I have been noting this more recently and it seems to be a trend, at least with people I converse with on the regular. The really religious types aren’t animal people or downright dont like them. The more chill or agnostic types seem to be more apt to love animals.
I could go on my theory of this but I’m interested to see if anyone thinks this is a trend.
that also seems anecdotal… I personally never heard of a single one (oh, anecdotal too) and in all cities I’ve lived I knew of shelters and rescuers because I’m one (and I currently take care of 34 cats and 4 dogs), and I must agree with OP, I know a lot of rescuers that have a religion (like, that vague belief in the god their parents talked about) but none that are overtly religious (wear symbols, attend temples, etc)
edit: Homeless shelters and nursing homes though, plenty of religious institutions behind them.
Ton are a google search away. Dalo Acres Animal Sanctuary UT, St. Francis Animal Sanctuary MI, Keeping the Faith Animal Shelter PA. There’s a ton of em.
The question isn’t whether they are not animal friendly, but whether they are less animal friendly. There may be a ton of them but if there are six tons of non-religious shelters, there’s a difference.
What metric would you want to see?
Self-reported religiosity and affection for animals would be a start.
So the shelters and sanctuaries I listed as brief examples?
No, the logic doesn’t hold. There being shelters run by religious people does not say anything about whether they are more or less caring for animals than normal.
So you would need X amount of religious people to make a post like “hey I’m x religion and I love animals” what’s the number you’d need? Would it need to correlate proportionally to secular animal lovers?
You’d want to show a significant negative correlation between religiosity and friendliness toward animals. ‘Secular’ would just be one end of the religiosity dimension.