When the then minister of Worthing Tabernacle, Tony Sargent, spoke out against the exportation of live animals from Shoreham in 1996, a bemused BBC interviewer asked him, 'Does the Bible actually say anything about animals and their rights?'
As the hunting debate returns to the news over the next few months, it will not only be BBC interviewers who will be asking about animals and their rights. Most of us who talk to neighbours, friends or at work about the day's headlines will have a chance to express an opinion. So we might ask, 'does the Bible say anything about hunting?'. It's a good question. Does it? If not, each of us must do what is right in our own eyes. But if it does, do we have a duty to say so?
Most evangelicals I have asked have told me that the Bible says nothing about hunting except, perhaps, that humans can legitimately hunt as we have dominion over creation. Some have felt that even to ask the question is a diversion from the gospel. However, many evangelicals of previous generations considered that, even on hunting, the Bible does speak. Moreover, in telling their neighbours what it says, they, like Tony Sargent, brought Scripture's witness into everyday life. It may therefore assist us in our conversations with our contemporaries to know what this older generation said. Of course, 'evangelical' is a vague term, so I will discuss below those who most thickened their theology with Scripture: the Puritans and mainstream Calvinists. However, the picture would not change much if we included broader evangelicals, from John Wesley to C.S. Lewis, who tried to escape thinking in the world's mould.
