Voices for Animals – A series of interviews with those who speak out loud and clear for all who are born nonhuman
The work of The Humane Education Trust is acknowledged internationally
A ground-breaking new international resource titled the Palgrave Companion to Humane Education is to be dedicated to Louise van der Merwe, editor of Animal Voice, director of the online platform naturebased.education, and Managing Trustee of The Humane Education Trust.
What an honour and heartfelt thanks!
Due out in 2026/2027, the Palgrave Companion to Humane Education is one of the first resources of its kind to introduce the concept of how we treat animals as a vital component of Education everywhere. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, it is edited and compiled by the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.
Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, PhD, DD, HonDD, is Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and Henry Bergh Professor of Animal Ethics at the Graduate Theological Foundation.
Here, Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford for more than 28 years, agreed to talk to Animal Voice as part of our Voice for Animals Series.
Animal Voice:
Revd Professor Linzey, you first graced the pages of Animal Voice way back in 1994 when you held the world’s first academic post in theology and animal welfare at Mansfield College, Oxford. Your book Animal Theology, had just been published and we were eager to hear your call for humanity to take action to promote animal well-being. You said traditional liberation theology had been grotesquely human-centred and that true liberation theology would embrace every being suffering oppression.
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Revd Prof Linzey:
Yes, changing perceptions is a difficult and arduous business. People seldom want to think through their assumptions or confront their own prejudice. It is challenging to change comfortable habits both of mind and body.
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Animal Voice:
In an interview you did with Compassion in World Farming, you said that without a change in our perceptions, there really can be no future for the animal welfare movement.
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Revd Prof Linzey:
Yes. Campaigns, strategies, petitions, demos – all the paraphernalia of activism are of course essential, but by themselves can seldom, if ever, bring about the necessary change of perception.​
If one looks at similar reforming movements, for example, for the abolition of slavery, or the emancipation of women, or more recently, Apartheid in South Africa, we can now see with hindsight how essential the foundational insight that motivated these movements were. Change came about with an evolving perception that equal value and dignity belonged to all human persons, black or white, male or female.
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Animal Voice:
And when it comes to animals?
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Revd Prof Linzey:
What the animal movement is about is a changing understanding and renewed perception of the intrinsic God-given worth of each and every individual sentient being.​
Our task is to encourage, invite and even exhort people to look upon animals as more than what is commonly thought to be an ‘animal’. Each such creature is a living, sensitive being worthy in its own right, irrespective of what it can give to us.
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Animal Voice:
Is it a kind of spiritual awakening then?
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Revd Prof Linzey:
Yes but by ‘spiritual’ I do not mean organised religion. I mean a changed and heightened consciousness of the divinely given worth of creation and an abhorrence of cruelty as something evil in itself.
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Animal Voice:
You found a kindred spirit in our Anti-Apartheid icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.​ In fact, Archbishop Tutu wrote the foreword to your incredible 323-page resource titled
The Global Guide to Animal Protection ​
In the foreword, Tutu wrote: “Our dominion over animals is not supposed to be despotism… If it is true we are the most exalted species in creation, it is equally true that we can be the most debased and sinful. This realisation should give us pause… Churches should lead the way by making clear that all cruelty – to other animals as well as human beings – is an affront to civilized living and a sin before God.”
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Should churches help lead the way, much more than they do?
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Revd Prof Linzey:
PLEASE COMMENT
​​Animal Voice:
It seems that, step by step, the LAW itself is forging a new perception of justice for animals.
As Deputy Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and Professor of Animal Theology at the Graduate Theological Foundation, Dr Clair Linzey (PIC), your daughter, has recently announced an Animal Ethics and Law Partnership between The Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and George Washington University Law School.
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Do you think we can safely assume that, ultimately, the law will bring some sort of justice to our kin who are shaped differently?
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Revd Prof Linzey:
PLEASE COMMENT
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Animal Voice:
Back in 2018, Amy Wilson became South Africa’s first lawyer to graduate with a Masters Degree in Animal Law from the prestigious Lewis and Clark Law School in the USA. As director of Animal Law Reform South Africa, and a member of George Washington’s Aquatic Law Project, I understand she will present “Factory Fins: Cruelty and Harm beneath the Surface” at your Summer School held at Merton College, Oxford, in August this year.
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Revd Prof Linzey:
PLEASE COMMENT​​
Animal Voice
Thank you, and may we pay special tribute to you for the changes in human perception that have been wrought worldwide by the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.
Louise was invited to present our humane education programme to an international audience at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics Summer School, back in 2019.
Please see data below regarding how many children our humane education programme has reached since then.
Teachers 464
Schools 435
Learners reached 62 617
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