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.
Here, Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford for more than 28 years, agreed to talk to Animal Voice.
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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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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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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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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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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Prof Linzey:
Yes, absolutely. As Helen E. Jones remarked “the Church should be a leader in the movement for the protection of animals but it isn’t even in the procession.” Apart from luminaries like Arch-bishop Tutu, Christian leaders have failed animals by failing to speak out. This is a matter of great pain to me.
​​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, 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?​​
Prof Linzey:
Well that has to be the goal. We need laws that will provide protection for all sentient beings. The problem is however that law works by inches and we have so much work to do to see our vision implemented.
We also of course need humane education at all levels. In this your work has led the way in remarkably difficult circumstances. I congratulate you on your pioneering ​endeavours. May they all be powerfully supported.
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​​Animal Voice:
Thank you. I value your kind words. 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 was one of the presenters at your Summer School held at Merton College, Oxford, in August.
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Prof Linzey:
Yes, Amy represented a South African perspective on aquaculture at the Summer School. She spoke brilliantly on the panel “Aquaculture: The New Moral Frontier.”
People simply do not realise how much cruelty there is in the farming of aquatic life, especially in the exploitation of octopuses.
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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 van der Merwe was invited to present Humane Education’s pioneering work at Forest Heights Primary School to an international audience at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics Summer School, back in 2019.
The inspiring outcomes of this
pilot project are now included in the
Palgrave Companion to Humane Education, due out 2026/2027
Animal History,
the latest book edited by Revd Professor Andrew Linzey and Dr Clair Linzey, is now available.​
Books include:
Animal Theology (SCM Press/University of Illinois Press, 1994)
Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society (Routledge, 1996)
After Noah (Mowbray/Continuum, 1997)
Animals on the Agenda (SCM Press/University of Illinois Press, 1998)
Animal Gospel (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998)
Animal Rites (SCM Press/The Pilgrim Press, 1999)
Animal Rights: A Historical Anthology (Columbia University Press, 2005)
Creatures of the Same God (Winchester University Press/Lantern, 2007)
Animals and Christianity: A Book of Readings (Wipf and Stock, 2008)
Why Animal Suffering Matters (Oxford University Press, 2009)
The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence (Sussex Academic Press, 2009)
Other Nations: Animals in Modern Literature (Baylor University Press, 2010)
The Global Guide to Animal Protection (University of Illinois Press, 2013)
The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
The Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics (Routledge, 2018)
Ethical Vegetarianism and Veganism (Routledge, 2018)
An Ethical Critique of Fur Factory Farming (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
Animal Ethics and Animal Law (Lexington, 2011)
Animal Theologians (Oxford University Press, 2023)
