Discussing
Chimps are people too?

A court case claiming personhood for chimpanzees suggests we may have to reconsider our Christian stewardship of animals.

"Person" is, as you mention, a legal term that applies to those with rights recognized in court. Under admiralty law, for example, ships have standing to bring suit and be sued. No one would say they are persons in real life, but the law says they are persons for the purpose of legal proceedings.

Christopher Stone, a USC law professor, published a short piece back in 1972 on whether trees should also have standing in court. That is, should trees have legal rights and the ability to bring suit to enforce those rights? Just as with a ship, there would need to be a real life human being acting on the trees' behalf in bringing the suit, but the suit would be brought to protect the rights inherent in the trees rather than the property rights of the owner of the trees. Stone's article is a milestone in the environmental law field.

So I don't get wigged out when I read of the courts saying animals or plants or collections of people might be persons for the purposes of court proceedings. I do think, though, that the rights to be enjoyed by these non-humans should be limited greatly from those that are held by real people in this world.

Tim

"... I hope that Christian voices don’t lapse into formulaic outrage about humans being the only creatures with souls and the only ones made in the image of God. I think people - and this goes for Christians as well - have a lot of revision to do in our thinking about animals."

I agree. We consider ourselves advanced, yet like so many powerful cultures in history, suffering of groups who don't benefit from the suffering, is part of that advancement.

Another gut-reaction I get from some Christians to animals and animal rights issues is the "worshipping creation over the Creator" argument. How dismissive and ignorant that is.