CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A SMALL CHRISTIAN FLOCK IN BALI

Among the great cultural and religious varieties of Indonesia, the island Bali shows one of the most spectacular examples. For reasons that are not clear until today, the island did not accept Islam in the fourteenth-eighteenth centuries, while all surrounding islands turned towards that new religion. Java on its western, Lombok and Sumbawa on its eastern side, Sulawesi as well as southern Kalimantan embraced Islam in that period, but the island of Bali remained devoted to its own variety of Hinduism. On the margin of Balinese society some trade with outsiders, especially the Dutch, took place, in the harbours only. In the nineteenth century, slowly, colonial society could gain some infl u- ence in Balinese society. Since the 1850s the Dutch government had already established a strong presence on North Bali with Singaraja as its centre. But only in 1908 was the whole island truly conquered in a bloody battle in South Bali. Since then the colonial administrators remained very cautious and did not like to trouble Balinese society too much. In order to prevent disturbances, foreign missionaries were not allowed to work in the island. Th e ban on missionary work, which lasted until the mid-1930s, was also based on the tragic outcome of the fi rst Christian propaganda in the 1860s. In 1864 three missionaries of the Utrecht Mission Society (UZV) arrived in Buleleng. Th ey started language training, and with much trouble they were able to establish a small school where never more than seven pupils attended classes. In 1873 the fi rst and only baptism in this period took place. Th e con- vert, I Gusti Karangasem, a migrant from East Bali, disappeared shortly aft er embracing the new religion. Only in June 1881 was there renewed contact between the only remaining missionary, J. de Vroom, and this fi rst Balinese Christian. Apparently the convert, embarrassed by his condition as an isolated Christian, had sought support from the missionary but he received only a severe scrutinizing about his orthodoxy. Th ereupon he asked several Muslim friends to kill the missionary. I Gusti Karangasem was executed together with his associates who had killed the missionary. In this period there was an off er to the Catholic mission by language researcher for the Bible Society Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk, working from 1849 until 1857 in Batakland, and aft er a period in Lampung, South Sumatera, from 1870 until his death in 1894 in Bali. Van der Tuuk was an outspoken agnostic who was glad that from 1873 his salary was no longer was paid by the Bible Society but by the colonial government. He deemed the

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Protestant mission as ‘absolutely inappropriate’ to work in Bali. Th e Catholics with their processions, statues and paintings of saints, richly decorated churches and ceremonies, would probably be more successful in this island. According to this linguistic scholar lower caste Balinese would be happy to embrace Catholicism in order to escape the inequalities of the feudal social system. Van der Tuuk was willing to give the Catholic missionaries courses in Balinese. In the 1870s there were no Catholic missionaries available for the new mission. A formal permission to start the mission was given to the Catholics in 1891 aft er repeated requests and Van der Tuuk’s suggestion was renewed, but again there was a shortage of missionaries.1 Aft er the eff ective conquest of Bali in 1908 no missionary activity was allowed although there were repeated requests from the Protestant and Catholic missionary organisations. Only in September 1920 was permission was given to the Catholics to start a Dutch language school in Denpasar or Gianyar. However, due to the death of Prefect Noyen (of Flores) during a trip to Europe, on 24 February 1921, the implementation of the plan was postponed. Noyen’s successor, Arnold Verstraelen, had to renew the request for an HIS, now to be opened in Bangli. Verstraelen sent his formal letter on 11 June 1924. On 24 June of that year Volksraad member Tjok Gede Raka Soekawati gave a pas- sionate speech against the infl uence of any Christian mission in Bali, “Western infl uence of any kind is welcomed by us, but not the Christian religion.”2 Th is was the beginning of a long debate that has been described by Dutch mission- ary Hendrik Kraemer (1933) in a book as “Th e Missionary Battle for Bali.” In 1924 a private HIS with a Hindu-Balinese background was established in Klungkung and the missionary proposals were rejected. While classical missionary organisations were still active lobbying for a permit to start work in Bali, all of a sudden in 1930 a Chinese evangelist, hired by CAMA, Christian and Missionary Alliance, started preaching in Bali with the permission of the colonial administration, to serve the small group of Chinese Christians in Bali. Th is man, Tsang Kam Fuk (later also called Tsang To Hang, a recent arrival from China with no good command of Malay, speak- ing only Chinese) started work among Chinese migrants in Bali, mostly small shopkeepers who in many cases were married to Balinese women. Th rough these connections a group of Balinese in the region of Mengwi were attracted to hear about the new religion. Th ere were rumours that this group too were poor lower caste and illiterate people who wanted to escape the heavy burden of the many obligations of Balinese social and religious life with its many and expensive ceremonies and

