Faith-based vegans redefine permissibility and recategorize food groups by drawing on terminology of 'purity' and 'pollution'. Plant-based whole-foods are constructed as pure, while animal-derived products are constructed as polluting. Consuming pure foods becomes important for their religious identity, representing correct religious observance, and veganism as God’s intended diet. Conversely, consuming pollution threatens religious identity, as one feels as though they are contradicting religious principles and going against the will of God, despite meat consumption being the social norm. Thus, we see how the purity of God (and veganism) is juxtaposed against the pollution of human greed and weakness (and animal-derived products).
ELLIE ATAYEE-BENNETT: Ethical veganism is centered upon ethics and animal rights ans is understood to be not only a philosophy and practice of avoiding animal suffering, but also an identity and belief system… Much of the vegan studies literature explores the secular context, however the intersection with religion is also pertinent to study… There is a noticeable research gap pertaining to sociological and empirical explorations of veganism in religious contexts, with little known about how vegan ethics and religious ethics come together in lived experience to reshape understandings and practices associated with edibility, permissibility, and consumption.
This study provides important empirical insight and reveals that faith vegans redefine permissibility and recategorize food groups by drawing on terminology indicative of the concepts of purity and pollution. Most notably, plant-based whole-foods are constructed as pure, whilst animal-derived products are constructed as polluting. Through such reconstructions, emphasis is placed on permissibility and acceptability, with religious ethics and principles guiding how these are interpreted…
This study employed multiple qualitative methods to understand the perceptions and lived experiences of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian vegans in the UK. I recruited 36 faith vegans, 12 from each religion, through purposive sampling so as to ensure participants met the criteria for the study, which was identifying as vegan, identifying as either Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, being over the age of 18, and having lived in the UK for at least five years…
The study revealed how faith veganism inspires a stricter relationship with food and faith than before one went vegan, and how faith veganism renders the boundaries of the dichotomies permissible-forbidden, edible-inedible, and ethical-unethical more porous… Given the emphasis on the redefinition of edibility in existing vegan studies,… faith vegans redefined edibility and permissibility, categorizing plant-based foods, especially whole foods, as pure, whilst animal products, especially meat, were regarded as unethical and polluting.
Permissible refers to foods that faith vegans felt were religiously and ethically acceptable for consumption, whilst forbidden refers to those foods deemed unacceptable for consumption. Edible, meanwhile, refers to foods that can be consumed safely, whilst inedible refers to those foods deemed unsafe, either in a physical sense (they are seen to harm the body) or in a spiritual sense (they are seen to violate religious ethics and potentially fall into the realm of sin)…
Where food can be understood as a cultural product, fitness for consumption is guided by both edibility and permissibility, with the latter superseding the former. Within religious communities, permissibility is guided by religious dietary injunctions, whilst for vegans, it is guided by ethics and a commitment to not harm others. In this study, we see these two domains merging, with (religious) ethics and understandings of purity and pollution guiding permissibility for faith vegans. Through this merging, connections are made, with pure being synonymous with ethical, and pollution being synonymous with unethical.
These concepts have implications for faith vegans’ religious identity and observance. Food is noted as playing an important role in the formation of one’s social, cultural, and religious identities. Consequently, consuming pure foods became important for their religious identity, representing correct religious observance. This is due to constructions of veganism as God’s intended diet, which arose from dietary imagery in religious scripture (for example the vegan Garden of Eden) and the emphasis on vegan-friendly principles in religious teaching (for example compassion and stewardship).
Conversely, consuming pollution threatens religious identity as one feels as though they are contradicting religious principles and going against the will of God. Despite meat consumption remaining the norm, this sentiment was nevertheless still felt, even though the new dietary lifestyle, veganism, represented a deviation from the social, cultural, and dietary norm. This is so since an association between plant-based foods, purity, and holiness had been formed, resulting in animal consumption being reconstructed as a form of consumption that breaches the divinely set limits of the pure and holy. Faith veganism may thus inspire a stricter relationship with food and faith than before one went vegan.
Here, we witness a curious tension where animal consumption is at once both acceptable and unacceptable, and both normal and deviant. Whilst faith vegans could not deny the permissibility of animal consumption in principle, they were keen to emphasize how in practice, religious teachings were not being upheld. Exegesis and the reinterpretation and reapplication of religious ethics became key for overcoming this tension.
To overcome this tension, animal products were reconstructed as a form of pollution, with emphasis placed on how the slaughtering of animals to fulfill human visceral desire contradicts the religious principles of compassion and stewardship, and how the strict conditions God applied to animal husbandry and slaughter are not being upheld resulting in violations of religious teaching. Animal consumption thus represents a pollution that fosters social and religious disorder.
Further, faith vegans reconstructed the divine permission to consume animal products as a concession that whilst permitted, nevertheless displeased God; food thus becomes an avenue through which God’s pleasure may be sought and religious order imposed upon Creation. In reapplying religious scripture and teachings to the topic of veganism, faith vegans imagined a religious ethical spirit, where veganism best fulfilled God’s vision for humankind and where animal consumption directly contested this. Thus, we see how the purity of God (and veganism) is juxtaposed against the pollution of human greed and weakness (and animal-derived products)…
Through the recategorization of food types and the consumption of only those foods deemed pure (plant-based foods), faith vegans attain a deeper sense of religious observance, and in so doing, subvert typical theological approaches to food and faith, highlighting new articulations of religion. SOURCE…
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