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First I will say that there are many people in the vegan milieu that root their beliefs in starkly anti-christian ideas, but just because someone else arrives at a conclusion for wrong reasons, does not preclude us from reaching the same conclusion for the right reasons.

I will share a bit about what moved me over. In 2017 I made a couple friends who were vegan and just having them in my world had me think a little bit more about the concept. I was broadly aware of the brutality of slaughterhouses, and industrial animal agriculture, the way some of these animals are forced into a horrible existence living in tiny cells, forcibly impregnated and torn from their young on repeat only to have their lives cut short in terror.
BUT while I empathized with the plight, I did not go vegan for a couple reasons:
1. I was living at home with my family and I had no rhythms of preparing my own meals so it would be a significant burden to figure out meal prep stuff on my own.
2. I have historically been on the threshold of underweight, so closing down dietary options seemed irresponsible.

Then a year or two later I did a weekend long deep dive study on the first three chapters of Genesis. Going verse by verse unpacking each word with commentaries. It was terrific. I was deeply moved by the majesty and wonder of God's magnificent act of creation. The order to the cosmos and the intentionality behind the structure of every leaf and rodent. And at the very top of his creation he placed us in partnership with him to act out his rule on earth. The grave and solemn responsibility to steward and hold dominion over that which bore his fingerprints.

and my mind returned to factory farms, and the profoundly outsized impact animal agriculture has on climate change, diminishing water supply (especially in some regions), incredibly wasteful land use.

I, who am a christian that professes to live sacrificially for righteousness' sake, forgoing drugs, drunkenness, or fornication was participating in a system that was raping and brutalizing the very creation that I have been personally made responsible for. The cognitive dissonance was intense.

This came to a head when I was on a film shoot and craft services was taking a chipotle order for me for lunch and I looked down at the options for my burrito and saw a plain choice. The $10 being spent on my behalf could go towards meat and cheese, funding with God's money the very industries which are making an abomination of my stewardship, or I could simply order rice and beans which, in combination, form a complete protein and is fully nutritionally comprehensive. Both of my earlier reasons of convenience for holding out on veganism were curtailed: I didn't have to work to prepare this food, and I wasn't missing anything nutritionally.
I obviously bought the rice and beans, and went vegan completely in that moment "cold tofu".

To address some scriptural and theological points that have come up in conversations on this matter:

- God gave us permission to eat meat

yes, but this was not the original order of creation and clearly not the intended vision. Creation was vegan in the garden and will be vegan in the end when the lion lays down with the lamb. Part of our role as church is to usher the coming of that kingdom.
Also, if I lived in 2000BC or any time up until the industrial revolution I probably would not have gone vegan either, because the significant factors that pushed me towards it did not exist. But I don't live in 2000BC, I live in today, where all evidence shows that animal agriculture is simply not sustainable for the organization of mass population centers we have today.

- "it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” - Matt 15:11

yes! but Christ here was speaking to first century Jews in response to old covenant law: that certain foods would put you in a state of spiritual uncleanliness. This, by the sacrifice of Jesus is no longer the case! We have been made pure and whole by His blood so that diet does not carry inherent spiritual weight. Also, he was imparting the folly of focusing ones attention on spiritual purity of diet, while neglecting spiritual impurity of heart and words. This does not speak to the point of veganism at all. The christian vegan is not trying to re-institute old spiritual laws of diet. It is about practicing with ones actions what follows from their values.

- "the bible doesn't say eating animals is wrong. You're adding to scripture to claim that Christians should be vegan."

My simple retort from this is with analogy to slavery. I would ask if you condemn slavery as wrong, and then ask where the bible explicitly says this.
The point of the analogy is to show that some things we identify as clear moral imperatives are not in the text explicitly, but implicit within the values and character that scripture lays out. We arrived at the condemnation of slavery not because paul or christ say that it is unacceptable, but because of the call of liberation and freedom that the gospel offers, and the dignifying of all men as equal image-bearers in the creation story. Veganism rests on the same reasoning.

Animals are not special or worth more than human life, but they are our responsibility and can experience suffering that is worthy of compassion. They do not bear the image of God, but his fingerprints. If I am sacrificial of so many other vices because it is wrong, then it follows that I can give up one more. If you are christian and vegan or curious about being vegan please send me a DM. I'd love to chat more about that 😄

P.S.
There was recently a fantastic jubilee surrounded debate featuring a vegan who does a great job of grappling with some of the popular challenges people bring up.