Christians In Indonesia

LEYAKET ALI MOHAMED OMAR

History of Religion Part 2- Prof Bernard Adeney- Risakotta and Prof Margana
Readings are from : Benny Giay- Zakheus Pakage and His Communities
Sutarman Partonadi- Sadrach’s Community and its Contextual Roots..

As Christianity and Islam spread to new parts of the globe, these faiths confronted long established cultural and religious traditions, and their missionaries had to decide whether to insist that the new converts observe the established orthodoxies or allow them to infuse local beliefs and traditions into the ways they practiced their faith.

In this process, the Catholic Jesuits in Java tended to find compromises between local customs and Christianity, and they wanted to allow the Locals to retain certain long-established traditions. It is noted in the Zakheus Pakage where unique settings of gospel was preached with Christians and indigenous touch; much to this example there are many other rituals in both Christian and Islam that are blend with the tradition of Java, personally I think the phenomena is rather unique on its own to reflect upon the richness of diversity on the other hand I can also feel the orthodox struggle to eradicate the grey area and put original practices into the community.

The Catholic missionaries started their work in Maluku, North Sulawesi and East Nusa Tenggara by sixteenth century under the patronage of the Portuguese and Spanish armed power. In the next cen¬tury, when the armed traders of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) con¬trolled North Sulawesi and Maluku, they converted the local Catholics to the Dutch Reformed Church. However, during the first two centuries of its rule, the Dutch in general did not support Christian missionary activities, particularly if the latter could endanger colonial economic interests.

Only by the middle of nineteenth century when the colonial power was well established did the Dutch support and finance Christian missionary activities. Since this period, Catholic and Protestant missionaries intensified their activities and gradually achieved much success in several places like Java, North Sumatra, parts of Kalimantan, and Central and South Sulawesi. The Sadrach’s community was indeed a community that contextualized to survive in a faith; in that period of time as the Javanese converts had to abandon their culture in order to become truly Christian. Being a Javanese and a Christian he mould the faith to be on its own that fitted the Javanese framework to gain their interest. Personally, I believe this method of bridging does make a different in mellowing the locals to glance a second view on the ‘new religion’ that was not gaining popularity at that time. If we take another step back the Islamic scholars that were preaching Islam in the 14th – 16th centuries; they were using the same techniques such as the ‘wayang’ to bring the locals closer to Islamic teachings.