association between big-game hunting and racism. Perhaps showing my own bias as a former biomedical scientist, I was less persuaded by Clough's denial (151ff.) of the necessity of any non-human animal research for human survival or welfare. One can disagree on this point, of course, and still agree that there are compelling ethical reasons to work toward an end to such research.

This specific disagreement aside, I have two questions to raise. First, although Clough emphasizes that the Christian ethical analysis is informed by the theological account in Volume 1, I found fewer direct references to the latter than I expected in several chapters. This does not mean, of course, that the theology of Volume 1 is not informing those chapters, but in places its influence is perhaps less explicit than it could be. Does this indicate an inherent danger in the author's chosen two-volume format, that the connections between theological foundations and ethical analysis risk becoming weakened?

A second question relates to the key category of flourishing. For Clough this is clearly a theological category, related to God's good purposes for creatures, but understanding what this means for each creature will require "careful investigation" informed inter alia by animal welfare science (24). In practice, in some places, the science seems to do much of the work in telling us what flourishing looks like for particular creatures. This may be inevitable, but it does raise a question about how much, and what, theologians should expect to learn from science about God's good purposes. I found myself wanting a more fully developed answer from Clough to that question.

Mildly critical questions like these, however, do not detract from the book's value and importance. Taken together, David Clough's two volumes look set to play a major role in shaping Christian reflection and practice regarding other animals for some time to come.