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For the Wild
Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism
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The notion of a second chance or new life after conversion in which one’s old ways are left behind is such a pervasive metaphor in American cultural history and American religion that it lends clout to conversion stories. At the animal rights conference in Los Angeles I attended in 2007, plenary speaker Alex Pacheco, one of the founders of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), told the audience that he was “baptized” into animal rights through his involvement with Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd (a direct action organization of activists formed to protect marine mammals and featured in the series Whale Wars that premiered in 2008 on cable station Animal Planet). He went on to describe his “second baptism” working with the underground ALF as a further stage in his initiation into activism. Another participant in the Los Angeles conference, who said she grew up as a “born-again Christian” and later left Christianity, also described being “born again” into the animal rights movement as beginning a new phase of her life.53 In various sessions and workshops, other conference-goers identified a “tipping point” that set them moving towards their commitment to nonhuman animals, often the final stage in a series of experiences that had already prepared them for such a commitment.
These activists, while painted as extremists, might also be seen as expressing concerns that cut across a broader swathe of the U.S. populace. Activism is one of many possible ways that young Americans, who experienced the greatest growth in the category of “spiritual but not religious” or “unaffiliated” in the early twentieth century, express spiritual and moral values outside religious institutions in unexpected places.54 The widespread and surprising support among American youth for Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2015–2016 speaks to young people’s dissatisfaction with the social and political status quo, including attitudes toward the more-than-human world. For instance, in September 2014, over 300,000 people converged on Manhattan for the peaceful People’s Climate March that included mainstream environmental and animal rights activists, a large contingent of interfaith groups, and politicians such as former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, secretary general of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon, and New York mayor Bill de Blasio.
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