Are Religions becoming Green? Faith-Based Environmentalism in Switzerland

Religious communities have powerful resources at their disposal to address environmental challenges such as climate change. They can use their public voice to lobby for progressive climate policies, draw on their influence on moral attitudes to disseminate pro-environmental values among their members, and employ their infrastructures to undertake projects to improve the carbon footprint of their institutions (e.g. energy efficient refurbishments). Undertaking such activities, they can contribute to the ongoing sustainable transformations of our societies. However, it is unclear to what extent religious communities in Switzerland are undertaking environmental activities. 

Scholarship suggests that religious traditions and communities become more environmentally aware and engaged over time. Although the topic has increasingly received academic attention in recent years, there is still little empirical expertise about religious environmentalism at the congregational level. Research at the congregational level is particularly important, given that congregations constitute important brokers of environmental engagement between the macro-level leadership of religious communities and the micro-level membership. Congregations can disseminate “green” theologies and environmental programs, which the leadership initiated, among the local membership. At the same time, they can promote religious grass-roots initiatives, which started at the local level, towards the leadership or expand them towards other local congregations.

This project identifies (a) to what extent congregations in Switzerland are environmentally engaged, (b) what types of environmental engagement they undertake, and (c) under what circumstances they are most likely to be environmentally engaged. To this end, the research team conducts a survey about the environmental engagement of congregations in Switzerland. The project contributes to the increasing international debates about religious environmental engagement by exploring the mechanisms that facilitate (or block) this engagement.

Leitung:Prof. Dr. Jens Köhrsen

Projektdauer: 2020-2022

Projektart: Drittmittelprojekt; SNF