Prof. C. J. Williams’ article in this issue, “Why I Hunt,” has been in our manuscript file since the end of last year’s hunting season. In the interim, some things have changed. For example, the election rhetoric, the speeches, the opinion polls, and the media coverage have left no doubt about whether traditional Christian views of government and moral issues have fallen on hard times.

Those views are not even understood, much less generally accepted. The views that have gained prominence in their place are a curious amalgam of Christian views and secular. They rely on some sort of eternal truth without naming or claiming that truth.

One example would be in the area of animal rights. The web site of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) provides some reasons for kind treatment of animals that are not only agreeable but honorable: “Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth—a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans” (PETA official web site). God created animals with that inherent worth, although the PETA statement doesn’t indicate their source of authority for that assertion.

The statement shows misunderstanding when it characterizes “society’s traditional view that all nonhuman animals exist solely for human use” (italics added). I don’t have time research writings on the subject, but I could challenge PETA to show the basis for their judgment of society’s traditional view. Even casual Christians would seldom express such a view, and it certainly isn’t biblical teaching.

The statement moves seemlessly from things on which we have a weird agreement to things that are just weird. “As PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk has said, ‘When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fights the knife.’”

But it gets more bizarre: “Only prejudice allows us to deny others the rights that we expect to have for ourselves. Whether it’s based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species, prejudice is morally unacceptable.”

Thus the reasoning goes: Animals have inherent rights. They don’t exist just for our use. In many ways they are the same as we are. Thus it would be immoral to discriminate against them.

An article like “Why I Hunt,” then, becomes much more than a standalone article on a single topic of interest. It is a courageous attempt to declare biblical truth in an age of strange syncretisms. It demonstrates how far we have come as a society, and it hasn’t all been progress. That’s not to say that everything in the article is above debate. Prof. Williams, I am sure, would not claim that the article is a perfect expression of biblical truth. But it points us in the right direction. And we all need to get practice at speaking the truth courageously, and winsomely, in our own context. A lot of people need to hear.

—Drew Gordon