• religions are, overall, radically friendly toward anymals; • people tend to be ignorant of these prevalent teachings; and • our current economic choices (bolstered by our collective spiritual ignorance) perpetuate anymal industries that profit from untold misery and billions of premature deaths.

Rightful relations between humans and anymals are spiritually significant in every major religion. Core religious teachings from around the world require humans to protect and respect all that is natural, to show compassion for all who are sentient, and in contemporary times, to rethink our relations with anymals—especially what we eat.

Exploring sacred teachings from around the world demonstrates that nature, including anymals, is sacred, that anymals are central to our spiritual landscape, and that we owe them respect, justice, and compassion.

Religions teach of a deep and fundamental unity on planet Earth. Interestingly, consistent with Darwin, the world’s dominant religions teach people that there is much more continuity than separation across species.

Anymals do not exist to satisfy our desires and pleasures.

Religions are, overall, radically friendly toward anymals.

We can feed more of the world’s many hungry people if we stop producing anymal products.

Religious people tend to be unaware that chewing on a chicken’s body purchased at a grocery store contradicts the core religious ideals of every major religious tradition. Still other religious people do not take their religious commitment seriously and therefore do not care one way or the other about anymal suffering and slaughter.

This book is about what religions teach, not about what religious people believe or how they live. There is often shamefully little correlation between the two.