PETA recently sat down with longtime Vanguard Society member Victoria Moran.
Victoria — the founder of the Main Street Vegan Academy, the host of the Main Street Vegan podcast, and the author of several vegan books – describes her spiritual journey toward a life of compassion.
Please share a bit of your spiritual journey with us. Did anyone in particular influence you in your early years?
My nanny, Adelene DeSoto, was my first spiritual teacher. I called her Dede. She was grandmother-aged when she came to care for me at 6 months old. (My parents both worked and this was before daycare.) She was a member of the Unity Church, a Christian denomination founded in the late 1800s in Kansas City where we lived. The founders, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, were devoted vegetarians. While they weren’t vegan––that really wasn’t a thing yet––they were such avowed vegetarians that they didn’t wear leather and the covers of the Bibles they published were bound in an early kind of faux leather — 130 years ago!
Dede was the first person to tell me about vegetarians. As she put it, “Some people never eat any meat. They’re called vegetarians and I could take you to the Unity Inn and get you a burger made of peanuts. You’d think you were eating beef.”
When did you begin to consider animals in your spiritual practice?
I had a very eclectic spiritual upbringing. I was baptized Catholic and loved the stained glass and incense, but I was drawn early on to Dede’s way of seeing things, that all beings are equal in the sight of the Divine.
Dede would remind me at Christmastime when everybody was saying “Peace on earth, goodwill to men” that all people and animals should be included, because God made all of us and loves all of us.
I attempted to be vegetarian at 13 and while I wasn’t able to keep it up, I knew that one day I would. That time came when I was 18 and living in London to study fashion. I took up yoga and the vegetarian message was strong there, and being in a city that was veg-friendly even in 1968 made the transition possible. Veganism would take quite bit longer, but I’m at 43 years’ vegan now and grateful for every day of bringing my life into harmony with my convictions.
Your first book is such an eye-opening account of moral veganism. Could you please tell us what inspired you to write on this subject?
I’d been writing professionally since I was 14. Then it was about rock groups for teen magazines. When I changed my diet at 19, I moved to writing for vegetarian/vegan and natural foods publications. I didn’t go to college until my late 20s and I majored in comparative religions at North Central College, a United Methodist liberal arts school in the western suburbs of Chicago. In my junior year, I earned a fellowship for foreign study: I could research anything related to my major, as long as I left North America to do it.
For my fellowship I spent 3 weeks in England, Scotland, and Ireland, meeting vegans and animal rights activists, some of whom had been involved in the compassionate living movement since the 1940s. The result was “Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration of Veganism.”
It wasn’t meant to be a book, just the research paper for the fellowship, but the American Vegan Society serialized it in their journal (now American Vegan, then Ahimsa) and legendary British author and activist Jon Wynne-Tyson acted as my literary agent and connected me to Thorsons, now an imprint of HarperCollins. They did a beautiful job on the book and kept it in print about 7 years. The American Vegan Society then took the rights and produced their own version.
What advice do you like to share with people exploring veganism?
First, I celebrate what they’re doing already, even it’s ‘only’ switching to plant milk or making some other change that can seem small to a longtime vegan but that may be huge to the person just making the change.
I have become a huge believer over the years in what I call ‘attraction activism,’ living in a way that piques people’s interest. At my current age, that means staying fit and active. While I realize veganism is not a panacea and everybody gets sick, I’m doing pretty well for 76, and when people realize that I’ve been vegetarian since my late teens and fully vegan since my early 30s and not, to date, on any pharmaceuticals, that means something. Simply being kind and reasonably content means a lot, too.
When someone is really interested and starts asking questions, I stick with short answers so they’ll ask more. For the ubiquitous ‘Where do you get your protein?’ query, I like to use the answer I learned from Marty Davey, RD, one of our Main Street Vegan Coach Training Academy* instructors. She likes to respond with ‘Where do you think I get it?’ This forces the person to think, ‘Well, she’s walking around and talking to me, so she must be getting protein somewhere.’ They might say, ‘I don’t know, maybe peanut butter?’ And the response could be, ‘That’s certainly one source. Peanuts are legumes, like beans, peas, and lentils, and they’re the protein all-stars of the plant kingdom, so yeah, peanut butter, beans and rice, tofu and tempeh split pea soup are all high in protein. But the truth is, protein is in everything that grows out the ground. If you get enough calories from a variety of whole plant foods, you’ll get more than enough protein.’
If someone asks why I’m vegan, I often cite my favorite quotation. It comes from Mahavira, a saint in the Jain tradition of India, who said ‘To every creature, their own life is very dear.’ This sums it up better than anything else I might tell a person. It’s also a “but stopper.” With any other argument, someone can respond with ‘Yes, but I eat only humane animal products,’ or ‘Yes, but I have to be on a keto diet for [insert rare disease].’ No one can argue that every living creature cherishes his or her own life.
Please tell us about Compassion Consortium.
The Compassion Consortium is a spiritual hub for animal advocates and welcomes as attendees and members everyone who cares about animals and spirituality. It was founded in 2019 by my husband Rev. William Melton and his colleague, Rev. Dr. Sarah Bowen, both Interfaith ministers, and me. Our regular service is the 3rd Sunday of every month via Zoom, 4 pm Eastern Time. It includes Rev. Sarah’s “sermonish,” interspecies meditations, song of compassion, the Special Spiritual Guest interview that I do with an ethical vegan from a recognized faith tradition, and breakout rooms at the end for fellowship and sharing. There are also mid-month activities including vegan meditation and companion animal loss support.
The Compassion Consortium is kind of “supplementary church” for Christians and others who are active in a religious community but whose animal ethics are not understood and whose dietary choices are not accommodated by clergy and congregants.
The CC also draws religious and spiritual folks who have left faith communities because the disregard there for God’s non-human creatures became too difficult to tolerate. As one CC attendee said in a breakout group, “I’ve been Baptist all my life, and I love Jesus with all my heart. But I could not go back to my church after they roasted that pig.” She, like so many others, found solace, community, and inspiration at the Compassion Consortium.
Also under the CC banner is our Animal Chaplaincy Training Program, This 9-month educational experience combines spiritual care fundamentals and bereavement basics with best practices from the innovative fields of interspirituality, humane education, animal theology, nature spirituality, and human-animal studies. Upon ordination, our chaplains support humans through animal loss, help veterinarians tackle moral distress, create rituals for biodiversity loss, help vegan activists manage compassion fatigue, and much more.
To connect with Victoria, subscribe to the Main Street Vegan newsletter and blog at https://www.mainstreetvegan.com. This is also where you’ll find information about the Main Street Vegan Coach Training Academy and the live Zoom course taking place this fall. Victoria’s academy trains people to become vegan lifestyle coaches and helps people launch and sustain vegan businesses.
PETA supporters can receive a $250 discount on tuition for the academy with the code PETA250.
Use the Contact page if you have questions or if you’d like to invite Victoria to present for your organization, religious or secular.
You can also listen to the Main Street Vegan Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or on Victoria’s YouTube channel, @VictoriaMoranOfficial. You can also find Victoria on Facebook and on Instagram.
To attend a Compassion Consortium service, register here; there is no charge but registration is required to receive the Zoom link.
