Mobilizing Faith Communities for Bee Preservation
An Analysis of Bees for Peace
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.41903Keywords:
Religious environmentalism, religious values, nature conservation, interfaith cooperation, religious skepticismAbstract
Bees for Peace seeks to engage faith communities in applied projects for bee preservation by extracting from myriad faiths the shared traditional interest in promoting peace between human communities and extending this principle to the nonhuman world through imagining bees as peace ambassadors that unite disparate religious communities. Bees for Peace had an initial run during the 2018 Interreligious Week for Nature Conservation in Cologne, Germany. The Bees for Peace project contributed to the Cologne Week’s twin goals of spreading nature conservation through religious communities and increasing social cohesion through interfaith cooperation. Yet it was confronted with a deep skepticism toward religion on the part of nature conservationists and failed to win the support of the central clique of Cologne.
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