Indigenous Religions of Indonesia
Kristanto Budiprabowo (TATOK)

There are at least three different approaches to recognize indigenous religions of Indonesia. First, it is a missionary’s perspective that saw indigenous religious using their “western-Christian” viewpoint. In this viewpoint, the sources of information concerning indigenous religion of Indonesia in the beginning were full with prejudices. It is caused by many reasons. It can be because of missionaries who make a report and publish in the academic journal at that time did not train enough about Islam and another Asian’s religions (Ricklefs, 2007, p.93). With this background, on one side missionaries see indigenous religions in over generalize as same as another traditional religions phenomenon in Asia. On the other side they contrast religion using dichotomy between modern and ancient religion. Even though some information is very usefull, it can be make the readers come to bias in seeing indigenous religion not a religion at all.

Second, until now some scholars see about indigenous religions using whether sociological or religious point of view. Indigenous religions are a part of social phenomena that could be analyze as religion only if it categorize as “religion”. For example, Javanese religion is always connecting with one of the common religion in Indonesia such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Some scholar beliefs that there is a proto-religion that only can analyzed as religion as long as combine with one of the “official religion” of Indonesia. It is reasonable if we look to the indigenous religion practice. Javanese religion use many aspects from Hinduism-Buddism and Islam as integral part of their ritual, prayer, and as a basic of values. From the Islamic perspective it is can be easy to categorize that in two ways, as a process of Islamization or as indigenization of Islam.

Third, it is because religion in Indonesia is not just an individual matter, religion should be something formal, organized, and practicing in community in many forms and purposes. In this category, indigenous religion can see as a “polarization” of the real religion or as a community belief system that “synthesize” the newest religions. In every part of the world, community belief system has a dynamic that can transform two or more cultural encounter. The transformation process of Javanese religion also has a dynamic depend on social, economical and political context.

In the case of Javanese religion, based on three assumption above I see that Javanese religion is a capacity of “religious” community to use religions not only for their identity and social cohesion but also for another reason whether individual or communal. Only if religion can enrich communality and the sacred relationship with nature, it will anyhow transform to the community consciousness and even became a spirit to do social or political movement.