Friends in Indonesia
From The Forum Magazine, Winter 2015 - view the full issue here
What does a country of 17,500 islands, 700 languages, and the largest number of active volcanoes in the world—a country on the exact opposite side of the world—have to do with Calvin Seminary? What does a country like Indonesia, which the government proclaims is 87 percent Muslim, have to do with Reformed Christians here in North America? I have discovered that the connections are surprisingly strong. I spent the month of January 2015 teaching at two Reformed seminaries in Jakarta and Malang, Indonesia, where I received an overwhelming welcome and observed a heart-felt loyalty to Calvin Seminary.
Religion is a core value for Indonesian people. Hindu priests and traders brought Hinduism to the country in the first two centuries AD, while Islam began taking over the country in the 13th century. Portugal brought Roman Catholicism to Indonesia, whereas the Dutch introduced Protestantism at the beginning of the 17th century. Accordingly, the history of the Protestant churches goes back to the change in colonial rule, when the Reformed Dutch drove the Catholic Portuguese out of the Moluccas in 1601–1605. The result was the founding of the oldest Protestant church in Asia. Today, the government recognizes six religions, and the law states that every citizen must hold an identity card specifying which of these religions he or she belongs to. Furthermore, the threat of prison holds sway over any atheist.
Present Blessings
Today 85 percent of the Protestants in Indonesia belong to the Communion of Churches in Indonesia (Persekutuan Gereja-Gereja di Indonesia [PGI], founded in 1950), which has 75 member churches, 62 percent of which belong to the Reformed tradition. Christian Indonesians report that the seminaries in Indonesia have a strategic position in shaping the future of Christianity in that country. Over the last years, Calvin Seminary has sent visiting professors every year to teach at a Reformed seminary in Jakarta and recently in Malang as well. These seminaries have their roots in ministry to ethnic Chinese Indonesians dating back to the early twentieth century, when many Chinese migrated to Indonesia around the time of the Boxer Rebellion. Each campus is growing in students and in its building projects—growth that indicates the vitality of the church and the support of its constituency.
The Challenges Ahead
Probably the largest challenge to Indonesian Christianity is that Christianity is weakest in the most highly populated and fully developed regions, such as Java and Bali (where at most 1 percent of people are Christian). Furthermore, Indonesia is home to 779 people groups, of whom 226 are still unreached by the Gospel. But consider these personal reflections from Indonesian graduates from Calvin Seminary about what they consider to be the challenges facing the church in their country.
Agung Gunawan, Calvin Seminary graduate and president of Aletheia Seminary reports, “The challenge of the Reformed Church in Indonesia is preparing the future leaders for the church. The problem faced today is that so few young people in the church give their lives to be God’s servant.”
Amos Oei, a Ph.D. graduate from Calvin Seminary, reflects, “Upon the completion of my study at Calvin Seminary, I serve as a professor and dean of students at the Church of Christ the Lord. Our dominant Chinese background is both a strength and a weakness. We are strong in fellowship but weak at adapting to changes in the culture and bridging the generational gap to our youth and teenagers.”
Yohanes Budhi, a visiting scholar at Calvin Seminary, adds, “The real struggle of Christianity in Indonesia is for Christians to live side by side with the poor in a country with one of the fastest rising rates of inequality in the world.”
Yuzo Adhinarta, now a professor at a Reformed seminary in Jakarta, emphasizes that “to an alarming extent, freedom of thought, conscience, and belief is being curtailed, often threatening the safety and survival of innocent persons, especially members of religious minorities, since constitutional rights have been abrogated and violated through government inaction.”
Certainly our prayers go out to the churches and seminaries of Indonesia.
(Dean Deppe, former Professor of New Testament)
