Essay

Thank you, Compassion Consortium, for inviting us at the Interfaith Vegan Coalition (IVC) to write about our favorite subject–Vegan values and spirituality. We, Lisa Levinson and Judy Carman, co-founded the IVC in 2015 at an animal rights convention with the help of Thomas Jackson, director of the film, A Prayer for Compassion. The timing for launching such an organization, that brought spirituality together with animal liberation, seemed to be perfect. We were met with tremendous encouragement from many people at that first meeting

Since the birth of IVC, we have discovered many other groups with very similar visions. The Compassion Consortium became one of our coalition members early on, and we have enjoyed many common projects together. It’s no wonder, because our missions and goals are so aligned and complement each other in many ways. 

Our Declaration gets to the heart of why we formed IVC. Compassion Consortium and other groups and individuals have signed on to it as a statement that we can all uphold and treasure: 

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“We, the members of the Interfaith Vegan Coalition, do hereby declare that humanity has caused severe destruction to people, animals, and the earth. We believe there is still time to heal the damage and liberate all animals and the earth from human violence if human beings can awaken to our true nature. We recognize that all beings, regardless of species, value their lives, families, and friends. They want to live and be free from human domination and violence. As spiritual people who seek to align our values of loving-kindness and nonviolence with our actions, we declare that we will do our part each day to create a Vegan world of compassion, respect, and liberation for all beings.”

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From this basic vision that we share with the Coalition members, we have four prominent goals. Our first is to build an interfaith Vegan community in which we all find spiritual support and growth. We want to provide a loving space for spiritual Vegans who are struggling with their faith in the face of services, leaders, and sermons that ignore or even denigrate animals. The folks at the Compassion Consortium note  “...that many people do not see their deeply rooted compassion for all creatures reflected in houses of worship or spiritual centers; some people have even left faith traditions after seeing animals excluded from the level of mercy they deserve; in many cases, they're even denied the possession of a soul.” IVC sees this as well.  

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Our second goal is to help people of faith introduce Vegan values within their own churches, temples and places of worship to “awaken the sleeping giant of religion.” The influence spiritual leaders could have on creating a Vegan world is immense. We and the animals need their help. It will take many members of these places of worship to introduce the revolutionary idea from the inside. We have created a lot of resources for those brave and dedicated people. Watch this inspiring video of our resources in action.