The spirit of tolerance and peace can be seen at least in some instances. There are some young Torajan theologians participating in interfaith dialogue groups and making significant contributions which represent a radical shift away from the exclusive doctrines of his/her tradition. Their influence is quite remarkable in that, at all levels of church meetings, the need to understand more of other faiths in the framework of mutual understanding...
For the Torajan, modernization came through education as the Dutch colonial rule reached its remotest regions almost a century ago. The basic schools opened by the colonial government were taken over by a Dutch Reform Christian mission that Christianized the region until Japanese military occupation in 1942. It was the education work of the mission that changed the Torajan from a backward ethnic group to one of the more advanced, compared...
Islam emerged as major religion in South Sulawesi when, in the early 17th century, Sultan Alauddin, the King of Goa, Islamized other kingdoms by military force. Islam became a popular religion and mixed with old traditions. At the upper level it was institutionalized by an Islamic official in the court structure and legitimized by adopting Islam as the crown of the traditional custom system. The Torajan are the only one of the four major...
As mentioned before (read HISTORICAL BACKGROUND), the Torajan culture is strongly attached to its tribal religion, centered on clan-house kinship (Tor: tongkonan) and its ritual for the deceased. The main problem encountered in the mission among Torajan Christian was how to deal with their strong cultural traditions. In the past, the simple approach the Dutch mission—that of rejecting religiously related customs and adopting positive aspects...
Modern Christianity came to the Indonesian archipelago together with Western traders in the 16th century. The first baptism was in 1534 in Tobelo, Halmahera, by a Roman Catholic priest. The famous Asian Apostle, Francis Xavier, along with other Jesuit and Franciscan priests, baptized many native people in Eastern Indonesia in the short Roman Catholic period. In the early 17th century, trade and political power was taken over by the Dutch...
(By Zakaria J. Ngelow The author is a lecturer at the Theological Seminary of Eastern Indonesia in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. A graduate of The South East Asia Graduate School of Theology where his dissertation was on the history of Christianity and Indonesian nationalism, he has written articles on Indonesian church history, religion and society, and interfaith reconciliation.)INTRODUCTIONThe theme of this article is the interrelation...
The Blanjong (Belanjong) pillar inscription in Sanur dates to 914 CE, and testifies to the contacts between Bali and the Indian subcontinent.Bali was inhabited by Austronesian peoples by about 2000 BC who migrated originally from Taiwan through Maritime Southeast Asia. Culturally and linguistically, the Balinese are thus closely related to the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines, and Oceania. Stone tools dating from this...