Animal Christian Concern (ACC) on vivisection

This week we’re showcasing an article on vivisection from Roslyne’s book, Animal Welfare: Through the Cross, A collection of Animal Christian Concern Articles. This was part of a reply by May Tripp in answer to questions from a secular animal welfarist. (1993)

 
MARGARET: “I am aware that lonely clergy voices do cry out against vivisection but as an Institution the Church looks the other way. Dr. Westcott, one time Bishop of Durham, said last century: ‘What God would so arrange the avenues of healing that we can only cure our diseases by the unutterable agonies of beings which trust us?’ Why doesn’t the Church support this view?”

MAY: Why not indeed? It is very difficult for you or for me to understand the reticence of contemporary Christians on the subject of vivisection. We recall the opposition to scientific animal usage expressed by such Christians as Wilberforce and Shaftesbury and we feel at one with them.

But our conviction is not always easy to express. During a recent visit to hospital I had the distressing experience of meeting with young women who had undergone massive cancer surgery. I saw, and ached at, the anguish of one young mother as she learned that her own condition was inoperable, and then watched in wonder as she rallied with great courage and cheerfulness. My own father died at the age of twenty six from this disease, plunging my mother and me, her unborn child, into a life of hardship and into a bitterness from which she, and consequently I myself, never fully recovered. One should not speak lightly of opposition to any kind of medical experimentation.

Christians who support the scientific usage of animals are, I think, looking at such human suffering and are genuinely believing that medical experimentation will eventually eliminate it. They are conditioned in their thinking by the vast commercial enterprises which profit from vivisection, by the bulk of the media – and, sadly, by the contemporary secularisation of the churches.

Many churchgoers have lost their awareness of the effects of the Fall upon the world and upon all of its systems, whether these systems are ostensibly good or whether they are overtly corrupt. Sin has been superseded by psychology, penitence by self-assessment. Thus many Christians are no longer sensitive to the fact that the whole world is separated from God and from His ways. In diluting and secularising the claims and teachings of Christ Jesus they have lost their vision of the Kingdom of God.

I am sure, as you are, that the use of animals for experimentation is both fallacious and indefensible. I believe this because I believe in the absolute love and in the absolute justice of the Kingdom of God. I am glad that a growing number of scientists and doctors are now condemning animal experiments not only because of the cruelty involved but because they are scientifically ineffective and misleading. As Bishop Westcott said, it is simply not possible to relate our sense of the perfect purpose of a loving Father of all creation with such deliberate oppression and abuse of helpless creatures as that which is found in experimental laboratories.

Yet the more sophisticated we become, the more attached to this world we become. Inherent in our egocentric human nature is an overwhelming will to survive, a longing to eat of the, “Tree of Life” that “tree” which is now banned to us (Gen. 3). During our brief portion of earthly time we cling to life and fear to die. But humankind will never defeat disease and death, consequences of the Fall, by engaging in ruthlessness and oppression, weaponry created by the Fall. The cause for health and wholeness has become a House divided against itself and is doomed to failure. It is a failure which we recognise already in the polluted world around us, a world impaired rather than improved by our profligacy and by our usage of technology.

As with all other worldly affairs, humankind will only ever understand the alien and sinful nature of vivisection when he truly knows, through Christ Jesus, the loving perfection of the Kingdom of God.
                                                                                                                                                           
May Tripp

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