There is a widely accepted consensus that religious education, together with all other school subjects, should contribute to the goals of education for sustainable development. As a result, theoretical models have been developed to profile what the specific contributions of religious education might be. However, the question whether religious education can achieve the intended goals has not yet been researched in more detail. More fundamentally, to be able to formulate realistic goals involves the clarification of students’ predispositions. In the light of these questions, the author focuses on an ecological sustainability dilemma, the so-called poplar dilemma, and asks how students react to this conflictive situation and what roles religious orientations play in their responses. Analysis of the responses of a sample of more than 1100, 14- to 16-year-old students at secondary schools in Germany and Austria led to the conclusion that over-reaching, action-changing environmental sustainability goals are probably beyond the reach of religious education as a single subject. Nevertheless, it becomes clear that ecological issues are regarded by many as religious and spiritual questions and can therefore be addressed in a focused way through religious education. The idea of religious stewardship, which implies taking responsibility and addresses both religious and non-religious students, could be particularly promising. Religious education could develop a characteristic profile as an area in which translation between different motivations for engaging in religious stewardship occurs, and where commitments to taking responsibility are sought.

宗教教育与所有其他学校科目一起应为实现可持续发展教育做出贡献，这一点已得到广泛接受。结果，发展了理论模型来描述宗教教育的具体贡献。但是，尚未进一步研究宗教教育能否实现预期目标的问题。从根本上讲，要能够制定出现实的目标，就需要澄清学生的易感性。鉴于这些问题，作者着重于生态可持续性的困境，即所谓的杨树困境，并询问学生如何应对这种冲突情况以及宗教取向在其应对中所起的作用。分析了1100多个样本的响应，在德国和奥地利的中学中14至16岁的学生得出的结论是，超越范围，改变行动的环境可持续性目标可能超出宗教教育作为一个单独学科的范围。然而，很明显，生态问题被许多人视为宗教和精神问题，因此可以通过宗教教育有针对性地加以解决。宗教管理的思想，尤其是承担责任并针对宗教和非宗教学生的思想，可能是特别有希望的。宗教教育可以发展成为一个特色领域，在这个领域中，从事宗教管理工作的不同动机之间会发生转化，并寻求承担责任的承诺。