Review of Familiar Strangers: The Church and the Vegetarian Movement in Britain (1809 – 2009)
For several years I was a vegetarian who worked in social justice campaigning. The roots of radical politics and vegetarianism in Britain are closely connected with Nonconformist Christian Churches. I was asked to review the book Familiar Strangers in 2011 and the subject is interesting enough to republish the review 7 years later.
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Many people’s first reaction to a book on church and vegetarianism may be “what on earth have they got to do with each other”? John M. Gilheany’s entertaining new book shows that, for two centuries of British history, the answer is “more than you think”.
The author admits that his work is an amateur study. But this makes for an accessible read. We encounter the colourful characters who defined modern Christian Vegetarianism, including Joseph Brotherton, MP for Salford and minister of its Bible Christian Church, (a breakaway from the mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg’s New Jerusalem Church); Sidney Beard who funded the Order of the Golden Age which produced vast quantities of literature and extensive letter-writing campaigns; Charles Spurgeon the Baptist preacher; William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army; and others.
Methodists will be delighted to read of John and Charles Wesley’s vegetarianism: John’s unbalanced-sounding diet of ‘rice and biscuits’ apparently keeping him in vibrant health! The passages on Lord Soper’s journey to vegetarianism are also engaging.
The book sketches vegetarianism’s complex relationship with other emerging issues in Christian activism, including the peacemaking, temperance and animal rights movements, and the problematic issue of theological justification. It also reveals the change from the spiritual and intellectual focus of 19th century visionaries like Anna Kingsford, who was one of the first women to obtain a medical degree, and intellectuals like Henry Salt and Howard Williams who were major influences on Tolstoy and Gandhi, to the increasingly single-issue, secular and lobby-focused approach of the 20th century.
When many Christians, like the author, prefer secular over religious justifications of vegetarianism, it is hardly surprising that the wider vegetarian movement ignores religion, or turns to Eastern and ‘new age’ sources for meaning!
Overall, it is hard not to warm to Familiar Strangers. Its light and enjoyable approach will appeal to non-specialists, while its deeper implications are sure to fire vegetarians and church and society activists with a conviction that understanding their origins is crucial in answering the question ‘where do we go from here’?
For several years I was a vegetarian who worked in social justice campaigning. The roots of radical politics and vegetarianism in Britain are closely connected with Nonconformist Christian Churches. I was asked to review the book Familiar Strangers in 2011 and the subject is interesting enough to republish the review 7 years later.
---
Many people’s first reaction to a book on church and vegetarianism may be “what on earth have they got to do with each other”? John M. Gilheany’s entertaining new book shows that, for two centuries of British history, the answer is “more than you think”.
The author admits that his work is an amateur study. But this makes for an accessible read. We encounter the colourful characters who defined modern Christian Vegetarianism, including Joseph Brotherton, MP for Salford and minister of its Bible Christian Church, (a breakaway from the mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg’s New Jerusalem Church); Sidney Beard who funded the Order of the Golden Age which produced vast quantities of literature and extensive letter-writing campaigns; Charles Spurgeon the Baptist preacher; William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army; and others.
Methodists will be delighted to read of John and Charles Wesley’s vegetarianism: John’s unbalanced-sounding diet of ‘rice and biscuits’ apparently keeping him in vibrant health! The passages on Lord Soper’s journey to vegetarianism are also engaging.
The book sketches vegetarianism’s complex relationship with other emerging issues in Christian activism, including the peacemaking, temperance and animal rights movements, and the problematic issue of theological justification. It also reveals the change from the spiritual and intellectual focus of 19th century visionaries like Anna Kingsford, who was one of the first women to obtain a medical degree, and intellectuals like Henry Salt and Howard Williams who were major influences on Tolstoy and Gandhi, to the increasingly single-issue, secular and lobby-focused approach of the 20th century.
When many Christians, like the author, prefer secular over religious justifications of vegetarianism, it is hardly surprising that the wider vegetarian movement ignores religion, or turns to Eastern and ‘new age’ sources for meaning!
Overall, it is hard not to warm to Familiar Strangers. Its light and enjoyable approach will appeal to non-specialists, while its deeper implications are sure to fire vegetarians and church and society activists with a conviction that understanding their origins is crucial in answering the question ‘where do we go from here’?