Welcoming remarks by Michael Mertes, Director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Israel Office
Your Beatitude, Patriarch Theophilos,
Your Excellencies, Archbishop Dr. Elias Chacour, Sheik Muhammed Amara, Rabbi Ronen Lubitch, and Rabbi Daniel Sperber,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Honoured guests:
A warm welcome to all of you on behalf of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation! My colleague Hildegard Mohr and I are happy and proud to be involved in this unique event. The credit goes to the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development and its enterprising Executive Director, Rabbi Yonatan Neril.
The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung has always been a strong supporter of interfaith dialogue, and we have also been committed to environmental and climate protection. However, this is the first time I know of that we have an opportunity to merge the two priorities.
We believe in the separation of church and state, but we also believe that religion is not simply an individual, private affair. Faith communities have a significant position in the fabric of a vibrant civil society. They influence the way millions and billions of people on our planet think and behave. But there is another dimension which goes much deeper: Even a secular liberal democracy is based on fundamental values which transcend it and of which it cannot dispose.
This is a message religious communities have to keep alive as an antidote for human hubris. The dignity of each and every human being is certainly on top of those fundamental values. Over the last decades, there has been a growing awareness of humankind’s stewardship for nature. And yet, we still practice a dictatorship over nature. From a religious perspective, the stewardship for nature is a stewardship for creation. In the Book of Genesis we read: “And God saw that it was good“. Creation is a gift which has been entrusted by God to the living generations and has to be handed down to future generations.
There is a close causal link between the protection of human dignity, humankind’s stewardship for nature, and the preservation of peace. Take climate change as an example. Climate change has dangerously destabilizing effects. It increases poverty and misery, distributional conflicts, and migratory pressure.
When environmental protection became a major political issue in the 1970’s, critics contended that this was a new ideology, opposing the goals of economic growth, technological progress, and, generally speaking, modernity itself. This has turned to be as wrong as the prediction that modernization automatically equals secularization. Environmental and climate protection has unleashed a new wave of modernization. You may call it “ecological progress”.
In Germany, some 400 000 jobs are provided by the renewable energies sector. In terms of technology, it is one of the most innovative sectors of our economy, and it is no doubt a driver of future growth – a growth that will be less and less dependent on energy consumption.
That brings me to my last point. There are to ways of reacting to ecological challenges, the apocalyptical response and the hopeful response. I believe faith communities should oppose the apocalyptical response because it contradicts the basic moral principle of responsibility. If the world is going to perish anyway, why should I try to change the run of things? The most beautiful expression of anti-apocalyptical thinking is what God says to Noah after the Great Flood when he sets the rainbow in the cloud to seal his promise that “never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish us all an inspiring and fruitful conference!
Thank you very much.