Between Despair and Honest Hope: Facing the Aporetic Space of the Climate Crisis

Abstract

Based on autoethnographic descriptions of recent climate events in Germany, Greece, and England, three colleagues describe these events’ impact on daily life and their implications for religious education in European schools. The argument oscillates between struggling for climate justice and enduring its aporias. In the aporetic (learning) space, it is important to turn hope into concrete and realistic actions that keep people, societies, and education moving.

Keywords:

• Religious education
• climate justice
• aporetic space
• honest hope
• autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maike Maria Domsel

Maike Maria Domsel is Lecturer at the Chair of Religious Education of the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Bonn (Germany) and a teacher in primary and secondary education. She earned a Doctor of Theology degree in Systematic Theology from the Philosophical-Theological University St. Augustin and completed her habilitation thesis in Religious Education at the University of Bonn, emphasizing the spiritual self-concept of educators. She has published widely on themes related to religious education. She co-edits the “Handbuch der Religionen”. E-mail: [email protected]

Marina Kiroudi

Marina Kiroudi is Research Associate at the Chair of Religious Education of the Faculty of Catholic Theology of University of Bonn. She earned a Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg and received an Argelander research grant for the project “Religious identity formation in the diaspora and approaches from the children’s point of view.” She led the project “Ecumenical Day of Creation” of the Council of Churches in Germany. Her current research includes approaches to children’s theology and spirituality from an orthodox perspective.

Bert Roebben

Bert Roebben is Professor of Religious Education of the Faculty of Catholic Theology of University of Bonn. He earned a Doctor of Theology degree from the KU Leuven (Belgium) and taught previously at the universities of Leuven, Tilburg (the Netherlands) and Dortmund (Germany). Since 2019 he is an Extraordinary Professor at the Faculty of Theology of Stellenbosch University (South-Africa). In 2017 he was the president of the Religious Education Association and currently he serves as the president of the European Forum for Teachers of Religious Education (EFT RE).”