1 Steenbrink 2003:66–67; 392–394. 2 Quoted in: Muskens 1974–IIIb:1408.

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access a small christian flock in bali 733 forced labour for building and restoration of temples. But there are also indica- tions that the fi rst Balinese converts in the Mengwi region were followers of a Javanese primary school teacher and mystical leader, Raden Atmadjakoesoema working already in Bali since 1908. Th is man had preached about an escha- tological event in the near future related to a religious person in white cloth. Atmadjakoesoema was sent into exile aft er the communist uprisings in Java and Sumatra of 1926, but apparently a group of people saw in the coming of the Chinese preacher a fulfi lment of his announcements.3 Several of these fi rst converts were sent to Makassar to attend the Bible school of CAMA. In June 1931 Rev. R. Jaff ray baptised four Balinese through immersion, and in November 1932 there were 113 more baptisms. Th e Balinese villages of the Mengwi region reacted in a quite drastic way. All new Christians were expelled from the villages and declared excommunicated and dead. Quite a few returned to Balinese tradition and religion, but many remained loyal to their new faith. However, their rice-fi elds no longer received water for irrigation and their rice plants were destroyed. It was widely spread among Balinese that evangelist Tsang had said that food off erings should be given to dogs rather than presented in the temples and at other places for off er- ings. In October 1934 again 125 Balinese were baptised by a young Balinese, I Made Glendung, who had followed the Bible school in Makassar between 1931 and 1933 and had become the fi rst Balinese preacher.4 Th e colonial administration was not happy with the upheaval caused by the preaching of Christianity and the vehement Balinese reactions. In August 1933 permission for work in Bali was withdrawn for foreign workers and evangelist Tsang and Dr. Jaff ray were no longer allowed to spread Christianity. In consul- tation with the delegate for the Protestant Mission (Zendingsconsul) in Batavia and Hendrik Kraemer in Malang, it was decided that East Javanese ministers would assist the small fl ock of Balinese Christians. Aft er strong protests the CAMA leadership agreed to withdraw from Bali and to end the training of Balinese in the Bible School in Makassar.5 CAMA people, feeling themselves in rivalry with the Dutch missionary organisations, only consented to this step under threat of a total ban from the Dutch colony. Th e colonial government had to choose between the freedom of religion it wanted to defend and the beginning of democracy. Not only in the Volksraad, but also in the councils

3 Swellengrebel 1948:68. 4 Sources diff er about the number of baptisms and the exact locations: numbers from Catholic and government reports are lower than CAMA information. See Rai Sudhiarsa 2001:134–135, based on local sources; also Kersten 1940:208. Swellengrebel 1948:73 mentions October 1934 for the fi rst mass-baptism of 123 candidates; so also Lewis 1995:247. Müller-Krüger 1968:239 mentions for this November 1932 baptism the number of 113. A detailed discussion of sources in Nyoman Wijaya 2003:31–44. 5 Jongeling 1966:203.

