Christianity in Indonesia
The Christian religion is the second largest religion in Indonesia with about 26 million followers, about 10 percent of the population. The Roman Catholic Church in Indonesia , Protestantism and Jehovah's Witnesses are recognized as religious communities by the Indonesian state, with Protestantism having more followers. There are 38 Catholic dioceses in Indonesia, including a military ordinariate .
For a long time there was tolerance towards Christians in the predominantly Islamic country. In the last few decades, however, the relationship between the various religious groups has been increasingly tense due to the politics of the Transmigrasi and the resulting population shifts. Poverty and unemployment as well as a wave of Islamization since the late 1980s also contribute to this. Since 1999, an estimated 9,000 people have been killed and more than 600 Christian churches have been destroyed by the mob in interfaith clashes in Sulawesi and the Moluccas . Since the connection to Indonesia, the territory of the present provinces is also Papua and Papua Barat scene of severe conflicts in which the majority Christian Papua ethnic group has too much suffering.
Protestantism
Five percent of Indonesia's population are Protestants (as of 1998). Protestantism is an officially recognized religion alongside Islam , Catholicism, Buddhism , Hinduism , Jehovah's Witnesses and Confucianism . It is divided into many individual churches that belong to different denominations and are often limited to just one area, island or group of islands. Over 100 of them are united in the Communion of Churches in Indonesia , which was founded in 1950 .
The first Protestants arrived with the colonization of the Dutch East Indies .
On the island of Sulawesi, 17 percent of the citizens are Protestants, especially in the Toraja settlements and in Sulawesi Tengah (Central Sulawesi). Up to 65 percent of the population in the Tana Toraja administrative district are Protestants. In some parts of the country, entire villages belong to a particular denomination, such as Adventism , Lutheranism , Presbyterianism , Methodism or the Salvation Army . There are two provinces with an evangelical majority: these are Papua and Sulawesi Utara (North Sulawesi), with 60 percent and 64 percent of the total population, respectively.
Gereja Injili di Tanah Jawa is the Mennonitentum affiliated denomination. Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen had converted the Batak people on Sumatra to Protestantism at the end of the 19th century. Huria Kristen Batak Protestan is a denomination founded by Nommensen. It is the largest evangelical denomination in Indonesia with almost three million believers.
Gereja Reformed Injili Indonesia, a church founded in 1989 and headquartered in Jakarta, is a Reformed church under the direction of Evangelist Stephen Tong . This congregation is represented around the world, including in Asia, Australia, Germany and America.
Interreligious Dialogue
The interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Islam is increasingly being disrupted by Muslim extremists who want to turn secular Indonesia with 237 million inhabitants into an Islamic state.
literature
- Jan Sihar Aritonang, Karel Steenbrink: A history of Christianity in Indonesia . Leiden 2008, ISBN 978-90-04-17026-1 ( online ).
Web links
- Assessment of the Divine Word Missionary Father Paul Klein SVD on the interreligious dialogue (accessed on August 20, 2010)
Individual evidence
- ↑ 2010 Census: Population by Region and Religion . Statistics Indonesia. May 15, 2010. Retrieved November 20, 2011.
- ↑ L'Indonésie - Religion. Ambassade d'Indonésie, 2008, archived from the original on June 25, 2012 ; accessed on April 2, 2018 (French).
- ↑ Entry on Indonesia on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on April 2, 2018.
- ↑ The Chronicle of Higher Education: Christian College in Indonesia Will Relocate After Violent Attacks (English)
- ↑ Peter L. Münch-Heubner : East Timor and the crisis of the Indonesian multi-ethnic state in world politics. Munich 2000, p. 134
- ↑ Kirsten E. Schulze: Laskar Jihad and the Conflict in Ambon, in: The Brown Journal of World Affairs 9,1 (2002), pp. 57-69, there p. 57
- ^ Presentation on the website of the WCC.
- ↑ "Jakarta: Heavy Bomb Attack Foiled in Church" , Der Standard , April 22, 2011