Is Veganism a Religion?
Veganism isn’t a diet, and it’s more than a philosophy
Nishant looked at me through his black aviators, grinning cheekily, holding a piece of chalk with one hand and gesturing behind himself with the other. I looked over his shoulder at a group of Christian street preachers, who were screaming at pedestrians that they would burn in hell if they didn’t stop fornicating. I saw at their feet what Nishant had written on the sidewalk, and I burst out laughing:
THOU SHALT NOT KILL. GO VEGAN.
The preachers didn’t seem to share our amusement or our more inclusive interpretation of the word “kill.” Instead, they glanced at us suspiciously from afar, as they continued to warn strangers about the temperature of hell. It was a lovely summer’s day in the Boston Common, and their fear-mongering seemed completely incongruous; the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the couples are holding hands, and the children are playing. Burn in hell, on a day like this?
Incidentally, we were also preaching about fire and brimstone. On that day — beneath our latitude rather than beneath our feet — a hellscape of human and animal suffering was taking…
