Spark

On a muggy summer evening, Professor Matt Halteman visited his former philosophy student Sarah Bodbyl Roels '06 on her 28-acre farm in Lowell, Michigan, to catch up and talk about his new book, Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan. Halteman and Bodbyl share a vision to seek harmony and justice in God's creation but pursue that vision in different ways. Their relationship, rooted in what they share, allows them to productively challenge one another to imagine ways of expanding their own practices toward shalom.

Matt Halteman

Professor of philosophy and chair of the Animals and the Kingdom of God Lecture Series at Calvin University 

I’m taking a selfie with a donkey called Mickey. My host, the biologist Dr. Sarah Bodbyl Roels ’06, rescued him from his native Arizona. Michigan is a challenging home for desert-roaming donkeys, so Sarah and her husband, Dr. Steve Roels ’06, socked significant sweat equity into turning a parcel of their 28-acre homestead into a hospitable place for Mickey. 

Sarah and Steve know a thing or two about investing their unique talents and gifts to bring as much justice and joy to their patch of Earth as circumstances allow. They also understand, as Calvin grads should, that living towards shalom—the flourishing of God’s creation across an all-species kinship—is a perpetually unfinished business that requires tough conversations about the sometimes-conflicting methods we humans concoct to do our well-intentioned best, God helping us. 

I know these things about Sarah and Steve because I learned alongside them as their professor in 2005. Sarah enrolled in my first section of Peaceable Kingdom, the animal ethics seminar my students dared me to teach upon noticing a tension between my fierce love of my bulldog Gus and my aggressive savor of pork ribs. They knew I taught the course in hopes of justifying my carnivorous predilections. They were delighted when I felt inspired to change, in no small part because of their questions and courage. 

There is no greater joy for an educator than watching such questions and courage lead to flourishing lives that seek peace amid life’s complex mysteries. Now my professional peer, Sarah agreed to be an advance reader of my new book, Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan—born from the curiosity and resolve of Sarah and her fellow students then, and the occasion for our reunion now. 

As we hike the wilds beyond Mickey’s quarters, Sarah apologizes for overgrowth, mosquitoes, and the regrettable need to cull does. But she knows her vegan former professor isn’t judgy. We’ve learned together—then and now—that disagreement is a sharpening tool for mutual flourishing, and no obstacle to abiding love. 

Sarah Bodbyl Roels ’06 

Associate dean, Van Andel Institute Graduate School 

I’m a bad vegan. 

At least that’s what I told myself before I read Hungry Beautiful Animals. During my junior year, I took Matt’s very first animal ethics course. For three weeks in January, we wrestled with the brokenness of our food system, the diminishment of health caused by our eating habits, and the disconnect between the ways we loved our pets yet dis- missed animal suffering elsewhere in society. I left the course humbled, but also inspired and eager to make ethical food choices. 

Twenty years later, when the draft of Matt’s new book appeared in my inbox, I opened the file with trepidation. I expected the pages to deliver a tongue-lashing for my failure to achieve vegan perfection in my adult life. I believed that going vegan was all or nothing. If I ate a steak at a family celebration, continued to cook with butter, or kept a flock of chickens on my farm, I was a bad vegan. 

To my delight, Hungry Beautiful Animals banishes the all-or-nothing approach to going vegan, focusing instead on the joyful discovery and celebration of what can be done to work toward creaturely flourishing, instead of what cannot. For me, this means my passions for ecological restoration, environmental education, and developing loving relationships with the host of creatures on my farm I call family align with and contribute to going vegan. 

Hungry Beautiful Animals unabashedly proclaims a grace-filled, big-tent vision for going vegan with room for everyone at the communal table. Whether you insist there’s “no way” or are already practicing veganism every day, I invite you, dear reader, to delve into the pages of Hungry Beautiful Animals and discover your own journey towards creaturely flourishing.