Mapping Chineseness on the Landscape of Christian
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Singapore Management University Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Research Collection School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences 4-2016 Mapping Chineseness on the landscape of Christian churches in Indonesia Chang Yau HOON Singapore Management University, [email protected] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2014.1001161 Follow this and additional works at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research Part of the Asian Studies Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, and the Religion Commons Citation HOON, Chang Yau.(2016). Mapping Chineseness on the landscape of Christian churches in Indonesia. Asian Ethnicity, 17(2), 228-247. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2103 This Journal Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Social Sciences at Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Collection School of Social Sciences by an authorized administrator of Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. For more information, please email [email protected]. Mapping Chineseness on the landscape of Christian churches in Indonesia Chang-Yau Hoon, Singapore Management University Published in Asian Ethnicity, 2016, Volume 17, Issue 2, pp. 228-247. http://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2014.1001161 Abstract: Scholarship on the Chinese Indonesian community has largely been concerned with the tensions between the community and the majority non-Chinese (or pribumi). The fault lines were usually examined against the background of Suharto’s assimilation policy, the 1998 anti-Chinese riots, the stark imbalance of the nation’s wealth within this minority group, and Chinese loyalty – or chauvinism – in the time of nation-building, and in the face of the rise of modern China. Little attention has been given to Christianity as offering a shelter for the inconspicuous propagation of Chineseness; particularly in terms of the conduct of services in Chinese, the teaching of the language, and business-management leadership. The network of Chinese churches locally, and extending internationally beyond Indonesia, represents a rich field for further scholarship. This article sets out an epistemological map in the service of such research. Keywords: Chinese Indonesians, Christianity, Indonesia, Chineseness, identity, religion Interest in the study of Chinese Indonesians grew during Suharto’s New Order period (1966–1998) owing to the discourse on the ‘Chinese Problem.’ Scholars researched on the history of the Chinese in Indonesia and the community’s response to the New Order assimilation policy. The role of the Chinese in the nation’s economy also came under scrutiny because much of indigenous resentment centered on the concentration of wealth within the minority group. Interest in the study of the Chinese Indonesians was renewed after the 1998 anti-Chinese riots when the research focus shifted to issues relating to violence,1 politics,2 identity,3 and, in the wake of the rise of China, to the post-Suharto renaissance of Chinese culture, language, media, and religions. This author proposes that the lack of scholarly attention paid to the study of Chinese Christians in Indonesia is conspicuous for the importance of the subject with regard to the notion of Chineseness in the Chinese Indonesia community. Chinese conversion to Christianity is a rich field for the study of identity politics. During the New Order, the Suharto administration actively promoted religious affiliation to prevent the re-emergence of Communism. Many Chinese considered that joining an officially recognized religion afforded them the best protection against persecution. Christianity was a most suitable choice because the religion did not bear the stigma of being Chinese. Indeed, for the Chinese minority who were subjected to forced assimilation and oppression of their culture, Christianity offered a new identity.4 Consequently, Christianity experienced a boom with the mass conversion of ethnic Chinese.5 Chinese churches, however, have maintained a very low profile in their expression of Chinese identity because of the assimilation policy. Soleiman and Steenbrink argue this reticence is a reason why there never was a development toward a ‘truly contextual Chinese Christianity,’ although, ‘a Chinese ethnic identity cannot 1 be concealed, and ethnicity remains a very important factor in Indonesian society’.6 This partly explains why Chinese Christianity has not attracted much scholarly attention. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 35% of Chinese Indonesians are Christians (both Protestants and Catholics). This figure comes only after Buddhism that accounted for around 54%.7 Remarkably, the Chinese Christian population increased to almost 43% in the 2010 Census,8 most likely because of conversion in Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, the fastest growing denomination in Indonesia. Despite almost half of the Chinese population in Indonesia are Christians, there is a tendency not to view Christianity as a Chinese phenomenon. This is because Christianity is not naturally considered indigenous to the ethnic Chinese compared to ‘traditional Chinese’ religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Tridharma (Sam Kauw – a syncretism of Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian practices). However, although this may explain why scholarship on the religions of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia are confined largely to the study of more explicitly ‘Chinese’ religions, it does not explain why the study of Chinese Muslim community, which accounts only for a little more than 5% of the Chinese population in Indonesia, has received disproportionately more attention in the literature compared to the Chinese Christians.9 This is in addition to the fact that besides being more numerically significant, the members of Chinese Christian community is also much more diverse and has a more complex ethno-religious landscape than its Chinese Muslim counterpart. In fact, it is not only Chinese churches that have been neglected; Christianity in Indonesia itself is an understudied topic. The field of religions in Indonesia is dominated by the sheer size of the population of Muslims, which, according to the 2010 population census, represent 87% of the Indonesian population. Outside this group, Christians form the second largest religious group in the country and represents the largest concentration of members of minority ethnic groups with 7% of the population represented by Protestants, 3% by Catholics, less than 2% Hindus, and a smaller percentage Buddhists and Confucianists. Despite the importance of Christianity as a minority religion, there has been little published work in English on the subject. We have had several monographs of ethnographic research on various Christian ethnic minorities,10 but had to wait till 2008 for the publication of a comprehensive tome, a gap suitably filled by the impressive 1000-page volume, A History of Christianity in Indonesia, edited by Aritonang and Steenbrink.11 If Christianity in Indonesia has not been sufficiently considered, works published in English on Christianity among the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia are even scarcer. Chinese churches have played a significant, although subtle role in shaping the identity, culture, business, and communal life of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, yet scholarly literature on the Chinese Christians in Indonesia is limited to only one unpublished PhD thesis,12 two monographs13 and a handful of book chapters and journal articles.14 It is commonly perceived that only Buddhist and Chinese temples played a role in preserving Chineseness when the Chinese culture was under the threat of erasure during the New Order. The agency and contribution of Chinese Christian churches, particularly, the Protestant churches,15 in maintaining Chineseness has largely been denied. In fact, some Chinese Indonesians have criticized the mass conversion of Chinese to Christianity as an abandonment of Chineseness and Confucian values in favor of Westernization.16 Yet while it is true that a number of Chinese churches have chosen the route of assimilation and Indonesianization, other churches have stuck to their Chinese identity. These churches not only view themselves as constituting an ethnic church in Indonesia but have moved beyond maintenance to the inculcation of Chineseness through teaching Mandarin in Sunday school, delivering bilingual sermons in Indonesian and Mandarin, and maintaining transnational ties with Chinese churches in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. In this manner, these churches have been able to nourish and renew their Chineseness as well as to imagine themselves as part of a transnational, global network of Chinese churches. 2 One of the major transnational Chinese Christian organizations is the Hong Kong-based Chinese Coordination Center of World Evangelism (CCCOWE). Founded in 1974, it aims to unite a global Chinese Christian diaspora and to create a global Chinese church. As a pan-Chinese transnational network, CCCOWE is sometimes seen as ‘the last bastion of … primordial ethnic chauvinism’17 because of the organization’s insistence on preserving an essentialist notion of Chineseness, and its resistance to the local assimilation of Chinese churches.18 However, in the light of an increasingly complex landscape of migration and globalization, the definition