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Japanese Yes. Most churches teach that Christians may eat pork. The law of Moses forbids it to Israel in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, but Mark’s Gospel says Jesus “declared all foods clean,” and Paul told the first churches not to judge one another over food. A few Christian groups, including Seventh-day Adventists and Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, still abstain.
Where does the Old Testament forbid pork?
The ban appears twice in the law of Moses, in almost the same words. Leviticus 11:7–8 says: “And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.” Deuteronomy 14:8 repeats it: “And the pig, because it parts the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.”
The rule for land animals was that a clean animal both chews the cud and has a split hoof. Cattle, sheep and goats qualified. The pig has the split hoof but does not chew the cud, so it was unclean. Isaiah later used pork as a mark of unfaithfulness, condemning people who sacrifice in gardens, sit among tombs and “eat pig’s flesh” (Isaiah 65:3–4; 66:17).
Leviticus gives its own reason for the food laws at the end of the chapter: “You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45). A later chapter ties the distinction between clean and unclean animals to Israel’s calling as a people set apart from the nations (Leviticus 20:25–26), and the laws kept that calling in view at every meal. Undercooked pork can carry parasites, and the rule may have protected health as a side effect, but the text never gives health as the reason.
Did Jesus eat pork?
The Gospels never show Jesus eating pork, and as a Jew who lived under the law of Moses he almost certainly did not. What changed the question for his followers was his teaching about what makes a person unclean.
In Mark 7, some Pharisees complain that his disciples eat without washing their hands in the traditional way. Jesus answers the crowd: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:15). He explains that food goes into the stomach rather than the heart, and that evil thoughts, theft, murder, adultery, envy, slander and pride all come from within (Mark 7:18–23).
Mark adds his own note in verse 19: “Thus he declared all foods clean.” These are the Gospel writer’s words, not a quotation of Jesus, and they show how the early church understood the teaching. Older translations such as the King James Version read the phrase differently, as “purging all meats,” a description of digestion. Most modern translations take it as Mark’s comment.
Pork in the New Testament
The clearest scene is Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Peter is praying on a rooftop in Joppa when he sees something like a large sheet let down from heaven, full of animals, reptiles and birds. A voice tells him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” Peter refuses: “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice answers, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happens three times (Acts 10:9–16).
Peter’s refusal shows that he was still keeping the food laws after Pentecost. The vision also reached beyond food. Messengers from Cornelius, a Roman centurion, arrive while Peter is still puzzling over it, and when he enters Cornelius’s house he explains: “God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28). While he is speaking, the Holy Spirit comes on the Gentiles who are listening, and Peter has them baptized (Acts 10:44–48). The food laws had kept Jews and Gentiles from eating together, and when Peter returned to Jerusalem, believers there objected: “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them” (Acts 11:3).
When the apostles met in Jerusalem to decide what to ask of Gentile believers, they did not impose the food laws. They asked them to abstain only “from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood” (Acts 15:20, 29). Pork is not on the list.
Paul wrote about food more than once. “I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean” (Romans 14:14). He told the Colossians, “Do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink,” and called such rules “a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Colossians 2:16–17). To the Corinthians he wrote, “Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience” (1 Corinthians 10:25).
The early church and the food laws
Many Jewish believers went on keeping the food laws after the resurrection, as Peter had, and some Christian groups with Jewish roots may have kept them for generations. Early Christian writers explained the laws in several ways. The Epistle of Barnabas, from the early second century, read the ban on pork as an allegory about people. It says Moses named the swine “as much as to say, You shall not join yourself to men who resemble swine. For when they live in pleasure, they forget their Lord; but when they come to want, they acknowledge the Lord” (Barnabas 10).
Justin Martyr (c. 100–165), in his Dialogue with Trypho, told his Jewish companion that Christians would keep the Sabbath, circumcision and the feasts too if they did not know why those laws had been given, which he said was “on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts” (chapter 18). The food laws, he argued, were given “in order that you might keep God before your eyes while you ate and drank” (chapter 20). In his view, none of these laws were meant to bind Christians.
Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–202), in Against Heresies, treated them as a discipline that prepared Israel for Christ and was no longer binding once he had come. Origen of Alexandria (c. 184–253) read them symbolically in his homilies on Leviticus: the unclean animal stood for a vice to avoid.
The Didache, an early Christian manual from the late first or early second century, left the matter to the believer with one exception: “concerning food, bear what you are able; but against that which is sacrificed to idols be exceedingly on your guard” (Didache 6).
Which Christians do not eat pork today?
The Catholic Church places no restriction on pork, and neither do the main Protestant churches, including Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians. They hold that the food laws of the Old Testament are no longer binding, on the strength of Mark 7 and Acts 10. Eastern Orthodox Christians eat pork too, though they give up all meat during fasting seasons such as Lent, as a spiritual discipline rather than a ban on any one animal.
Seventh-day Adventists abstain. Their statement of beliefs asks members to “adopt the most healthful diet possible and abstain from the unclean foods identified in the Scriptures,” which includes pork. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians traditionally avoid pork as well, and some Messianic Jewish congregations, who worship Jesus as Messiah while keeping Jewish customs, follow the kosher laws. Other Christians give up pork for reasons of health, conscience or family custom.
The case for and against eating pork
Christians who eat pork point to Mark 7:19, where Jesus “declared all foods clean”; to Peter’s vision; and to Colossians 2:16–17, which calls the food laws a shadow fulfilled in Christ. On this reading, the law of Moses belonged to the old covenant, and believers under the new covenant are not bound by it.
Christians who abstain point to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” They see the food laws as lasting wisdom from God. They do not claim that keeping them earns salvation; they keep them as obedience, as a spiritual discipline, or to honor the Jewish roots of the faith. Some read Mark 7 as a ruling about eating with unwashed hands, the dispute that opens the chapter, and read Peter’s vision as a lesson about people rather than food, since that is how Peter himself explains it in Acts 10:28.
The disagreement is as old as the church, and Paul gave an instruction for it: “The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them” (Romans 14:3). He also wrote that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).
Is pork healthy, and are there ethical concerns?
Pork, like other meat, can be part of a balanced diet. Modern farming, food-safety rules and proper cooking have made it safer than it was in the ancient world, and its risks today are much like those of other meats. Processed pork such as bacon, ham and sausage is often high in salt and saturated fat, which in excess may contribute to heart disease.
Some Christians, seeing themselves as stewards of creation, also weigh the treatment of animals in industrial farming, the pollution and emissions from large pig farms, and the grain fed to livestock in a world where many go hungry. Some eat less meat or buy from farms with higher welfare standards for these reasons. These concerns apply to meat in general.
Eating with Jewish and Muslim friends
Observant Jews avoid pork because of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and Muslims because the Qur’an forbids it (for example, Qur’an 2:173). A Christian’s freedom to eat pork gives no right to press it on anyone else. A host with Jewish or Muslim guests can serve dishes without pork and keep pork away from their food, utensils and cooking surfaces, and should not suggest that their abstinence is pointless. If a friend asks why Christians eat pork, Mark 7 and Acts 10 are the passages that explain it.
Paul insisted on Christian freedom, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1), and in the same letter told the Galatians to use it “to serve one another humbly in love” (Galatians 5:13). He wrote that although he was free, he had made himself a servant to all: “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:19–22). He was also willing to give up meat altogether rather than cause another believer to fall: “if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again” (1 Corinthians 8:13).