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access 734 chapter fifteen of Balinese village chiefs there were strong protests against the creeping in of Christianity. Th e East Javanese assistant-ministers were native Indonesians and they needed no special permit for working as pastors to Christians in Bali. Less attention has been given to an even somewhat earlier start of mission- ary work in North Bali in 1929 by a Javanese recent convert to Christianity from Kediri. Police offi cer Salam Watias was baptised in December 1926 and thereupon excluded from his family. He arrived in 1929 in Singaraja as a col- porteur, selling tracts and the (bad) Balinese translation of the Gospel of Luke by the Dutch representative of the British Bible Society, P. Penninga, working together with a Balinese teacher in Bogor. Th is translation was the result of the more intensive contact with Bali aft er the army expedition to Lombok in 1894 and some later initiatives. It was fi rst printed in 1910. With Singaraja as centre Salam was quite successful in spreading copies of the Gospel. He came in contact with people, but he could do little more than giving explanation. Baptism courses were banned for the time being. Th is contact, however, prob- ably was the start of the more intense cooperation of East Javanese Christians in mission work in Bali aft er 1932.6 At the request of Hendrik Kraemer, in May 1932 an East Javanese teacher, Tartib Eprayim, paid a visit to Bali and he reported to the Synod of the East Javanese Church about the developments. Th ereupon he was sent to Bali together with Mas Darmoadi. Th ey started work in Singaraja in January 1933. Mas Darmoadi had been born in 1904 in Sambirejo, close to Pare, East Java. He had followed the teachers’ training school of Mojowarno and the theological school of Malang. Soon aft er his arrival he concentrated on the translation of catechetical material into Balinese. Tartib became know as a good storyteller who could present the Christian message through the traditional shadow play in Javanese. Th e fi rst converts of these East Javanese evangelists were baptised in Malang, because baptism in Bali was not allowed. Th is soon changed: GKJW evangelists baptised 38 Balinese on 29 November 1933 in Bubunan, on the north coast, west of Singaraja. In order to post a Dutch ordained minister in Bali, Rev. Th . Gramberg was, in 1937, nominated as resident minister of Denpasar, in charge of the Indische Kerk, theoretically for the European Christians, but in fact also as a supervisor for the growth of Protestant Christianity in Bali that in 1937 counted already some 1,000 baptised members. Bible translator Dr. Swellengrebel arrived at the same time. Th e CAMA did not fully withdraw from the region and in 1939 opened a preparatory class for a Bible School in Lombok, hoping for a return to Bali that could only be realised in the 1950s. Notwithstanding the diffi culties with Hindu-Balinese people in their sur- roundings, the Balinese Christians survived in the 1930s most oft en in their original villages. But rather soon missionaries and government offi cials decided

6 Suyaga Ayub 1999:28–29. K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access a small christian flock in bali 735 that a strategy similar to that in many areas of Java should be taken: the foun- dation of a distinct and quite separated Protestant village. Th e location, a still virgin area in the extreme northwest region of Bali (considered as an unlucky and polluted area) was selected by the government. Th is choice was made at a moment when in West and East Java more and more Christians moved to the bigger towns and the idea of special Christians villages was more or less left behind. On 30 November 1939 the fi rst male Christians started work for the development of Blimbingsari, the Protestant village located at the utmost western (and negative, bad) side of Bali. It was soon followed, from 1940 on, by the development of its neighbour Palasari as a segregated Catholic village. Because of the continuing problems of Balinese Christians who wanted to work on their own rice fi elds in their villages of origin, in the 1950s and later many more Christian Balinese moved to other islands than the average for common Hindu Balinese. It has been estimated that even more Balinese Christians are living outside Bali (especially in Kali mantan and Sulawesi) than in the island of Bali itself, but precise fi gures are diffi cult to obtain. In 1938 for the fi rst time the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in Bubunan. Christians from the higher castes, however, only ate the bread, because they were not prepared to drink from the same cup as the outcaste Christians. Aft er some deliberations it was decided that for this celebration the wine should be distributed on small individual cups, in order to prevent people having to drink from cups from which others (read: outcaste people) had also drunk. As in so many other areas of Indonesia, the Catholics were somewhat later than the Protestants, but also developed evangelisation. In September 1935 Father J. Kersten SVD settled as a resident priest in Denpasar, formally also for the pastoral care of the European Catholics or for Catholic migrants from other regions of the archipelago. Soon aft er his arrival I Made Bronong and I Wajan Dibeloeg two former evangelists of Jaff ray who had refused to join the Reformed Christians of East Java, visited him. One of them originated from the village of Tuka, south of Mengwi, the other from Gumbrih, in the Jembrana region, more to the west. Th ey joined with their families and con- verted to the Catholic tradition of Christianity. Th is Bronong-Dibeloeg group had already translated hymns into Balinese and used them in the weekly service on Sundays. Father Kersten allowed them to continue this practice. About this fi rst period he wrote: At Sunday meetings they sang their hymns in Balinese. One aft er another the leaders would stand up to pray with bowed head from the fullness of their heart for all the needs of their brothers, while others would remain seated. Although we barely could understand their words, we were deeply touched by the religious seriousness of these men and all the faithful.7

