Interment in Natural Spaces - Ecclesiastical Reactions and Theological Processing

在过去的几十年里，葬礼的习俗发生了显著的变化。葬礼空间不再局限于墓地的封闭区域。在树根网中埋葬是墓地外最著名的埋葬形式，也是增长最快的形式。像FriedWald GmbH和ruheforest GmbH这样的公司，以及许多公共供应商，都在指定的林地提供葬礼服务。在弗里德瓦尔德森林埋葬的决定显然不仅仅是出于实用主义的原因。它还结合了个人对死亡的解释，基于对自然的历史文化观点。我们的项目旨在通过定性实证研究来确定新教神职人员对这种葬礼的态度，并在实践神学上进行反思。这方面的手段将是与专业人士进行面谈，并对他们的意义形成结构进行重建性评价。在对被采访者在弗里德瓦尔德/树葬讲道的分析中，态度与他们转化为公开神学演讲之间的关系将得到反映。其目的是详细阐述这种类型的葬礼是如何在神学上处理，并在新教教堂的牧师实践中形成。因此，该项目以特殊服务的实践领域为基础，处理贯穿现代晚期宗教文化变革的实践神学思想和教会行为的挑战。这一变化对当今宗教实践中的实践神学反思具有典范意义。

Throughout the last decades funeral practices have been changing noticeably. Funeral space is no longer confined to the enclosed area of the cemetery. Burial in the network of the roots of a tree is the most well known form of burial outside the cemetery and the form that is increasing most rapidly. Companies like FriedWald GmbH and RuheForst GmbH, as well as numerous communal providers, offer burials in designated woodland areas. The decision for a burial in a FriedWald Forest is evidently not only motivated by pragmatic reasons. It also combines with individual interpretations of death, based on historico-cultural perspectives on nature. Our project is supposed to identify the attitude of Protestant clergy towards this type of funeral in a qualitative empirical study, as well as reflect on it practical-theologically. The means for this will be interviews with the professionals and their reconstructive evaluation with regard to their formative structures of meaning. In an analysis of the interviewee's sermons at Friedwald/tree-burials the relation between the attitudes and their translation into public theological speech will be reflected. The aim is to elaborate how this type of funeral is theologically dealt with and shaped in the pastoral practice of the Protestant churches. Therefore, the project, based in the practical field of Special Services, deals with the challenges of practical-theological thought and ecclesiastical acting throughout the religio-cultural change of late modernity. This change is of paradigmatic significance for practical-theological reflexion in the present religious practice.