Friends and animals

Thom Bonneville tells the story of a Quaker concern for animals

In the earliest days of the Society many Friends bore witness on behalf of animals. Many of those who followed them carried this concern forward through the centuries.

While the majority of early Friends no doubt reflected the prejudices of their time when it came to animals, some examples of a more encompassing spiritual or ethical regard have survived in writings of that period. For instance, George Fox – who censured the ‘vain sports’ of hunting and shooting – recollected with indignation the theft of a horse’s provender: ‘I had rather they had robbed me.’ Animals, or at least some animals, were clearly within George Fox’s moral compass, and deserving of not just our solicitude but our justice.

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