Woof if you Love Jesus?

Is there a case for Animal Spirituality?  

In Genesis, the first book of the Jewish scriptures and the Christian bible, God engages is the prodigious work of Creation, with swarms of creatures in the waters, and the air, and on the land given life. In this first account of Creation (there is another that follows) humans are created last in God's likeness, to "hold sway" over the fish and the fowl, the domestic and the wild beasts. While there seems to be a unique agency for humans, all these other species are God-breathed, so do they have souls? 

This has been the subject of theological discussion for centuries,  although in the 17th century the philosopher Rene Descartes took Western thought in a disastrous direction. He posited that animals were merely 'mechanisms' or 'automata' – basically, complex physical machines without experiences. 

My first consideration of whether non-human animals have souls or the potential of an afterlife came in a philosophy of religion course at Queen's University nearly 50 years ago. Millard Schumaker was the remarkable professor and he opened me to a possibility I'd never considered before. He didn't suggest that "all dogs go to heaven" or that creatures could be Christian, or any other religion. He did invite us to ponder whether other sentient animals might have a spiritual life. I can say that there are cats and dogs I would rather encounter in heaven that a number of humans, including a select few members of congregations who I would readily consign to...I won't go there. 

Yesterday I saw the abstract for a two-part article called The Case for Animal Spirituality by Paul Cunningham. Have a read and see what you think: 

This is the first part of a two-part article that presents the theoretical and empirical case for nonhuman animal (hereafter, ‘animal’) spirituality. Part 1 discusses the relevance of evolutionary theory and species differences for understanding animals’ capacity to have spiritual experience, conceptual issues related to defining animal spirituality, and methodological considerations pertaining to the use of analogical reasoning and animalcentered anthropomorphism as heuristic strategies in the study of animal spirituality. Behavioral and ethological evidence bearing on the existence of awareness, perceptual experience, self-awareness, and meaning-making in the absence of human language in animals is presented. 

Part 2 examines evidence for six biopsychosocial capabilities in animals that are proposed building blocks of human spirituality—cognition, imagination, emotion, moral sense, personality, and value-life. Part 2 concludes with a discussion of the implications of animal spirituality for society’s treatment of animals, humanizing an inhumane human biocultural world, and advancing understanding of human spirituality.