Die Klimakrise im Lichte der Coronakrise oder: Kann Religionsunterricht zu zukunftsfähigem Handeln motivieren?

Abstract

The coronavirus crisis is met with force and solidarity. The same is missing when it comes to the climate crisis. There are several parallels between both crises and both similarly challenge religious education. The main difference between the two crises lies in their respective speed, their reference to time which explains the feeble moral motivation in matters concerning environmental issues.

Religious education has specific resources needed to deal with the problems innate in both crises with its reflection on retinity and finiteness and its traditions of sufficiency and solidarity. Also religious education can strengthen the moral motivation to live and act sustainably by promoting competencies of imagination, complex thinking and anticipation as well as by telling creation stories and reflecting on these as visions of the sustainable interconnected way of life given us by God.