I Wayan Mastra

Interior view of the Bukit Doa International Church. This GKBP community is dedicated to pastoral care for tourists (Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, 2015)

I Wayan Mastra (* 1931 ) is an Indonesian clergyman. He was a long-time chairman of the Synod of the Protestant Christian Church in Bali (= GKBP, member of the World Fellowship of Reformed Churches and the World Council of Churches ). He promoted the inculturation of the Christian faith in the Balinese culture, which was shaped by Hinduism.

I Wayan Mastra was the eldest son of a Balinese family who belonged to a low caste ( sudra ). Since there was no possibility of further education in the vicinity of his home town, he moved to Klungkung and lived with relatives there. His further training as a teacher took place at the College of Surabaya on Java. There he came into contact with Christianity, took catechism lessons and was baptized in 1952. In retrospect, he described how young Balinese fell into a spiritual crisis, as the school provided them with scientific explanations for volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, which invalidated the mythological explanations for these phenomena. Balinese Hinduism, according to Mastra, was animism .

This was followed by a brief activity as a teacher at the secondary school in Denpasar . From 1955 to 1960 he studied theology in Jakarta . In 1961 he was ordained pastor in Singaraja , the largest city in northern Bali. Christianity, which had only reached Bali in the 1930s, aroused greater interest in Balinese society at that time, so that Mastra, as a pastor, was able to baptize 350 converts. It was an extremely critical time in the history of Bali. Numerous people were murdered on suspicion of being communists; The eruption of the Gunung Agung volcano in 1963 exacerbated the situation. According to Mastra's analysis, Christianity profited from the Communist Party's ban because the Balinese, who had disintegrated with traditional culture after attending modern schools, were looking for a new orientation.

From 1965 to 1970, Mastra studied theology at Dubuque Seminary in the United States. His doctoral thesis was a criticism of the mission theology of Hendrik Kraemers . Kraemer had interpreted the rise of European nationalisms as symptoms of crisis in traditional Christianity. Similar nationalisms with religious claims can also be expected in Asia. As an alternative to this, Kraemer relied on a strictly theocentric Christianity. Who God is and what his message is for people can therefore be derived exclusively from the Bible ; according to Kraemer, human cultures, traditions and religions cannot contribute to this. Kraemer applied Karl Barth's criticism of religion to the situation of the mission churches. According to Mastra, the present requires a dialogue between religions . The theology of Barth and Kraemer made no contribution to this. On the contrary, people of different faiths reacted aggressively to the fact that their religion was being devalued by Christians. There were examples of such anti-Christian excesses in Indonesia.

In 1972 I Wayan Mastra was elected chairman of the synod of his church, an office he held until 2000 with a four-year hiatus (1988-1992). This gave him the opportunity to initiate changes in the Protestant Christian Church in Bali, as a result of which this relatively small church took its own development among the churches in Indonesia.

The 1972 synod decided to open the church to Balinese culture. Among other things, she formulated the following goals:

• Proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that is relevant to Balinese people;
• To help Balinese Christians express their faith in the forms of their own culture:
• Use Balinese architecture and cultural symbols in church building;
• Promote interreligious dialogue in Bali.

In 1976, an earthquake destroyed the church in the predominantly Protestant town of Blimbingsari. The new building broke with the tradition of European church architecture: an ensemble of small buildings embedded in a garden with flowing water. The half-open church interior followed the traditional Pendopo style. Mastra also called this programmatic church building a temple. As is usual with Balinese temples, the entrance area is particularly highlighted. Mastra linked this tradition with the biblical phrase " I am the door ".

Mastra's parents were dancers, so he had a connection to sacred dance from his Hindu family tradition . Because of the upbringing of the missionaries, there were great inhibitions among Balinese Christians about playing a gamelan orchestra in church services or performing a dance. Mastra studied the Bible, especially the Psalms, in order to tie in with the Israelite tradition of dance and music in worship.

Publications

• The impact of the gospel and the Balinese culture: an approach of making an indigenous church. Dubuque, 1967.
• The salvation of non-believers: a missiological critique to Hendrik Kraemer and the need for new alternative. Dubuque, 1970.
• A contextualized church: the Bali experience, the “Gereja Kristen Protestan di Bali” responds to the Gospel. Abington, 1978.
• Christology in the context of the life and religion of the Balinese . In: Journal of Religious Culture 55 (2002)

literature

• Jan Sihar Aritonang, Karel Adriaan Steenbrink: A History of Christianity in Indonesia. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2008
• Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus. A Critical and Comparative Study of the Practice and Theology of Christian Social Witness in Indonesia and India Between 1974 and 1996 with Special Reference to the Work of Wayan Mastra in the Protestant Christian Church of Bali and of Vinay Samuel in the Church of South India. Regnum Books International, New Delhi 1997

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bukit Doa International Church. Retrieved November 25, 2018 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} January Sihar Aritonang, Karel Adriaan Steen Brink: A History of Christianity in Indonesia . S. 737 .
3. ↑ Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus . S. 59 .
4. ↑ Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus . S. 62 .
5. ↑ Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus . S. 61 .
6. ↑ Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus . S. 79-81 .
7. ↑ Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus . S. 85-86 .
8. ↑ January Sihar Aritonang, Karel Adriaan Steen Brink: A History of Christianity in Indonesia . S. 738 .
9. ↑ Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus . S. 129 .
10. ↑ Chris Sugden: Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus . S. 132-133 .