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In 1936 the creative and inventive artisan priest Simon Buis (maker of three fi lms on Flores) joined the Bali mission. In 1937 the two priests left Denpasar in order to stay in a new parish house in Tuka where also the fi rst Catholic church of Bali was built. It would remain a small community. In 1939 there were about 250 baptised Balinese Catholics and some hundred catechumens. A quite exceptional convert was the linguist and historian Roelof Goris, acknowl- edged as a great scholar of Bali, who became a Catholic in June 1939. From the beginning much attention was paid to a style of Catholicism with full attention for Balinese culture.8 Jan Kersten wrote a grammar of Balinese (published in Dutch and Indonesian) and a dictionary (published in Indonesian only). In 1943 during the Japanese occupation, I Made Rungu was ordained as the fi rst Balinese Reformed minister. Th e ceremony took place in Mojowarno and was led by some Javanese colleagues. He was also the chairman of the fi rst independent Synod of a Balinese Protestant Church in January 1948. Th e village of Blimbingsari was already suffi ciently developed to host this fi rst Synod of the GKPB, Gereja Kristen Protestan Bali.

Balinese Protestantism between strict orthodoxy, vivid inculturation and fl amboyant Pentecostalism; 1945–2005

Th e ‘Protestant village’ of Blimbingsari that had started in the late 1930s as a refuge for baptised from other regions of Bali, developed slowly, solidly and fi nally prosperously. Rev. Made Ayub, ordained in 1949 by a Dutch minister, became in that same year the second chairman of the synod in a church that was organised in a rather bottom-up Presbyterian style. In 1984 the church order was revised and more power was given to the newly instituted bishop. Until 1972 there was a continuing debate about policies within the young church: should it remain close to the Netherlands Reformed Church (pro- vider of most of the fi nances) or behave more independently, far away from Balinese tradition or more close to the rich Balinese cultural and religious heritage? Until 1972 the older generation was dominant. Th ey completely rejected all Balinese music, dance, architecture and habits. Th e later bishop, I Wayan Mastra, compared this period to Bonsai cultivation where tipping and topping is a necessary evil, to obtain a beautiful and ideally trimmed plant. About this period Paul Webb wrote: In Blimbingsari the church was of local stone and wood, but refl ecting little of the indigenous artistry and design. It appears to have been simply a place in

8 See the two examples of the woodcarving for the altar in Tuka and a stone carving of the Last Supper in Kersten 1940: between 224–225; see also in chapter twenty.

