Andrew Linzey

Andrew Linzey (born 2 February 1952) is a British Anglican priest, theologian, author, and prominent figure in the Christian vegetarian movement. He is a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, and held the world’s first academic post in Ethics, Theology and Animal Welfare, the Bede Jarret Senior Research Fellowship at Blackfriars Hall.

Linzey is the founder and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, an independent academic centre opened in November 2006 to promote the study and discussion of animal ethics. He is the author of a number of books on animal rights, including Animal Rights: A Christian Perspective (1976), Christianity and the Rights of Animals (1987), Animal Theology (1994), and Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics (2009). He is also the editor of an academic journal, the Journal of Animal Ethics, which is published jointly by the Oxford Centre and the University of Illinois, and a series editor, with Priscilla Cohn, of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series.

Linzey has written more than 180 articles, and authored or edited twenty books on theology and ethics. He has lectured and broadcast extensively in Europe and the United States. His Animal Theology has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Japanese and French.

He is most often quoted as saying "Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ... Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering." He also said “Christians haven’t got much further than thinking that the whole world was made for us, with the result that animals are only seen in an instrumental way as objects, machines, tools, and commodities, rather than fellow creatures," and it is claimed that he "wants to see animal abusers placed on a register and forbidden from keeping an animal, or working with them."

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