Religions Conserving Nature Together? The Contributions of and Conflicts in an Interfaith Initiative for Nature Conservation in Germany

人为气候变化和地球资源枯竭是人类今天面临的主要危机。鉴于这些问题的全球范围，越来越多的人寻求为解决这些问题作出贡献，包括宗教行为者。将环境可持续性纳入宗教话语和实践提出了重要的学术问题，即这些问题如何改变宗教教义和实践，并创造新的宗教间交流。尽管有很多关于这些主题的优秀研究，但迄今为止只有一项研究考虑了德国宗教动机的环保主义的一个方面。然而，德国为这一主题提供了丰富的研究领域，因为它的绿色政治，联邦政府通过宗教社区促进自然保护和可持续发展的多次尝试，以及德国对成为移民之地的焦虑。在此背景下，本研究采用文件分析，半结构化访谈和参与观察，以研究宗教特定的环境保护团体，在各种宗教间的举措进行互动。这个项目首先试图帮助我们理解更大的文化，社会和政治力量，有助于环境保护主义作为一个动态因素的宗教转变在德国。然后，它研究了以环境保护为重点的宗教间网络中的思想交流如何修改所涉及的特定宗教的教义和实践。最后，通过关注宗教间环保主义者的对话和个人创造可持续社会的倡议，该项目考虑了宗教环保主义对公民社会更广泛贡献的潜力和局限性。

Anthropogenic climate change and planetary resource depletion are major crises facing humanity today. Given the global scope of these problems, ever more people seek to contribute to their solutions, including religious actors. The incorporation of environmental sustainability into religious discourse and practice raises important scholarly questions about how these issues are both transforming religious teachings and practices, and creating new interreligious exchanges. Despite much excellent research on these topics, only one study has thus far considered an aspect of religiously-motivated environmentalism in Germany. Yet Germany offers a rich field of study for this topic, due to its Green politics, the multiple attempts of the federal government to promote nature conservation and sustainability through religious communities, and the anxiety in Germany about having become a land of immigration. Against this backdrop, this study uses document analysis, semi-structured interviews and participant observation to examine religion-specific environmentalist groups that interact in various interreligious initiatives. This project seeks first to contribute to our understanding of the larger cultural, social and political forces that contribute to environmentalism as a dynamic factor of religious transformation within Germany. It then studies how the exchange of ideas in environmentalist-focused interreligious networking modifies the teachings and practices in the specific religions involved. Finally, by focusing on interreligious environmentalist dialog and the initiatives of individuals to create a sustainable society, the project considers the potentials and limitations for religious environmentalism´s contributions to civil society more generally..