Karen Swallow Prior hopes that animal welfare makes a comeback in Christian communites:
Many Christians accept or ignore the wide-scale suffering of animals under the justification of scientific “progress” or cheap meat (as a meat-eater, I include myself here). This perspective, though, reflects the influence of a modernist worldview more than biblical thinking. After all, it wasn’t the Bible but rather the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes, who helped popularize the idea that animals are mere machines to be put to human service. “Here is my library, from which I take my wisdom,” Descartes told an observer as he dissected a calf. Descartes’ disciples are said to have kicked their dogs and laughed to hear the “creaking of the machine.”
In contrast, while the Bible mandates humans in Genesis 1:28 to rule over animals, other passages make clear that we are to do so with kindness: the Scriptures tell us not to muzzle the ox while it treads the grain and that the righteous one has regard for the life of his beast.
More biblical thinkers than Descartes and his disciples have also taught compassion toward animals. John Calvin said that we are to “handle gently” the animals God placed under our subjection. John Wesley proclaimed in his sermon “The General Deliverance” that the animal kingdom is included in God’s salvation. William Wilberforce, Hannah More, and other 19th-century abolitionists included animal welfare in the reforms they succeeded in bringing to Great Britain.
The Dish 