Rev. D. Dample's Sermon on Vegetarianism

Good morning brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, cousins, uncles and aunts; Good morning grandfathers and grandmothers and all their kin. Good morning, goats and hogs and wild creatures. Good morning chickens.

“You may wonder why,” continued the very Reverend Donald Dample, “I have addressed such a wide ranging company of people and living creatures, this morning. Usually, as you know, it is just Good morning, brothers, elders, sisters, boys, girls, and visitors. The reason is simple. I have been thinking. That is also, incidentally, why there was so much smoke in the vestry this morning. And I have come to some quite disturbing conclusions, all under the influence of prayer, which I feel bound to communicate to you, my precious flock.

“I have seen by Almighty revelation, that all these years, we have been wrong, in slaughtering and eating our animals for food. The Church had never thought this through. But now I have. In Genesis, God gave man all the fruit of the Earth to eat; he did not give the animals for food. They were for domestication. We, all these years, should have used our dominion over the animals, to tend then and manage them; but what have we done? Invented chicken farms, and slaughtered thousands of beasts to slake our greedy appetite. In the 19th century we also managed to kill millions of bison just for fun.

“Now do not get me wrong. I am no vegetarian. I like a manly juicy filet of beef as much as the next person does. I might even say, that without regular meat, I would probably be a pasty weakling, like the one of the members of the Terminate family, who if you remember used to worship in here in the 1940s, but then went on to build the united Vegetarian Church of Almighty God, in Hickory Valley, Tennessee. Most of the members of this church are ailing for lack of protein and the whole Terminate family are dead, but the Church still thrives.

“But, to come back to us, I have decided that we need to be in harmony with God’s instructions, so I exhort you, myself included, that from after lunch today where most of us will be eating pot roasts, that we exclude meat from our diets. In addition, we all need to construct enclosures, each man working out the dimensions according to the size of his dwelling, for the animals that we do not slaughter. This will be a reminder to us that we are in accordance with God’s will.

“Just a word here about the Mr Bailey ranch and Miss Kripenseltzer’s homestead. In view of the acreage of their properties, I propose to except them from the general rule about enclosures, as I figured out that, for example, in Mr. Bailey’s case, one-tenth the size of an enclosure based on acreage for his ranch, would be an area 700 miles long and 460 miles wide. This would not make sense for the enclosed animals that had been saved from death to have this much pasturage. So Mr. Bailey and Miss Kripenseltzer’s special acreage for saved animals may be proportionately smaller.

“For the rest of us, all our farms, homesteads and properties, when reduced by one tenth for the special pastures would still have plenty of room. I have calculated that the average size of our special pastures would be about 2,000 acres each.

“I have also thought out the details of what to do with the frozen meat. It is, of course, for each man to make his own decision. But I think a good idea will be to truck the frozen carcasses to city zoos which have big cats, like lions, eksetra, for them to devour them up.
Nowhere in the Bible, as far as I can see, is it forbidden for carnivores to kill and eat each other or herbivores, like roebuck, deer and rabbits. So, those of you who agree about this method of disposal of our frozen meat stocks, should meet outside Bailey’s dairy tomorrow at 4 am. Make sure your trucks are fully loaded with meat and we will travel in a convoy to the Columbus Zoo in Ohio to make our offerings. Wives make sure to prepare soy sandwiches and large bags of almonds, along with the beer and whiskey to slake our thirst and satisfy our hunger on the way of righteousness.

“So now, that is my message for you today. From now on, after our last lunch of meaty morsels, we will all be vegetarians – according to the prophetic revelation I had in the vestry.

“Finally, I would ask each one of you to consider whether or not we should change the name of our church from the Reformed United Presbyterian and Methodist-Congregationalist Church of Christ the King, to the Reformed Vegetarian United Presbyterian and Methodist-Congregationalist Church of Christ the King?

“Now, go in peace to eat your last luncheon meat.

Reverend Dample, Donald