Jun 26, 2020
This week’s guest is Sarah Bowen. Bowen is an award-winning author, multifaith spiritual educator, animal chaplain, and is completing postgraduate work at Chicago Theological Seminary on the intersection of human spiritual values and animal welfare.
She and Rabbi Rami discuss how we humans tend to categorize animals into groups, such as the ones we love, the ones we eat, the ones we wear... Bowen says, “Those of us who are interested in theo-ethics are really keen on trying to have conversations and figure out how far do we extend compassion, rights, relationships,” to animals other than ourselves, becoming, basically, less species-centric.
A lot of people’s theology leaves out many sentient beings, Rabbi Rami and Bowen discuss, but if we expand compassion outward from ourselves, it is inevitable that we need to examine our behavior and ethics toward animals.