For Waters, the most challenging scene was at Polyface Farms in Virginia, where Waters filmed a rabbit being hung upside-down and killed, while a child looked on.
“I could have done something if I wasn’t filming, but I knew that I had to film it to be able to show what the reality is,” said Waters.
By the end, the filmmakers reason that all religions, at their root, value compassion for all beings. Religious systems that uphold eating animals aren’t representative of their own foundational Scriptures or leaders, and believers who kill and eat animals are, consciously or not, missing the point of their own religions.
For Lin, the documentary’s evidence about Christ’s opposition to killing animals, though interesting, doesn’t prove anything definitively. And drilling down to try to pinpoint the historical Jesus’ original beliefs regarding animals is a task that’s both elusive, she said, and unnecessary.
“I think we can make ethical arguments just fine from the 21st century against eating animals,” said Lin. “We don’t actually need the historical Jesus to be against eating animals.”
Tabor was more persuaded: “I also have come to a similar conclusion of the film, that there was a version of the Jesus movement that was definitely vegetarian, but probably vegan,” he told RNS.
For Waters, his many years researching and creating the film have strengthened his convictions that Jesus would have looked out for the last and the least, including animals.
“It’s only deepened my faith,” Waters said about the film. “My faith has always been to aim to be Christlike. I feel now I have a better picture … of what that looks like, now that I know what it means with our relationship and our connection to animals.”
This article originally appeared here.