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which to meet for the Sunday morning worship. Th e eff orts of the Protestant Balinese in the middle sixties appear to have been concentrated on building a dam, called Ora et Labora [Latin for Pray and Work].9 Later I Wayan Mastra called it “a garage with small and few windows and it was very hot inside.”10 During the Japanese occupation some kind of “gentle Balinisation” had started in the village of Blimbingsari. In this period the new Christians started again to use traditional decorations from palm-leaf, coconuts and bamboo, in the style of the decorations and off erings made to the many Balinese deities and sacred places. But there were no further steps towards a truly Balinese face of the Christian congregation during the next decades until 1972 when all of a sudden a drastic change was started within the GKPB. I Wayan Mastra, the architect of this change, was also the dominating fi gure for the next three decades. He was born in 1931 as the oldest son in a low caste (sudra) Hindu family, like most Balinese. Aft er the fi rst three years of primary school he was sent to a “senior primary school” in Karangasem, a daily walk of twice 11 km. For high school he went fi rst to Klungkung, stay- ing with relatives, and fi nally for a teachers’ training college to Surabaya in Java. In a diffi cult situation he found fi nancial support with some Christians, took catechism lessons and was baptised in 1952. Between 1953–1955 he was a teacher at a secondary school in Denpasar and then studied theology in Jakarta (1955–1960). In 1961 he was nominated a minister in the largest town of Northern Bali, Singaraja. He served here during the dramatic period of the eruption of Mt Gunung Agung in 1963. He established fi ve new small mission stations in this period, baptising 350 converts in this period of growing interest and openness for Christianity in Bali. From 1965 until 1970 Mastra undertook doctoral studies in the USA, at Dubuque Seminary. He experienced a quick process towards a radical appraisal of Western missionaries, writing a doctoral dissertation on “Th e Salvation of Non-Believers. A Missiological Critique to Hendrik Kraemer and the Need for a New Alternative” in 1970. Mastra began his study in the USA only 13 years aft er conversion to Christianity, but he became soon a quite radical reformer in his small church. In his Catechism, written in the 1980s, he criticised again the cultural strategy of the Protestant mission: Untal-Untal was a village where 95% of the people became Christians. Th ey sold their only set of gamelan orchestral instruments that they inherited for genera- tions through the encouragement of the Christians. Th e Christians did not like their children to learn Balinese arts and music which belonged to the demons

9 Webb 1986:114. 10 Sudhiarsa 2001:156.

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because they were related to the worship of ancestral spirits. Th ey looked to western arts and music as Christian.11 As the only Balinese Protestant with a doctoral degree in theology, Mastra was asked to chair the GKPB Synod in Abianbase in 1972, where he also was elected as its chairman for the next fi ve years. He continued to work in this position until the year 2000, with the exception of the fi ve-year period 1988–1992. During the 1972 Synod decisions were taken as to a far-reach- ing inculturation and openness for Balinese culture. Balinese-style painting, wooden and limestone statues became fashionable for decoration of the churches. Th e gamelan, the traditional orchestra with percussion instruments, even some sacred dancing was introduced in the worship. When in 1976 the church of the major Protestant village Blimbingsari was destroyed during an earthquake, a totally diff erent church building replaced the western-style fi rst church: a compound of several small buildings within a lovely garden with streaming water, an elaborate entrance in pure Balinese style and a semi-open church building in the traditional pendopo-style became the trade mark of the new GKPB. In his Catechism Mastra has a long section (46–58) on this church. Just one quotation: Our Mother Temple is a sermon in stone. It has so much to teach us. It sits beneath the mountain. As we walk up to the temple we see that the roof of the church is also like a mountain, which in Bali is the place of the gods. It tells us that we are coming to the source of life for our life on earth. Th e mountain is a place of fi re, water and air. Because we need warmth for our bodies, water to drink and air to breathe. So we are coming to meet God, the source of our life. . . . Notice that the roof does not end in a point. It is cut off at the top and fl at. Th e reason is that many religions are man’s eff ort to fi nd God. Th ey are like the tower of Babel trying to reach God. But God did not like the tower of Babel. He knew that man could never reach Him by his own eff orts. So the roof of the church is fl at. Th e point is cut off to show that in Christianity God comes to us himself by his grace. (46). While returning from the USA in 1970 Mastra was able to buy a piece of land in Kuta, at that time still a quiet village of fi shermen, but soon developing into the booming tourist centre of Bali. He built a hotel and in this way he could remain fi nancially independent from the GKPB. The later 1960s and the 1970s were not only the period of beginning inculturation, it was also the epoch of the beginning of development aid by European states. Especially in the fi rst two decades it was the churches that orchestrated and managed many of the bilateral programmes. For the GKPB a quite peculiar project was designed: Dhyana Pura, a training centre for

