We believe that a kinder world begins with the choices we make every day. Our mission is to inspire compassion through education, advocacy, and community — one meal, one conversation, one heart at a time.
Overview
A Jain speaks of ahimsa, a Muslim of rahma, a Christian of stewardship, a Buddhist of lovingkindness, a Jew of tza'ar ba'alei chayim, a Sikh of daya. The vocabulary differs; the direction of travel is remarkably similar. Each page below stays inside one tradition and asks a single question: what do its own teachings, teachers and texts say about how we treat animals and what we put on the plate?
The material is adapted from the Interfaith Vegan Coalition advocacy kits — resources written with clergy and practitioners for use in temples, churches, mosques, gurdwaras, synagogues and meeting houses. Each page collects core principles, quotations, practical steps a community can take, and the books, films and organisations that go deeper.
You do not have to leave your tradition to stop eating animals. For most people, it turns out to be a way further into it.
Traditions
Demonstrating Christian Ideals of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness
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Cherishing all creatures through responsible stewardship and universal lovingkindness.
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Embracing the Golden Rule of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness for All Creatures.
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Demonstrating the Quaker Ideals of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness
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Demonstrating Jewish Ideals through Universal Lovingkindness and Compassion for All Life
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Embracing Islamic ideals of universal mercy and compassion for all living beings.
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Embracing Ahimsa and Non-Duality for the Benefit of All Life
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Cultivating universal lovingkindness and cow protection through plant-based living.
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Demonstrating the Buddhist Ideals of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness
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Demonstrating the Jain Ideals of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness
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Demonstrating the Sikh Ideals of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness
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Demonstrating the Zoroastrian Ideals of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness
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Demonstrating the Pagan Ideals of Harmlessness and Universal Lovingkindness
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Aligning universal lovingkindness with daily actions for all living beings.
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Building justice and compassion for all life within the interdependent web of existence.
Read moreShared threads
Long before anyone used the word vegan, every tradition on this page had a word for refusing to cause needless harm. Those words are not interchangeable — each carries its own history, law and practice — but placed side by side they show how widely shared the underlying instinct is.
| Word | Tradition | What it asks of us |
|---|---|---|
| Ahimsa | Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism | Non-injury in thought, word and deed — the first vow, and the measure against which every other practice is judged. |
| Tza'ar ba'alei chayim | Judaism | The prohibition on causing distress to living creatures, a Torah-level obligation that overrides considerable convenience and cost. |
| Rahma | Islam | Mercy — the attribute by which God is named at the opening of almost every chapter of the Qur'an, and which the Prophet extended explicitly to animals. |
| Stewardship / dominion as care | Christianity | Responsibility for creation modelled on a shepherd rather than an owner: the animals are entrusted, not surrendered. |
| Daya | Sikhism | Compassion as one of the five virtues, expressed daily in langar — a free meal served to anyone, traditionally meat-free so that nobody is excluded. |
| Metta / karuna | Buddhism | Lovingkindness and compassion cultivated deliberately towards all sentient beings, including those who end up on plates. |
| Testimony of peace | Quakers | A refusal to participate in violence that many Friends have extended from war to the systematic killing of animals. |
| Asha / good thoughts, words, deeds | Zoroastrianism | Alignment with truth and right order, including care for the good creation of water, earth, plants and animals. |
Swipe sideways to read the full table.
Arguments
These are not arguments against religion; they are arguments made by practising Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Pagans and Quakers about what their own commitments imply once industrial animal agriculture is described honestly.
Every scripture quoted on these pages was written in a world of small herds, named animals and visible slaughter. None of them contemplated seventy billion land animals a year in windowless sheds. Believers who go plant-based rarely claim to have found a hidden vegan verse — they argue that the old rule of mercy, applied to a genuinely new system, produces a new answer.
Common to every tradition covered here.
