HUNTING IS EVIL - MYTH

The antis would have us believe that the Christian Church opposes hunting as an evil practice in which human beings behave abominably towards other creatures which God has made.

Taking just the Church of England, they point to the many clergy who oppose hunting, and to the fact that motions condemning hunting are frequently presented to the General Synod.

BUT...

For every member of the clergy who opposes hunting, there are plenty who think that the matter is one of personal conscience, and who believe that the individual should be allowed to decide for himself.

There are at least 50 clergy on the books of the St Hubert's Society, the organisation that exists for "hunting parsons".

Historically, there is no doubt at all that the Church accepted hunting as part and parcel of the fabric of rural life, even though it rejected cock fighting and bear baiting.

Christian thinkers would assess whether an act is evil by three main considerations:

(1) The motives for the act
(2) The nature of the act itself
(3) The consequences of the act

(1) In the case of hunting, it is very clear that the motives of those who take part in it are not sadistic.

(2) The actual act of killing a fox is no different from the act of an angler killing a fish, or a shooter killing a pheasant, or an abattoir-worker killing a cow. Killing an animal is never a pleasant act; but it is accepted as part of human life. People cannot single out killing a fox as worse than all the other ways in which Man kills animals.

(3) It is obvious to any objective observer that the consequences of foxhunting are very beneficial both to the fox population and to the countryside environment in general.

So, we can state confidently that foxhunting would not pass the usual criteria for being condemned as evil.

The Church broadly accepts this. None of the motions condemning foxhunting has ever been passed by the General Synod.

The position of the Church Commissioners, who own lots of agricultural land, has always been that it is a matter for the individual farmer or tenant to decide whether hunting is permitted on the Church's land.