 The Status of Animals
in the Protestant-Lutheran Faith.
“Lamb of God” –
The Butcher, a Secularized Priest?
According to a scholar of Protestant-Lutheran theology, animals do not play a significant role in the Protestant faith. In the Creed of the Protestant-Lutheran Church of 1530 which is still binding today, animals are not even mentioned.
Martin Luther himself is accused of gluttony by his opponents. Only the upper class could afford meat in those days, for the poor it was the exception, not the rule. It is likely that Luther ate a lot of meat. His corpulence and his illnesses would indicate it. With each meal four pints of Southern wine were served and he drank plenty of beer.
When his fellow reformer, Philipp Melanchton came to Nuremberg, he was fed the following: Pig’s head and tenderloin roast in sour sauce, trout, partridges with capon, roasted wild boar with pepper sauce … This is how it went when Master Philipp came … everyday fare was more modest. (Veranstaltungen in Luthers Landen, Kulturmagazin für Sachsen und Thüringen, [Events in Luther’s Regions of Influence, Culture Magazine for Saxony and Thuringia] 1997, p. 12)
What did the “Little Prince” say again? You see well only with the heart. Perhaps today he would say to us: You read well only with the heart, for instance an article in the German weekly, die ZEIT [Time] of April 2, 1998, under the heading The Lamb of God. The article discusses the connection between butchers and priests. It concludes with the following sentence: Christian theology, in its tradition of forgotten creatures that excludes the non-human creation from the Good News, has not done its part.
Here are some excerpts from the text: The Brotherhood of Butcher-Journeymen is celebrating its 100-year anniversary in the Friedenskirche in Federwardergroden, a section of Wilhelmshaven. The highpoint of the ecumenical worship service is the blessing of the brotherhood’s new flag, which depicts the Christian Easter lamb and the flag of resurrection. The congregation had sung “Christ, you Lamb of God, you bear the sins of the world, have mercy on us” moments before.
But the butchers’ guilds anniversary service caused some offence. The animal rights movement of the neighboring town of Schortens confronts the minister and priest with an unexpected question: How can the churches tolerate the fact that the symbol of the Christ-Lamb adorns the flag of animal murderers? At their wits end, the clerics pass the question on to the butchers, who defend themselves by pointing to the old age of their guild symbol.
Only an episode. But it raises the tough question: What does a butcher have in common with a man of God?
Interestingly, the butcher’s guild cites the ritual slaughter committed by the priests. The words of an old butcher-guild song, reprinted in the anniversary brochure of the Heilbronn butchers’ guild go: “If there is a guild deserving of fame and praise, then it is the butchers’ guild, which is highly-praised even in its origins; because it has been shown that it stems from the order of Leviticus who in the Old Covenant butchered the animals for sacrifice, offering them to the Lord at the altar.”
The author of the article then poses the question: Are butchers secularized priests? …
The oldest preserved guild flag, that of the 15th-century Bern butchers shows both symbols: The Christ-lamb with the resurrection flag and a bull with two hatchets hovering threateningly above.
The following description of an “individual public slaughter” will tell a lot to those who read with the heart: A shot rings out. A metal bullet pierces the pig’s brain. The light goes out of the eyes. The animal collapses on the floor. Two butchers roll the body to the side, one holds the jerking hind legs, the other, the master, holds the front legs and the head. Quick as lightning he punctures the animal’s throat. The butcher’s wife comes with a metal basin to catch the animal’s gushing blood. The body, while being drained of blood is still violently jerking and kicking.
The butcher caresses the pig’s head and explains to the group of watching vegetarians and TV-reporters: “The animal cannot resist. It is completely in my power. I feel in my hand how the life is flowing from it. Meanwhile, his wife, with an expression of tension and compassion, dips her hand in the dark red liquid of life that is still restlessly foaming in the butcher’s basin. After half an hour, the animal is already hanging upside down from a butcher rack, shaved and dressed. The tension among the surviving participants is broken with a round of clear liquor. “Now it is no longer an animal, now it is meat! Cheers!” The butcher, “master of life and death:” … He “caresses the pig’s head.” “I feel in my hand how the life is flowing from it.”
Let your feelings speak to you.
In meat factories, where 700 pigs are slaughtered in an hour, the conditions for this comparatively “humane” approach to a process that is unavoidable for the “use” of animals for food are, of course, not there. The article continues: It is enlightening to consider the connection between butcher and church in the Fifth Regulation of the Wurttemberg Butchers’ Code of 1651 (printed 1701 in Stuttgart). On pain of a one-guilder fine it is prohibited to “lead animals to the slaughterhouse or to the butcher during a sermon, or especially during the night.” This is not an ethical question, but concerns the resulting noise. The death cries of the butchered animal shall disrupt neither the sermon nor the night’s rest.
The Easter lamb with the flag of resurrection is the official seal of the butcher’s guild.
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