What the Hell Did I Just Watch?

A review of the film and a critique of its premise. Spoilers lie ahead.

By now, I have seen Christspiracy plugged enough times on my IG and FB feeds, I am probably reciting its tagline, “how would Jesus kill an animal,” in my sleep. This newest documentary from Kip Andersen posits that killing animals may be at odds with Christianity and other world religions. Its provocative trailer hints that a case will be made for Jesus holding and even preaching vegan values.

The premise might seem absurd to some and compelling to others. To me, the premise lacks relevance. At best, I find it extraneous, and at worst, I think the presumption of its relevance can be damaging to the animal rights cause. If our current struggles for moral justice hinge on what Jesus did or did not do, I suppose we better hope to hell he got everything right. Better yet though, I will suggest we bypass that hope altogether. Using Jesus’s example to define our own morality is a faulty foundation for a myriad of reasons, one of the most obvious being that the historical account of Christ’s life is clouded by language translation, 2000+ years of broken telephone, and of course, the biases of religious dogma. His story begins with virgin conception, so right out of the gate, its credibility is not doing well. And the way the story ends – just bonkers, but I digress.

Despite my reservations, I caved last weekend and subjected myself to Kip Andersen’s newest venture. PETA had shared a teaser and claimed the film is both convincing and relevant, and comments from folks who had already watched the movie conveyed confidence that the film was actually impactful. These comments, I should mention, came exclusively from vegans. Reactions from outside our comfortable hugbox were much different. The Guardian gave it 2 stars and called it “entertaining tosh.” These different points of view are nonetheless generated out of a lot of buzz, and with the animal rights community positively vibrating over it, I thought, what the hell, I’ll see what it’s about. I grabbed a snack of hummus and veggies, fired up my tablet, and gave this Jesus show my open mind.

If you watched Kip Andersen’s other films which dealt with the environmental, humanitarian, and health implications of consuming animal based foods, you may have had a hunch that at some point, Andersen was bound to finally tackle the morals at the centre of veganism. His decision to use religion as a backing block for this important angle is surely faulty as mentioned above, but it proved also to be wildly reaching.

As the movie begins, Andersen shares that he is not personally religious. This is a promising detail. He interviews theologians and religious historians with little to no apparent prejudice of his own, but as the film progresses, his lack of religious background actually renders him a bit out of his element.

Unlike his last three films which sought the science to compel some solid conclusions on the topics being explored, Christspiracy’s inferences are unscientific, thus only ever land shakily. Grand claims are made about historical figures like Albert Einstein and Leonardo DaVinci being involved in animal rights without any citation whatsoever. Hypocrisy is pointed out when various religious leaders preach peace but do not condemn violence toward animals used for food. These observations are nothing new and nothing that any religious leader skilled in philosophical gymnastics cannot find a way to squeeze out of. In Kip Andersen’s religious innocence, he presents these hypocrisies as “gotcha” moments, but he seems naive to religion’s ability to bend texts, distort objective realities, and deny universal concepts of human compassion in order to suit a given agenda.

Christspiracy climaxes with Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest and professor of theology, breaking down a few Hebrew-to-English mistranslations that present notable skepticism to parts of Christian lore. In particular, the story of the “den of thieves,” where Jesus disrupts an animal market and condemns the market’s purveyors for their greed, is revealed to be more accurately described as the “den of murderers.” Could it be that Christ’s condemnation had more to do with the killing of animals than with the greedy, thieving ways of its merchants? It is an interesting question; I will give it that. Additionally, Linzey believes that Jesus “the Nazarene” refers to a sect of vegetarians, rather than to a place called Nazareth. Finally, he makes the case that Jesus’s Last Supper speech was a plea for his disciples to refrain from eating animals. Jesus’s strategy with that speech, according to Prof. Linzey, was to use his own body as a graphic example in order to make the disciples understand that flesh and blood are foods of violence, while bread and wine are not.

Cleansing of the Temple, Lombard School, 18th Century

Kip Andersen might have found these hot takes revelatory, but to a guy who experienced teenagehood caught in the midst of the dismantling and rebuilding of a church, where adults all around me argued constantly about biblical literalism, metaphors, and doctrine, I found all this Hebrew-translation rumination uninspiring. Any Christian who wants to eat a cheeseburger without a shadow of guilt can simply turn to other passages of the bible that condone the exploitation of animals and conclude that Jesus could not possibly have been against eating animals. I have heard Christians go as far as to claim veganism is a blasphemous lifestyle because refusing to eat meat is refusing to accept a gift from God.

I for one will blaspheme all day long, thank you very much, which is why I am sure Christspiracy is ineffective and irrelevant. To elaborate on that, let us unpack my earlier mention of universal concepts of human compassion. Compassion is a huge factor in the evolution of the care-giving motives of humans and all mammals that has allowed us to thrive as synergistic social animals. It is a reaction to the emotional discomfort that can be triggered by empathy. When we decide to help others who are in trouble, the fight-or-flight area of our brain is relaxed, and we even experience a release of oxytocin and dopamine. Compassion even slows our heart rate. (Just one more reason vegans have great cardiovascular health!) Conversely, when we suppress our compassionate response to empathy, our heart rate jumps. Our fight, flight, freeze mechanism locks in, and our stress level increases as we search for distractions rather than exercising our compassionate reflexes.

In other words, it is perfectly natural, and incredibly healthy to experience compassion. Humans simply do not need a doctrinal code or the life example of a religious figure in order to care about the suffering of animals. The problem with religion is that it can be used to steamroll the validity of natural human reactions, including our reaction to empathy. Because this stifling of our compassionate nature causes so much stress, Christianity has morphed throughout the centuries in a weak attempt to accommodate the natural. In 1978, for example, the Mormon faith lifted its ban on black priesthood but kept its ban on female priesthood. In 2013, it dropped previous teachings that black people were a cursed race, the “marked” children of Cain, and that black Mormons would be made white in the afterlife. Mormonism may seem an outrageous example, but how many major churches have twisted scriptures in recent years in order to integrate acceptance of homosexuality?

The point goes back to bypassing religion altogether. A film regarding the morality of veganism could easily take a non-theistic approach. It could address the science indicating that animals suffer as much as we do when confined, tortured, and killed. It could show the science behind our compassionate response to animal suffering and the anthropological history of our harmonious relationship with other animals. 

But this is not the approach Kip Andersen took. Perhaps it is because his co-director, Kameron Waters, who appears to have first pitched the idea for the film, is a God-fearing man. To those who are afraid of God, their moral discretions must somehow filter through theistic instruction. One cannot claim an inherent sense of right versus wrong because such a claim would suggest the person knows better than God. Therefore, in order to relieve the stress of knowing in one’s heart that something is true, it is essential that the evidence of its truth be backed up by scripture. The problem is that when compassion and morality are gatetkept by theological stories and instructions, we have placed an obstacle in the road to justice.

The counterargument to avoiding religion when seeking compassion is made in the beginning of Christspiracy. It imparts that much of the population thinks the way Kameron Waters thinks, and the film therefore aims to appeal to their way of thinking. This does nothing to deal with religion’s slowing of the pursuit of justice. It ignores, if not condones, this problem.

If we can bring ourselves to have compassion strong enough that it outweighs our fear of God, we are truly liberated. Free to cultivate true confidence in our convictions, we can then move to liberate others. Animal rights efficacy is keystoned on the advantage of having the truth on its side. When we cater to fantastical beliefs, no matter how widely held, that have held back justice for thousands of years, we lose our advantage.

In short, the movie sucked.