No abstract

In January 2020, an employment tribunal in the United Kingdom decided that ethical veganism qualified for protection from discrimination as a philosophical belief under the UK’s Equality Act 2010. This article explores the reasoning behind this judgement, as presented in the preliminary hearing decision for Mr J Casamitjana Costa v The League Against Cruel Sports, to argue that ethical veganism in this context can be conceptualized as a form of nonreligion. This article uses a relational theory of nonreligion to demonstrate how ethical veganism in this case is constructed to be distinct from religious belief while also being conceptually entangled with religion. It contributes to emergent scholarship on nonreligion, and veganism and (non)religion, by demonstrating how a relational framework allows connections among these phenomena to be articulated and explored with greater depth. In addition, this article considers the diversity of ethical veganism as an identity and practice in relation to its legal construction as a philosophical belief. Attention is paid to the ways in which veganism as lived can intersect with religion, nonreligion and areligion.

This article explores how sociologists of religion can respond to ‘the animal turn’ in studies of lived religion and nonreligion. We begin by considering how sociology has neglected the place of non-human animals and the ‘more than human’ in social life. We then turn to the sociology of religion, where animals have often been devalued or ignored as irrelevant to understanding religion in society. We argue that it is necessary to consider the ways in which human activities are shaped by non-human animals. This does not mean that animals should be thought of as nonreligious or religious. We contend that the failure to incorporate non-human animals in sociological considerations of religion and nonreligion replicates a hierarchical model, which sees human life as above or higher than non-human life and calls our attention to the place of sociological research amid the climate crisis.