---
title: "Rev. John Todd Ferrier (1855-1943) - IVU - International Vegetarian Union"
description: "Rev. John Todd Ferrier (1855-1943): Founder of the Order of the Cross , advocate of vegetarianism from a Christian viewpoint. John Todd Ferrier was born in Greenock, Scotland."
url: "https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=article&id=2478:history-europe20a-ferrier&catid=60"
date: "2026-11-06T00:01:54+00:00"
language: "en-GB"
---

#  Rev. John Todd Ferrier (1855-1943)

![Rev. John Todd Ferrier (1855-1943)](https://ivu.org/images/legacy/history/banners/history-europe20a-ferrier.png)Founder of the [Order of the Cross](http://www.orderofthecross.org/), advocate of vegetarianism from a Christian viewpoint.

 John Todd Ferrier was born in Greenock, Scotland. For several years he was a minister in the Congregational Church but became increasingly dissatisfied with the traditional Christian attitude towards animals. For this and other reasons he left the Church, and in 1904 founded the Order of the Cross, an informal spiritual fellowship, all of whose members are pacifist and vegetarian or vegan. He frequently spoke in defence of the creatures and affirmed that a true Christian must be vegetarian. His writings (over 40 volumes) illuminate the deep issues of life and present a message of peace and healing, of joy and hope for all creation. The essential unity of all religious aspirations is proclaimed and many of the traditional Christian teachings shown to be allegorical and universal in nature. Quotations from John Todd Ferrier’s writings on a variety of themes are presented in the [Order’s website](http://www.orderofthecross.org/). Some of the quotations are accompanied by illustrations of great beauty, taken from paintings by members of the Order.

From the *Vegetarian Messenger* (VSUK Magazine):

**March 1909**
 Lecture by Rev. J.Todd Ferrier. - On March 22nd, Mr Todd Ferrier will lecture at 5 Fountain Street \[Manchester\] , at 8 o'clock p.m., on "Purity in Living, Economical, Humane and Divine." We hope there will be a good attendance.

\- [**History of the Order of the Cross**](https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html?view=article&id=2713:history-societies-ordcross&catid=48)

A note on this archive. The history section of this website is drawn from a body of legacy content originally compiled by John Davis, former manager of the International Vegetarian Union. It represents his curation of historical material, and in places includes passages written by him directly.

Over the years, the IVU website has migrated between several different hosting servers. In the course of these migrations, a number of PDF files were unfortunately lost, and **some links to PDF documents may no longer function**. Where this is the case, we have chosen to leave the original link text in place, as it may itself carry information of historical value.

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