Is Heaven a Zoopolis?

Abstract

The concept of service found in Christian theism and related religious perspectives offers robust support for a political defense of nonhuman animal rights, both in the eschaton and in the present state. By adapting the political theory defended by Donaldson and Kymlicka to contemporary theological models of the afterlife and of human agency, I defend a picture of heaven as a harmoniously structured society where humans are the functional leaders of a multifaceted, interspecies citizenry. Consequently, orthodox religious believers (concerned with promoting God’s will “on Earth as it is in Heaven”�) have a duty to promote and protect the interests of nonhuman creatures in the present, premortem state.