"The Blood of Every Beast" : Mormonism and the Question of the Animal
Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought
Summer 2011
44
2
Stanford, CA
Dialogue Foundation
2011
87-117
Welling examines Mormonism's concern for animals by discussing key Church of Latter Day Saints doctrines and historical events in dialogue with some of the central questions that subtend the growing interdisciplinary field of animal studies. He focuses on a foundational tension in early Mormon thought between a sort of practical millennialism, in which concern for animals and a semi-vegetarian diet are linked to the prophetic promise of a future without violence, and a frontier farming and hunting culture in which native animal species, particularly predators, were viewed not as fellow souls but as dangerous adversaries, perhaps even allies of the Adversary himself.