11 Mastra, no date:12.

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access a small christian flock in bali 739 the church but also a tourist hotel that should generate a fi nancial basis for the small churches with many poor members. It was built on 3.6 hectares of land in the heart of the major tourist resort of Kuta. Building started in 1976 and Made Kertiyasa, who designed the church of Blimbingsari, was also the architect for Dhyana Pura. It has been built in the style of traditional palaces like a human body with the restaurant on the place of the belly, the rooms for meeting and presentations in the head, the theatre in the heart. Th e exit to the beach has been constructed as a place of mission.12 Th e whole enterprise did not develop without problems. In the early 1990s there was mismanagement that caused much trouble and a Javanese Catholic Fransiskus Xaverius Hartadi became the manager. Finally the hotel was so full with students who came for training that a separate Hotel School was developed from this initiative. Many Japanese tourists came to the place for its multi-religious Saint Michael’s wedding chapel. Finally the Place of the Spirit (Dhyana Pura) became so busy that in 2001 a new meditation centre in the mountains near the old shrine of Bedugul had to be built, Wisma Nangung Kerti. In Kapal, 10 km north of the capital Denpasar, a centre for agricultural development was opened. Here the Maha Bhoga Marga (MBM) Foundation was started in 1980. While traditionally most Balinese are rice farmers, this centre promoted extra income through projects of animal husbandry (raising goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens), citrus fruits, and small scale trading. Starting in the 1960s quite a few Balinese Christians migrated to less densely populated islands like Sulawesi and Kalimantan. Paul Webb13 estimated that in 1988 some 12,000 members of the GPKB lived outside Bali while only 6,000 were still in Bali. Beyer gives, for a decade later, even the number of 20,000 migrants.14 In this way Balinese Protestant Christianity has created a number of small congregations outside Bali. From the other side, the fragmentation of Protestant Christianity took place also in Bali. Aft er the bombings in Bali in October 2002, the police reported 28 churches to be supervised in the capital of Denpasar. Several were Pentecostal, there was a church established by the GPIB, mostly Moluccans living outside their region. Also the Adventists have built a church in Denpasar.