Kosher and halal law, and the Hindu and Buddhist expectations around the life of a cow or a bird, all presuppose an animal that was fed, watered, rested and handled without cruelty before death. Industrial rearing violates that precondition long before the knife. A growing number of rabbis, imams and pandits argue that the requirement therefore fails at the farm even where the slaughterhouse is certified.
The traditional gentle picture — milk freely given, eggs simply gathered — described a household animal. Modern dairy involves annual insemination and the removal of calves; modern laying involves the killing of male chicks. Traditions that permit dairy on the grounds that it costs the animal nothing are, on their own logic, obliged to look at what it costs her now.
Feeding the stranger appears as an obligation in nearly every tradition: langar, iftar, the parish supper, prasadam, the Sabbath table. A plant-based table is the most inclusive one available — no guest is excluded by kashrut, halal, caste custom, allergy or conscience. Communities that make the switch usually discover that hospitality got easier, not harder.
Animal agriculture is a leading driver of deforestation, freshwater use and greenhouse emissions. Traditions that teach the earth is entrusted to us — from Laudato Si' to the Zoroastrian duty to keep water and soil unpolluted — increasingly treat diet as part of that trust rather than a private preference.
Several traditions treat the body as something held in trust: Adventists have taught a plant-based diet for over a century, and their longevity data is among the most studied in nutrition science. Where scripture asks believers to guard their health, well-planned plant-based eating is one of the few dietary patterns with strong evidence behind it.
Objections
Every community raises roughly the same questions. None of them are unreasonable, and none of them are new. Here is how practitioners inside these traditions usually answer.
Usually, yes — permission is not the same as a command, and almost every tradition frames that permission as a concession hedged with conditions: gratitude, restraint, avoidance of cruelty, limits on when and how. Plant-based believers argue that when those conditions can no longer be met, the permission no longer applies in practice.
Most traditions with a sacrificial history no longer practise animal sacrifice, and their own reformers argued against it long ago — the Hebrew prophets, early Christian teachers, Buddhist and Jain critiques of Vedic ritual. Choosing plants is generally presented as continuing that internal argument, not rejecting the tradition.
Congregations that start with food rather than doctrine report the opposite. Adding good plant-based dishes to a shared meal excludes nobody; removing everything at once and lecturing about it divides quickly. Every kit recommends the first approach.
Nearly every kit includes plant-based versions of the specific festival foods of its tradition, developed by cooks from inside that community, precisely because the meaning of the dish lives in the occasion and the recipe rather than the animal.
Slaughterhouse work is among the most dangerous and most exploitative employment in industrialised countries, intensive farms concentrate pollution in the poorest neighbourhoods, and grain fed to livestock competes with human food. Faith-based advocates tend to present this as one justice question, not two.
Major dietetic associations state that well-planned plant-based diets are appropriate at every stage of life, including pregnancy, infancy and old age, with attention to vitamin B12 and a few other nutrients. Communities usually ask a dietitian to review the menus they serve.
Many have simply never been asked. The kits behind these pages exist because clergy requested material they could read, check against their own sources and preach from. Bringing one of them to a leader is a normal and welcome request, not a challenge.
No tradition here demands perfection, and several explicitly warn against the pride that chases it. The consistent counsel is direction of travel: one meal, one meeting, one festival at a time.
Get started
Almost every advocacy kit recommends the same unglamorous sequence. It works because it starts with hospitality rather than argument.
Make a single monthly gathering fully plant-based, cooked by people who cook well. Nothing persuades like a good lunch that nobody expected to enjoy.
Plant milk beside the tea urn, a vegan option on every table, labelled clearly. No announcements required.
A rabbi, imam, priest, monk, granthi or Friend who eats this way and can explain it from your own sources carries further than any outside campaigner.
Run a short study series on the passages about animals in your own scripture. Let people reach their own conclusions with the sources in front of them.
Review what the community buys: leather, silk, wool, down, animal-tested products, and the charities it supports. Small procurement changes outlast enthusiasm.
Questions