The Friends We Keep

For personal reading, and for group study, there is none better than this! Hobgood-Oster raises the toughest questions and helps us find biblical answers.

~Thomas P. Eggebeen, Pastor, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Los Angeles

Wonderful. Read and share this inspiring, wide-ranging, and easy-to-read book so that we can all expand our compassion footprint to every being, big and small, furred and finned.

~Marc Bekoff, best-selling author of The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter

A carefully researched and powerfully argued book - both moving and revelatory.

~Wayne Pacelle, President & CEO, The Humane Society of the United States

Well-balanced and highly readable, The Friends We Keep has all the virtues of good scholarship while being wonderfully suitable for a wide range of readers. Hobgood-Oster has provided a superb example of how to combine scholarship with faith experience and active citizenship. I heartily recommend it.

~Paul Waldau, President of the Religion and Animals Institute, Bob Barker Lecturer on Animal Law at Harvard Law School, and author of The Animal Invitation: Religion, Law, Science, and Ethics in a More-Than-Human World

At last! A compelling and engaging book on how faith can speak to both our love for animals and our concern for their fate. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever loved a pet or who is concerned about the impact humans have on the livelihood of species.

~Janetta Cravens Boyd, Senior Minister at University Christian Church in Seattle, Washington

I hope this is a book to which many will turn. In such lively and engaging prose, Hobgood-Oster shines a light on a hidden ethical issue so that we are forced to wake up to practices that have been tolerated and reinforced by Christians and our theology.

~Wendy Farley, Professor of Religion, Emory University

With her sensitive retracing of the place of animals in the lives of saints and her constructive proposals for how Christians might include them with religious life in respectful ways, Laura Hobgood-Oster provides answers to the great questions surrounding faith and animals in this short, beautiful book.

~Jay McDaniel, Author of Of God and Pelicans, Earth, Sky, Gods, and Mortals With Roots and Wings.

Hobgood-Oster, a professor of religion and environmental studies at Southwestern University, examines the role animals have played in the history and development of Christianity in an attempt to return them to a more central role within the faith. Readers familiar with this area of study will find little new, as Hobgood-Oster recounts the work of scholars and theologians who have come before her: Andrew Linzey, Marc Bekoff, and Peter Singer. But rather than detract from the book, this foundation only enhances it, as Hobgood-Oster suffers from none of the academic-speak that plagues some of the deeper works on animals and religion. Indeed, the book's great strength is Hobgood-Oster herself, exhibited in her conversational tone and personal connection to the stories of animals in Christian scripture, as well as her experience in shelters and refuges, about which she writes movingly. A study guide will lead laypeople and church groups into a deeper exploration of the gifts animals can bring to the practice of Christianity, something Hobgood-Oster believes can only enrich the faith.

~Publishers Weekly

The Friends We Keep is a book both to alert Christians to the theological dimension of God’s hospitality to all creatures, and an activists’ manual to help us engage lovingly and compassionately with the animals whose lives we humans affect.

~Ted Witham, The Third Order, Society of Saint Francis, The Province of Australia, Papua New Guinea and East Asia

This paperback is highly recommended for undergraduate seminars or Christian adult study groups on topics concerning animal rights, environmental ethics, or religious responses to current social issues.

~Susan Power Bratton, Baylor University, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture