ABSTRACT
This volume explores how religious and spiritual actors engage for environmental protection and fight against climate change. Climate change and sustainability are increasingly prominent topics among religious and spiritual groups. Different faith traditions have developed "green" theologies, launched environmental protection projects and issued public statements on climate change. Against this background, academic scholarship has raised optimistic claims about the strong potentials of religions to address environmental challenges. Taking a critical stance with regard to these claims, the chapters in this volume show that religious environmentalism is an embattled terrain. Tensions are an inherent part of religious environmentalism. These do not necessarily manifest themselves in open clashes between different parties but in different actions, views, theologies, ambivalences, misunderstandings, and sometimes mistrust. Keeping below the surface, these tensions can create effective barriers for religious environmentalism. The chapters examine how tensions are manifested and dealt with through a range of empirical case studies in various world regions. Covering different religious and spiritual traditions, they reflect on intradenominational, interdenominational, interreligious, and religious-societal tensions. Thereby, this volume sheds new light on the problems that religions face when they seek to take an active role in today’s societal challenges.
The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|64 pages
Intradenominational Tensions
chapter 2|20 pages
From Global Goal to Local Practice
chapter 3|19 pages
Cosmological Tensions
chapter 4|23 pages
The Slow Greening of Established Churches in Switzerland
part II|64 pages
Interdenominational Tensions
chapter 6|20 pages
From “Why Should?” to “Why Do?” Tensions in the Christian Context While Acting for the Environment 1
chapter 7|23 pages
The Dissenting Voices
part III|66 pages
Interreligious Tensions
chapter 8|19 pages
Environmentalism in the Religious Field
chapter 10|23 pages
Finding Ubuntu in the Bible
part IV|101 pages
Religious-Societal Tensions