All
Thanks for your answer. I can hear what you are saying now. Its really hard isnt it. Sometimes I think we would be better off without any religion and just replace it with good and bad people.
Well We have good and bad people already of course but you know what I mean.
If you dont mind I will take a crack at answering the question that Scout Asked you but of course respond for yourself.

I would guess your reply would be > No I dont really know anyone .
Scout I will Scout around for my Few Good Men List and post it for you.
The trouble is they are already doing as much as they can.
Perhaps we could write them a thanks or something as much of their work goes[unthanked]

The problem is we need to reach the people who attend the church and give them the facts about the cruelty of Intensive farming and live exports so THEY can demand their Church Leaders act.

Many Church Leaders dont know about it either because oif the hush hush from the mediawith Murdoch packer and people like Vanstone.[ You can only try to imagine the media control. We had another Cormo rIGHT HERE in Austrialia a few months ago Scout. Thousands of sheep stuck onboard in WA[terribly]
No Press would run the story! Believe me there are thousands more with huge conflicts of interest.
To be honest Steve Fielding of Family first is THE ONE to preshure[goodluck]. He represents the christian Churches not only for the church but parliament for the people.
I think your doing a great job and when you wrote him tell him we are ALL interested in his reply to our letter after the meeting with him.
Give em Hell!
I got the feeling your the right person for the job along with Celivia and I am glad I am on you guys team.
I am posting a Press address from RSPCA President about CHURCHES and Animal Welfare next. might run over to a few posts.
Thanks again Al for your comment.

Scout, "some kind of obscure reference of women as animals" I'm guessing that you missed vetmans post which was deleted. Be very gratefull, it took a while to get the PC cleaned up after that one.

R0bert

Thanks, people, I said I would close this discussion as I thought it was dieing. Since there have been so many replies still, I agree with you, Wendy, to keep this open, if only to proof a point!
I haven’t had much time to post, and I’ll post some more soon, see how much I can fit in today.

Wendy, a fantastic idea to collect church’s’ email addresses; your suggestions are excellent, as usual. Hopefully media would be willing to work on this. You sound like you are going to make them ;)

I am also planning (will do so tomorrow) to send this discussion to AVA, Vaile, Family First (animals last?) and as many vets in my area as I can, including my own vet. Wendy, yes disgraceful about the kitten torture, and now on the news was also this distressing story about the seal shooting by Australian fishermen- why… because seals eat fish- uhhhm what are they supposed to eat, bullets?
Wouldn’t surprise me if these killers got off lightly too- even though they were not drunk.
Seems to me that the best defense anyone can have before abusing anyone including animals is to make sure to get drunk before you act instead of ‘think before you act’; you’ll get a lighter sentence. Wonderful world!

Antje and Wendy, I have tried if I could change the title because I agree that it would be a more appropriate title, but I haven’t been able to find out so I have asked the administrators if it’s possible- will let you know about the reply.

continued

Church leaders hopefully want to keep their reputation and their halo’s. As Shakespeare said:

"Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself and what remains is bestial."

I just thought they should remind themselves that without their reputation, the church will even lose more adherents- something that they are afraid of.

ALL, I realise that NO religion is innocent (perhaps the Buddhists are being closest to being animal-friendly) but it really doesn’t matter which religion is the worst offender or which one has the brightest halo- fact is, there's much violence in ALL off the holy books, and in my view it’s best to burn all these books and start using our own reasoning, ethics, morals and conscious. The thing to concentrate on is: WILL CHURCH LEADERS OPEN THEIR HEART AND IMPROVE THINGS FOR SUFFERING ANIMALS?

In this discussion I prefer to concentrate on the Christian leaders though, as the Islamic leaders as Wendy has mentioned have already agreed to improving things for animals by using stun guns before slaughter and by slaughtered here in Australia to save them the live export torture- the meat can be shipped chilled or frozen- no problems with that from Islamic leaders.
Correct me if I’m wrong about that, Wendy.

So please no more Islam bashing in this discussion. Also, women’s issues can be discussed somewhere else. Bible isn’t exactly women-friendly either- open a discussion about that and I’ll be happy to have a say too, but not here.

Scout, about BOAZ, I don’t really know him, haven’t been on this forum that long and had very little to do with him. I think I was just over the moon to see a Christian on here- they are scarce ;) But thanks for pointing that out. It was kind of ‘brave’ of him to show up here by himself, and I wanted to make him feel welcome and was hoping/suggesting he’d mention it to his church leader.
Will you, BOAZ, pretty pretty please with a free range leg of Australian slaughtered lamb on top?

After reading a few posts I would hazard a guess that any 'christian' in his right mind would avoid this thread like the plague..is he going to get a fair hearing anyway?This all sounds a bit too much like 'school yard bullying' to me, the us and them mentality.

I dont profess to be a 'christian' as such but I cant help but feel that this discussion is so heavily weighted as to be useless.
Diversity of opinion is what its about and if you only want to listen to your own voice, then we learn nothing and remain ignorant.

Dont pigeonhole christians as one eyed cruel bigots when that charcterisation represents only a small section of those people.They are people too,and should not be marginalised..come on ladies, fair go here.

People like Philo sure,he is very one eyed but this is very simplistic and unbalanced, even if the intention to start with was well intentioned...

Animal welfare is of paramount importance ,dont muddy the waters by slinging mud.

Thank you to Lachlan, for having changed the title of this thread on my request. Greatly appreciated- I hope everyone is happy with the new title?

OZGIRL, thanks for saying that Animal Welfare is of paramount importance- I’m glad you agree with us that it is important, so you are invited to perhaps add something positive to this discussion to make it 'useful'.

You are also invited to gather that large section of Christians you talk about; the section that is not oblivious and disinterested in animal suffering- we;ll all be delighted to see these compassionate christians on here!

They’ll be treated like they deserve to be treated: like compassionate people.

Tell us where they hang out, OZGIRL, because sure as hell they're not hanging out in church; Wendy wrote piles of letters to churches to ask for a bit of help, but NO REPLY from our wonderful church leaders and their flock.

OZGIRL, don’t tell me what we can or can’t talk about; anyone can start any discussion on any topic they like and I happen to like this topic. You are totally oblivious of the reason we have started this discussion.
You say that you have only read a few posts- that gives you no right to tell us what to talk about. If you had read our threads/posts you would understand why I have started this thread and why we are frustrated with the lack of compassion from Christians.

Atm you don’t know what you’re talking about as you have missed essential information. Didn’t you read that we do WANT to find out why Christians are staying away from animal welfare threads, that’s the whole point- I don't get it.

Even though I had some criticism about the way you judged our discussion, this is not meant to be personal but to let you know that you are not informed enough to tell us what to talk about. You are very welcome to add to this discussion. If you can’t find the other Animal Welfare threads and are interested I’ll paste the links for you next time.