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Books > History > American history
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The Gospel of Kindness - Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America (Paperback)
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The Gospel of Kindness - Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America (Paperback)
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When we consider modern American animal advocacy, we often think of
veganism, no-kill shelters, Internet campaigns against trophy
hunting, or celebrities declaring that they would "rather go naked"
than wear fur. Contemporary critics readily dismiss animal
protectionism as a modern secular movement that privileges animals
over people. Yet the movement's roots are deeply tied to the
nation's history of religious revivalism and social reform. In The
Gospel of Kindness, Janet M. Davis explores the broad cultural and
social influence of the American animal welfare movement at home
and overseas from the Second Great Awakening to the Second World
War. Dedicated primarily to laboring animals at its inception in an
animal-powered world, the movement eventually included virtually
all areas of human and animal interaction. Embracing animals as
brethren through biblical concepts of stewardship, a diverse
coalition of temperance groups, teachers, Protestant missionaries,
religious leaders, civil rights activists, policy makers, and
anti-imperialists forged an expansive transnational "gospel of
kindness," which defined animal mercy as a signature American
value. Their interpretation of this "gospel" extended beyond the
New Testament to preach kindness as a secular and spiritual truth.
As a cultural product of antebellum revivalism, reform, and the
rights revolution of the Civil War era, animal kindness became a
barometer of free moral agency, higher civilization, and
assimilation. Yet given the cultural, economic, racial, and ethnic
diversity of the United States, its empire, and other countries of
contact, standards of kindness and cruelty were culturally
contingent and potentially controversial. Diverse constituents
defended specific animal practices, such as cockfighting,
bullfighting, songbird consumption, and kosher slaughter, as
inviolate cultural traditions that reinforced their right to
self-determination. Ultimately, American animal advocacy became a
powerful humanitarian ideal, a touchstone of inclusion and national
belonging at home and abroad that endures to this day.
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