The One Issue on Which (Almost) Everyone Is Pagan
Do our best friends actually have a soul?
American Christian churches can be really weird about some things. The conservative Protestant objection to Halloween, for example, which is literally named after the churchy phrase “All Hallows Evening.” The Rapture, which makes no sense at all and even contradicts some of Paul’s writings.
But perhaps most of all, and this crosses denominations, is the insistence of some churches that animals have no souls. I’m not sure quite where they get this – I don’t recall Jesus ever saying it. In fact, I’m not sure exactly how, in the obviously (to me) fictional narrative about him casting a demon out from a human into a flock of pigs, the demon would have anything to possess if those pigs didn’t have souls. What I mainly remember Jesus saying about animals is that God cares a lot for every little bird, so how much more must he care about you?
Maybe that’s why most people I meet, even the devout B-BCs (Bible-Believing Christians), choose to ignore this dogma altogether. I recently asked some of my friends an open question: If you are religious, is there any part of your dogma, as preached by your leaders, that you would change? The answer I got back is the part about animals not having souls, along with the conviction by the person answering that they most certainly do.
