Pledge to Be Vegan for Lent! TODAY's conveniences make it HARDLY seem 'religious' in the sense of self-denial

Pledge to Be Vegan for Lent! "As we do to the least, so we do to Him." Help make this world a kinder place for all God's creatures by pledging to be vegan for Lent.

 

 

This time of year, many men and women of God will choose to abstain from various foods or practices in observance of Lent, and I am giving up animal products by going vegan.

There's never been a better time to cut the meat and other animal-derived products out of your diet.

With the huge selection of delicious vegan meats and alternatives to dairy foods and eggs that are available, it's never been easier to go vegan!
To take action on this issue, click on the link below:
https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?s_oo=_l878arEcQk8B0DtcJJR5w..&id=2847

You have just taken the first step toward a healthier and more compassionate life. Being vegan has never been easier, and we're here to help! For delicious recipes and nutritional information, visit our "Vegetarian Starter Kit" online.
A vegan diet is truly a lifesaver: Vegans and vegetarians are less likely to suffer from heart disease, obesity, and several types of cancer, according to the American Dietetic Association. Plus, vegan foods are delicious!
The following are our "Top Five Tips for Making the Switch":
1. Make vegan versions of your favorite meals. "Veg up" your favorite recipes simply by replacing the meat with other foods. For example, replace the beef in burritos with beans, guacamole, and grilled veggies, or try vegan beef crumbles from Morningstar Farms or Boca. Make spaghetti with marinara sauce and add roasted vegetables as well as vegan meatballs or sausage (try Nate's brand or GimmeLean).
2. Explore delicious vegan recipes.
You'll be amazed by the variety of tasty vegan options, from classic American dishes to Italian and Creole. People tell us all the time that being vegan exposed them to an array of flavors and foods they never knew existed.
3. Try tasty faux meats and dairy alternatives.
Sample the ever-growing lineup of mock meats - including vegan burgers, hot dogs, turkey deli slices, riblets, and chicken patties - and the vast array of tasty alternatives to dairy products, like vegan cream cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. Some of the most popular brands include Boca, Gardenburger, Morningstar Farms, and Silk.
4. Sample microwaveable meals and convenience foods.
Always on the run? Check out the variety of vegan microwavable meals in your local grocery store's freezer aisle, like Amy's Black Bean Enchilada With Spanish Rice, Fantastic Foods' Vegetarian 3-Bean Chili, and Yves' Thai Lemongrass Veggie Chick'n. There are many quick and easy vegan snacks, including basics like fresh fruit and PB&J and unique options like Tofurky Jerky and Silk Live! soy-yogurt smoothies.
5. Find vegan-friendly restaurants in your area.
Whatever your budget and wherever you live, you can enjoygreat vegan meals. Many national chains, like Johnny Rockets, sell tasty veggie burgers and other animal-friendly options.
Thank you again for taking the Pledge to Be Vegan for Lent, but there's no reason that your vegan diet has to last only 40 days. During and after the Lenten season, please visit VegCooking.com and GoVeg.com to find all the resources that you'll need to stick with your cruelty-free diet.
Best of luck!
Sincerely,
Jenny Lou Browning
Vegan Special Projects Coordinator

Wheaton College ranked second-most sober school in nation

By Elisabeth Mistretta | Daily Herald Staff

Published: 7/28/2009 3:30 PM

Whether Wheaton College's latest distinction is a good or not-so-good thing depends a lot on what you're looking for.

When The Princeton Review released results of its annual college rankings this week, the Christian institution in Wheaton was second in the nation in the Stone Cold Sober Schools category, right behind Brigham Young University in Utah.

BYU has held the top spot for 12 years and Wheaton is "a usual suspect" in that category, said Robert Franek, author of "The Best 371 Colleges, 2010 Edition."

The rankings are based on surveys of 122,000 college students, and any student with a college e-mail address can participate in the annual surveys at princetonreview.com.

Wheaton College officials say the ranking is a positive mark because it fits the school's moral philosophy.

"Part of our campus environment and goal is to cultivate an atmosphere that stimulates moral and intellectual growth," spokeswoman LaTonya Taylor said.

Wheaton College encourages all students to agree to a Community Covenant, which cites the school's Christian values and discourages behaviors officials believe are at odds with their religion and scripture, such as excessive alcohol consumption, any use of illegal drugs or anything deemed pornographic.

Taylor said many students are looking for such guidelines to help keep them true to their beliefs.

"The students who come to Wheaton are interested in growing their faith, as well as for challenging academics," she said.

In addition to being a the second-most sober school in the country, Wheaton also ranked in several other categories: first, Alternative Lifestyle Not an Alternative (low acceptance of gay community); second, Got Milk? (low beer consumption); second, Scotch & Soda, Hold the Scotch (low hard liquor consumption); third, Most Religious Students; fourth, Future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution; fifth, Town-Gown Relations are Great (good relationship with Wheaton residents); sixth, Don't Inhale (low marijuana use); eighth, Most Conservative Students, 13th, Best Campus Food.

Last year the college was said to have the best food in the nation. This year it moved from fifth to first place for low acceptance of the gay community. Franek said the rankings vary from year to year based on the changing student body.

"Each list is an incredible resource because it reports so much information from primary sources, which is college students themselves," he said.

He added that there is no such thing as a bad ranking in the book. Instead, the categories are created simply to help prospective students make the best decisions.

