Evangelizing for the animals
Appeals to protect all of God's creatures are finding sympathy in the faith community, including on the religious right.
By Stephanie Simon,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 6, 2007

She spent years as an outspoken antiabortion activist, and that cause remains dear to her. But these days, Karen Swallow Prior has a new passion: animal welfare.She wasn't sure, at first, that advocating for God's four-legged creatures would go over well on the campus of Liberty University, a fundamentalist Baptist institution founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Among the Liberty faculty -- and conservative evangelicals in general -- the animal-rights movement is often disdained as a secular, liberal cause.But activists have been working with increasing intensity to shed that image. They're lecturing in Quaker meetinghouses and Episcopal churches, setting up websites that post Scripture alongside recipes for vegan soup -- and using biblical language to promote political initiatives, such as laws mandating bigger cages for pregnant pigs.
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