1. Include at least one prayer each week for animals in the church services. Join the Worldwide Prayer Circle for Animals at circleofcompassion. org as a congregation. Include reverence for and kinship with all God’s creatures in the church’s mission statement.
2. Include language such as “guardian” rather than “owner” when referring to companion animals. (See In Defense of Animals’ Guardian Campaign, idausa.org). Use “he” or “she,” rather than “it,” when referring to animals.
3. Help develop a policy to remove or repel insects, mice and others without harming them and to protect birds from hitting large windows.
4. Encourage education and discussion about how the church can help animals by hosting films, speakers, and book studies about veganism and doing no harm to animals. Also, education about the intersectionality of all social justice movements, including animal rights, is very important.
5. Encourage church sponsored family outings that are nonviolent, such as hiking, camping, and canoeing, instead of hunting, fishing, rodeos, zoos, and circuses.
6. Require that members not wear fur into the church out of respect for God’s beautiful creatures who are brutally raised and killed for vanity.
7. Begin purchasing paper, cleaning products, candles, etc. that are ecologically sustainable, fair-trade, and certified cruelty-free.
8. Certainly the most challenging step, but the most dramatic in its message of compassion and social justice, will be for the church to sponsor only cruelty-free meals. Sharing plant-based meals as a community acknowledges our commitment to our own physical health, the health of the earth, the people who are hungry in the world (since a plantbased diet uses far fewer resources than an animal diet does), and the right of all animals to live their own lives free from human exploitation and violence. Sponsoring only plant-based meals also signifies respect and inclusion of those church members who are already committed vegans. Such meals signify our desire to mean what we say when we pray together--”on earth as it is in Heaven.”