Tripp York, professor in the Religious Studies department at Virginia Wesleyan College, has been deeply involved in the area of human-animal ethics for some time. Broadly speaking, his work tries to integrate the Christian tradition with improving the lives of animals. In this text, York takes up the complex subject of incarcerating wildlife in zoos. He wonders whether zoos are entertainment which exploit animals, or are they arks which are saving animals from extinction?

His efforts to answer this question, as well as many ancillary ones, involves personal reflection, research, and interviews, thereby confronting readers with writing typical of those forms. It is as if York wanted the reader to accompany him on a journey of thoughtful reflection rather than expose the reader to a decisive and well-argued diatribe.

Tripp avoids simple binary choices. In fact that is one of the maddening elements of his book. He seems to be able to raise a lot of questions but has difficulty providing a dogmatic answer that can clearly guide one’s behavior. I suspect that part of this is due to his genuine belief that the issues are complicated and resist simple solutions. However, I also wonder whether his avoidance of saying “Do this….” stems from an inherent bias against being preachy. Just consider his strange statement, “As a matter of fact, if you do have to tell me (that you’re a Christian), then you’re probably not much of a Christian. Just be a Christian” (p. 89; parentheses mine, italics his). I thought that being a Christian meant that you needed to tell people and embody it (see Matt 28).

The goal of his argumentation, though, is not in doubt. York believes that while human relationships with animals are complicated and messy, just like that experienced by zoos which are both unfortunate and needful, Christians must work toward reducing our negative impacts on animals as part of Christianity’s eschatological goal of the peaceable kingdom (cf. Isa 11:9). How will Christians accomplish this? Though York does not provide a point by point theological or rational argument for his beliefs, he does use several key ideas to ground his perspective. Let me attempt to list them. First, we need to recognize the goodness of creation and our need to care for it because all creation belongs to God. Second, we must understand that humans are animals. Third, taking a cue from Andrew Linzey, human leadership is sacrificial like Christ who humbled himself to serve humanity. Therefore, we humans should be humble and serve our fellow creatures. Finally, he uses the Greek argument that the true and good must also be beautiful. Since harming animals is ugly, therefore it should be avoided.

I thought York’s treatment of nature of freedom and the act of naming were the high points of the text. With freedom, he rightly explains that freedom is always accompanied by risk. In addition, he notes that what we think of as being free sometimes is just an illusion or a fetish. His chapter on the human tendency to name things discusses four distinct ways we name and how naming can either improve the lives of the named entity or belittle it. Though York is wrong in thinking that naming an animal as providing meat somehow prevents the namer from seeing other qualities or roles with the animal, York’s discussion is worthy of engagement.

In sum, York does a good job raising important questions about the appropriate treatment and use of animals. Regrettably, York’s work and argument is really designed for theists (I am using that term broadly) who aren’t constrained about scriptural teaching regarding animals rather than Christians, who one would think would want an animal theology that considers all of scripture.

Reviewed by Stephen M. Vantassel

More so, I was astonished to learn that the hawk’s complete transformation had been accomplished within three days after its removal from the wild. In that brief time it had become a voluntary prisoner, submissively doing the will of its captor and adapting to a strange and unnatural environment. But as I watched, I saw much more than a falconer and his captive bird. I saw a spiritual truth unfolding before my eyes—Truth—in the form of a question I want to ask you:

Can humans be mentally captured, removed from their natural state, subdued, and forced into a life-style that is totally alien to themselves and their role in the kingdom of God?

Image: Ruben Bagues

Let me illustrate the answer: In 1973, four bank employees in Stockholm, Sweden, were captured during a robbery and kept inside a vault. Strangely, within six days they became so devoted to their captors they not only resisted rescue but afterward refused to testify against the criminals. This psychological phenomenon became known as the Stockholm Syndrome and is identical to what happened to the hawk.

The most notorious instance of the Syndrome in America came in 1974 when 19 year-old millionaire-heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, kept in a dark closet, blindfolded, and abused. Then something strange happened; Patty joined her captors’ organization, renamed herself “Tanya” and took part in robbing a bank of which she and her parents were part owners. When captured and tried, Patty was sentenced to seven years in prison. In another case, an airline hostage later married one of her captors. Politically, we call this transformation “brain-washing”. A large Church of Christ in Boston, Massachusetts, was recently accused of using this tactic in “converting” new members. One of their steps was to deprive the people of sleep through all-night “prayer”, then, at dawn, church officials mentally bombarded them with religious ideology and overwhelmed them psychologically. In such a deviate method, the Holy Spirit was unneeded-just “mind control”.

I have a dear friend who as a child was accused of a crime he did not commit—but one to which he confessed after police interrogated him under bright lights for eight hours. Thankfully, he is a committed Christian today but his normal life was stolen from him by this horrendous childhood event. We have all heard of traumatized wives who refuse to leave an abusive husband. The style of maltreatment may change but the end-result is the same: The mind can be taken captive by powers of darkness.