Name John Ferrier | ||
John Todd Ferrier (7 November 1855 — 31 August 1943) was the founder of the Order of the Cross, an informal spiritual fellowship fostering compassion towards creatures. He was an advocate of vegetarianism from a Christian point of view.
History
Ferrier was born in Greenock, Scotland. Although biographical details are sparse, in 1947, E. Mary Gordon Kemmis wrote a biography and her memoirs of Ferrier: Shepherd of Souls: Some Impressions of the Life and Ministry of John Todd Ferrier. For some years he was a minister in the Congregational Church in Macclesfield, England. However, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the traditional Christian attitude toward animals. For this and other reasons he left the church, and, via the Order of the Golden Age, in 1904 founded the Order of the Cross.
In this informal spiritual communion, the members are both vegetarian or vegan and pacifist. He often spoke in defence of 'the creatures', and stated that a true Christian should be vegetarian. In his writings (over 40 volumes) he emphasised the underlying unity of all religious aspirations and suggested that many traditional Christian teachings are allegorical and universal in nature.