Christian vegetarianism is a Christian belief based on effecting the compassionate teachings of Jesus, the twelve apostles and the early church to all sentient or living beings through vegetarianism or, ideally, veganism. Alternatively, Christians may be vegetarian for ethical, environmental, nutritional or other spiritual reasons.[1][2]

Various church founders have recommended vegetarianism, such as William Cowherd from the Bible Christian Church and Ellen G. White from the Seventh-day Adventists.[3][4] Cowherd, who founded the Bible Christian Church in 1809, helped to establish the world's first Vegetarian Society in 1847.[5]

While vegetarianism is not a common practice in current western Christian thought and culture, the concept and practice has scriptural and historical support. According to the Bible, in the beginning, before the Fall, human and nonhuman animals, which are beings that have or are an nima, Latin for soul,[6][7] were completely vegetarian, and "it was very good".[Genesis 1:29-31] According to some interpretations of the Bible, raw veganism was the original diet of humankind in the form given to Adam and Eve by God in Genesis 1:29, "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat" (see Edenic diet).

Immediately after the Flood, God allegedly permitted the eating of meat,[Genesis 9:3] but forbade consuming "blood, which is life".[Genesis 9:4] However, some maintain that God permitted the consumption of meat only temporarily because all plants had been destroyed as a result of the flood,[8] despite the lack of any reference to this in Genesis itself. Christian vegetarians interpret that passage not as a free pass to kill for eating if the blood is supposedly excluded from alimentation,[9] but as an invitation (rhetoric or not) to necrophagy. "The biological fact is: no matter what you do you can never remove all the blood from the flesh of a slaughtered animal."[10][11]

One of the Ten Commandments says categorically, "Thou shalt not kill" without specifying that some animals are allowed to be killed. Isaiah states "He that killeth an ox [is as if] he slew a man."[Isaiah 66:3] However, specific sacrifices of animals for the atonement of sin were also mandated, by Moses, what may be inconsistent with the principle of grace or that one cannot force God to forgive. When the Moabite king Mesha offered in a holocaust "his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead" in order that his army were spared in a war against Israel, the Israelites felt so outraged, that they decided to stop the battle "and returned to their own land".[2Kings 3:27] (See Speciesism.)

Centuries after Noah, Leviticus 11 records God giving the Israelites rules about what types of meat may be eaten, suggesting that certain meats were acceptable. The Old Testament says that God commanded the Israelites to eat meat on some occasions. During the Exodus out of Egypt and the first Passover, God commanded that all of the Israelites to slaughter a Passover lamb and eat it. This was to be a lasting tradition.[Exodus 12:24] The sacrifices (including the Paschal Lamb), however, are considered as types of the Lamb of God, an innocent victim, tortured and murdered.

The Israelites tired of manna, a food of which "The Rabbis of the Talmud held that [] had whatever taste and flavor the eater desired at the time of eating"[12] and which probably was not an animal product[7] and was offered to them by God during The Exodus.[Numbers 11:4-10] They preferred meat, and were condemned for it.[Numbers 11:32-34] Because of that lust, the place where the incident happened became known as Kibroth Hattaavah.[12]

A donkey temporarily given the ability to speak showed Balaam more than signs of sentience.[Numbers 22:21-33]

Some Christians believe that the Bible explains that, in the future, human and nonhuman animals will return to veganism, regarded by animal abolitionists as the moral baseline of animal rights:[13]

[] The cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. [] They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord

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