Peace Church Can't Agree on Killing of Deer

Dayspring Church is a retreat center in Maryland affiliated with the Church of the Saviour, a small discipleship-oriented peace church founded by Gordon Cosby. The retreat center's forested grounds were facing the same problem that many forests around the country are facing, especially those surrounding urban areas: too many deer. In most parts of the country, deer have no natural predators, and they are overgrazing on the forest undergrowth and threatening the very health of the forest. Short of waiting for a crash in the population due to disease, the only way to keep the herd in check is hunting. But, according to this Washington Post article, this did not sit well with some of the members of the church. And even after a year and a half of Quaker-style meetings, the church was unable to come to a unanimous consensus on what to do with the deer, so the majority prevailed and the herd was thinned by hunting.

Growing up in central Pennsylvania among pacifist Brethren who all hunted, it took a long time for me to realize that there might be any moral inconsistency here. But I also grew up in farm country where livestock were raised and slaughtered so we could eat, and for a pacifist who isn't a strict vegetarian, there is a certain moral inconsistency every time we sit down at the dinner table. We take another life in order to extend our own. Living in the country, or in a small town in rural America, this reality of life and death and what it takes for us all to live is difficult to ignore. We are raising those pigs so we can kill them and eat them.

Growing up and living in urban areas, it is possible to be blissfully ignorant of all of this. I still remember our daughter Meagan's, now 19, first live encounter as a child with a cow. When told that the milk she was drinking came from one of those animals, she angrily insisted that her milk "did not" come from a cow, it came from the store. Meagan was, and is, a child of the suburbs if there ever was one. And I have had more than one experience of a suburbanite talking to me about the barbarity of hunting while we were chowing down on a slaughtered cow, or pig, or chicken. Unless you are Dick Cheney, hunting at least involves the concept of fair chase. For the farm-raised animal, there is nothing fair about their fate.

But all around the U.S. the suburbs are encroaching on the country. Deer and bear and coyote are increasingly showing up in suburban backyards. Deer in particular are causing major environmental damage in many parts of the country -- on farms, in forests, and in suburban gardens and parks. In some states, major tracts of forest are being fenced off to keep the deer out and allow the forest to recover. That works, but only in conjunction with hunting to thin the deer herd. For the health of our forests and for the health of the deer population, hunting is necessary. Even on the beautifully forested grounds of pacifist-run retreat centers.

Want to learn more about the reality of the deer overpopulation in America and the damage it is doing to the ecosystem? Read this article in Audubon by Ted Williams, the best environmental writer in the country.