Jesus a vegetarian in PETA campaign

PETA's vegetarian campaign uses the likeness of Jesus (Photo Jonathan Jones)

A controversial new public relations campaign by animal-rights group PETA proclaims Jesus Christ to have been a vegetarian, and portrays the Last Supper – complete with 12 "disciples" including Beatle Paul McCartney and lesbian country-music singer k.d. lang – as a spectacle meant to inspire mankind to forsake eating meat.

The outreach has been built into a 28-foot 1955 Silver Streak Airstream trailer wherein the "Last Supper" is re-created, surrounding Jesus with famous vegetarians, officials of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals told WND.

Dallas artist Greg Metz's work first was displayed in his hometown, then in Columbia, S.C., and now is headed for Norfolk, Va., according to campaign coordinator Mike Brazell.

"From all the demonstrations, this one has been the most successful in getting people to go vegetarian," he told WND. "People are visibly moved by the display itself."

"I've had people telling me they're going to be re-evaluating their food choices and lives after seeing the display," he said.

Eva Carpinelli, from Milano, Italy, hands out information about the PETA campaign using the likeness of Jesus (Photo Jonathan Jones)

The organization's "PETA Girl," whose antics over the years have included appearing naked with a sign that she'd rather be nude that wear fur, for this event was Eva Carpinelli from Milano, Italy.

The vegetarian "disciples" represented in the "Last Supper" include the famed Louisa May Alcott, Kafka, George Bernard Shaw, Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony, Jesus, Alec Walker, Paul McCartney, k.d. lang, Gandhi, Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci, officials said.

On the other side of the trailer are graphic images of animal slaughterhouses, and available at the trailer will be screenings of PETA's movie, "Meet Your Meat," narrated by Alec Baldwin.

"Why might visitors to the 'The Diner' arrive as meat-eaters and go home as vegetarians? Intensively bred and housed, animals in factor farms are kept in cramped, unnatural conditions," the organization said. "Baby chickens have their sensitive beaks cut off, pigs have their tails and the tips of their teeth cut off, and cows are dehorned and castrated – all without any painkillers."

The PETA diner where Jesus appears to lobby on behalf of the vegetarian campaign (Photo Jonathan Jones)

"The Diner is designed to give people food for thought," said Metz.

The display already has made its way across Europe.

As an online report about PETA's claims attests, no mainstream theologian buys the vegetarians' argument, since the New Testament clearly states, repeatedly, that Jesus ate animal flesh: "Jesus said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish. ... And he took it, and did eat before them." (Luke 24:41-43).

There are other references to Jesus eating fish, as well as the lamb traditionally served during the Passover.

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