UPDATE Jan. 6, 2022: the replay of my conversation with Victoria Moran has been posted here. The interview part goes from about 25:07 to 48:32 (starting with an introduction by Victoria).
I’ll be the guest speaker at the Compassion Consortium online service on Sunday, December 26. The service will be at 4 pm Eastern time (= 1 pm Pacific = 2 pm Mountain = 3 pm Central) via Zoom, and last 90 minutes; the conversation with me will be about 15 or 20 minutes.
Topics will likely include my research on early Christianity, why the historical Jesus was vegetarian, and why this matters today. If you want to hear me, you can register for the service here. (You have to order “tickets,” but they’re free.) If you miss the service, there is often a replay of past services on their web site.
The Compassion Consortium is a non-sectarian and interfaith religious center. They offer spiritual guidance, support, and fellowship to vegans, vegetarians, animal rights activists, animal lovers, and all humans who care about and advocate for animals and the planet, in a wide variety of faith traditions (in the past, Hindus, Catholics, and Muslims have appeared, among others). It is especially a home for those who feel excluded from their traditions because of their compassion (that’s me!). The leadership team is Reverend William Melton, Reverend Sarah Bowen, Victoria Moran, CHHC (AADP), RYT, and Reverend Erika Allison.
I’ll Be there
Good to see and hear Keith via Zoom at this gathering. More time should have been given to Keith to really get into the subject matter. So much more could have been said. Instead, the discussion with Keith ended all-too-soon and the proceedings moved on to internal-group feel-good self-promotion. Yes, we all have a need to belong, and so group recruitment has its place. Religion means “re-linking” — to Source, to Nature, to One Another. Seems to me we all have this need — but organized “re-linking” often adds an artificial or manipulative element that if taken to an extreme becomes the exploitation of this genuine need of us animals to re-link, even across species boundaries.
Certainly the conversation could have gone on for longer than 22 minutes! It’s an important topic. But what happened was fine. 22 minutes is the standard length of time they give to all the speakers. I also know that, as a speaker, you look best if you leave the audience wanting more (maybe they’ll want to check out your web site!), rather than leaving them restless after you’ve gone on for too long.