"If you're a young, gay kid thinking of applying to any school, you want to know what the campus climate is," Franek said. "If the tolerance is low, you would at least want to understand that and prepare some questions. It doesn't mean you should stop your research there, but you should let that make your research that much more savvy. I don't want people to cross a school off their list simply because of our rankings."

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On my refrigerator is a refrigerator magnet from folk song artist Jay Mankita, for his melodic and memorable album, 'Dogs are watching us." He talks about their trust in us (unlike cats, some might add; others have inspired the trust and love of one or more cats, but that's a different day's posting).
Some of us may find this topic mildly to moderately offensive (some may find it greatly or even profoundly bothering or offensive). It's an obvious takeoff from the song 'God is watching us' which gave many folks pause in the face of an unsettled society in multifactorial upheaval.

Others might think, well, if God is not vegan or even vegetarian (think of all the omnivorous animals in the creation and the deadly 'food chain' observation, even if some of us are exempt, as perhaps the stewards - we humans - who can honor God in the respect of loving all creation (a la NT scholar and professor Richard Alan Young: Is God a Vegetarian?), then at least (omnivorous) dogs CAN be (and should be, for ethical reasons.

Others object, but though cats need taurine (which CAN now be synthesized in a lab (it's good to be gifted with the neurological complexity that enables rational behaviors AND rational analysis, which can lead to the social construction of scientific method and scientific results which reshape society according to socially desirable HUMANE values), (omnivorous) dogs clearly CAN be not merely vegetarian, but also vegan.

The watershed book in the Vegetarian Dogs (and possibly! cats) movement was Dogs and Cats Go Vegetarian by the co-authors whose surname rhymes with EDEN: Barbara Lynn Peden (who did most of the journal research, I'm told; she is now a folksinger, I'm told) and her former husband, James Peden, who in the divorce got full rights to their shared book production AND VegDog & VegCat and empire (he had a paying job on the side and could sustain the D&GV 'empire' (enterprise) ("Harbingers of a New Age"), and she, claiming no extra-corporate skills of her own (though she had done most of the journal research and networking), left with little in the way terminated employees often do, with no IP rights to the work they have done along the way. Jim has since written new literature and a new chapter in the re-released book. In this light, one ought to read the book about Little Tyke, the vegetarian (not vegan) lioness, sold by the American Vegan Society (she died from being overstressed and overexposed on television as a celebrity - read 'oddity' or 'curiosity')

Blaming PETA in the recent media blitzes about vegan - read that again - not vegetarian but VEGAN dogs AND CATS - are those who (IMHO rightly) are concerned that some animals are, when not technically assisted with periodic lab-derived supplementary doses, suffer - read that again - SUFFER. However, the question persists, particularly in a Christian (read Genesis: God gave the animals the world; there was no DEATH (thus no killing for food) in Eden (rhymes with Peden).

More broadly, in monotheistic, Abrahamic 'traditions' of receiving the common literature of Genesis, the problem remains. Mohammed reported taught that 'it is better to drink milk than to eat meat', and while not PROSCRIBING the eating of meat (forbidding or teaching that it is wrong), there is remarkable tolerance in some branches of Christendom and Jewish practice, and even calendared encouragements of it (for its spiritual and 'meditative' or devotional benefits - as in Lent or in PRAYER AND fasting, etc.). Some monastics are largely or always vegetarian in some branches of Christendom. Dissident NON-MONASTIC groups have been suppressed, but often for doctrinary (not doctrinaire, but doctrinary - related to teaching or 'doctrine') or 'non-subscribing' (to doctrine) reasons.

What concerns me, though, is the philosophical problem of thinking inductively in the present world (as we all must) and committing oneself to a loving, rational (and both all-wise and all-knowing AND all-powerful) Deity, known among the uninitiated as God, though sometimes and by some through more personal names, quite reverently thought.

God has an interest in our intentionality - our behaviors - deliberate and unintentional

Some ways of being ourselves behaviorally and mentally are better (or at least less objectionable) than other behaviors. Some secular folks agree to this much; not all do.

In Genesis we are given stewardship in the sense of caring for all life; from this our (a) ecological and (b) humane AND (c) sociological stewardship obligations are derived.

In terms of our spiritually-derived public policy contributions, how can we endorse (let alone mandate) that we OR others care for animals - and humans, too - and the ecosystem in ways that trade off the well-being of some for that of others, even if mathematically one is numerically or quantitatively better.

Further, we’re helped along in this reflection by the prophecy of Isaiah, where the predatory rests with the herbivore, and there is no more exploitation of one (type) of the other (type), nor of one (type) by the other (type).

So, is keeping carnivorous animals, even pre-existing animals BEFORE any possible PHASING OUT of carnivorous animals by massive spay-neuter programs, ethically tolerable, particularly for those who derive at least part of their moral reasoning and rationale from Biblical sources and indirectly from others who also derive their thinking from those Biblical sources/texts?
VegetarianInBoston
Searching for vegan-friendly pet food is laudable in general, but specifically in light of this contextual reflection, that somehow, in the process BEFORE God becomes 'All in All', we ought to live in light of the eschaton, the hope of which (perhaps the Indwelling spirit, would be a foretaste or earnest (like earnest money) of one's spiritual inheritance, a life in a world of no more violence, for which righteousness we are to hunger and thirst (and surely our food would be characterized by having no violence).