The Political-Cultural Context

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. More than eighty per cent of the approximately 215 million inhabitants are Muslim. About ten per cent, more than 20 million, are Christian. Since the arrival of Christianity in Indonesia in the sixteenth century, Muslims and Christians have lived more or less together in peace. The Christians are most strongly represented in the outlying areas on the edges of the Indonesian archipelago, in the east in New Guinea, the Moluccans, Timor and North and Central Sulawesi, and in the West in North Kalimantan and North Sumatra.

After the independence of Indonesia, many were surprised that Christianity's significance increased rather than decreased. It should have been obvious that, as a “foreign” religion of the colonial powers, Christianity would have difficulty surviving and perhaps also decrease with respect to numbers. But the opposite happened. After the departure of the Dutch, Christianity increased faster in size than it had during the centuries that the Dutch had been present. That means that the churches in Indonesia have become real Indonesian churches and that they also share in all the tensions and conflicts that accompany religion in Indonesia.