12 Beyer 1998:49–51. 13 Paul Webb 1990:3. 14 Beyer 1998:102.

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Bible translation

Bible translation is a quite complicated matter in Bali. For traditional Balinese people the sacred scripture is in Old Javanese. Manuscripts are still written on the classical material of palm-leaves (lontar). Which language should be chosen for a bible translation? Th e classical religious language of Bali was dropped, because it was just a sacred language of manuscripts and some rituals. Th e great scholar of Balinese, Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk only worked on the grammar and a dictionary. Th e Penninga translation of the 1910s was basically worked out by Goesti Djelantik, a Balinese teacher and member of the nobility in Bogor, from a Malay translation.15 Between 1935 and 1942 the Javanese teacher Darmoadi translated major sections of the New Testament. Only the Gospel of John and Acts were printed. In 1937 J.L. Swellengrebel, a well-trained linguistic scholar, started his study of Balinese. During World War II he was imprisoned and he could only continue his work in 1947, but had to leave the island in 1950. In the Netherlands he continued work on some of the gospels. He translated into a quite colloquial Balinese, because court Balinese is a very formalised and rather indirect way of expression. In the 1960s many educated Balinese Christians, however, found his style of Balinese too simple and too close to everyday expression. As in other parts of Indonesia, also in Bali it was in Bible translation that ecumenical cooperation was most eff ective and continuing. In 1973 the GKPB and the Catholics joined forces for a Balinese translation. Th is joint body completed a translation of the New Testament in 1976 and the Old Testament in 1981. A revised and fi nal text of the whole Bible was published in 1990. Quite delicate problems had to be solved for the use of Balinese religious terminology in Christianity. Th e name for God, the Absolute Transcendental Reality, as Ida Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa, was also used for the more cosmic and abstract Brahman in Hindu thinking. Several Hindus protested against the use of this and other terminology by Christians. Th ey consider this as a violation of their exclusive rights to these specifi cally Hindu-Balinese words. Th is is only one element of the broader exclusion of Christians from Balinese society. Aft er 75 years of small Christian groups in Bali, “the existence of Christian institutions is suspected as dangerous for this ‘sacred land’ with potential to ‘pollute’ the Balinese cosmos.”16 Balinese Hinduism was and is very strongly organised according to geo- graphic unities, the traditional feudal kingdoms, but even more strongly in

15 Swellengrebel 1978–II:231 gives a number of quite nonsensical translations. In Luke 2:37 the ‘widow’ is replaced with a ‘bone’ (balu turned into balung) and Anna says that she was “a bone of 84 years old.” 16 Survey in Sudhiarsa 2001:184–190; 256.

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access a small christian flock in bali 741 the villages or sections of larger towns, that a are social, cultural and religious unit as well. Besides the organisation of Christian villages like Blimbingsari (Protestant) and Palasari (Catholic) the idea arose in the 1990s of using the concept of BCC, the Basic Christian Community from Latin America as a social and also religious unit. Modern mobility, migration, the fragmentation of the Protestants into various churches, made this development not really easy. Th e modern Christians have no deep sentiments about their ancestors and therefore the traditional basis for this local congregation is not strong enough. Balinese Christians never tended to adopt the complex and very expensive burial rituals of the Balinese-Hindus that keep the family ties strong and foster respect for the ancestors.

Catholics in Bali

Aft er 1950 nearly all-major Protestant leaders were of Balinese descent. Dutch missionary Henk Visch was, between 1948 and 1971, working as a Protestant minister, but he held no key position in the GKPB (apart from fi nances). Th is was diff erent for the Catholics. For most of this period it was SVD priests from Flores or Timor who were nominated to lead the Apostolic Vicariate, which became a regular diocese in 1961. It was again a Dutch bishop, A.Th ijssen who, between 1973 and 1981 led the fl ock of the diocese of Denpasar that also served the islands of Lombok and Sumbawa. Th ey stimulated the use of the rich Balinese culture, but also dreamt of the growth of Catholicism. Already in 1947 a great church was built in Denpasar, the St. Joseph’s Church, with exuberant and very elaborate Balinese sculptures, paintings and ornaments. Diff erent from the new Protestant Church of Blimbingsari, a compound of many small typical Balinese buildings, in nearby Palasari the Catholics built in the 1950s a grand cathedral, basically in neo-gothic architecture but with so many Balinese decorations and additions that it is considered a splendid mixture of the two styles. Besides one Dutch architect (SVD Brother Ignatius de Vrieze) it was two Balinese Hindu architects, Ida Bagus Tugur and Gusti Made Rai who designed the structure and the artistic details for the Sacred Heart Church of Palasari that was consecrated in 1958. (See also chapter twenty.) Lay people, specialists in music, language, dance or craft s, took most of the initiatives in the artistic fi eld because until the 1990s there were very few Balinese clergy. Because of the cost in money and time, real Balinese Christian festivals are reduced to days like Palm Sunday, Easter, Christmas, and priestly ordinations. Training and rehearsals for the gamelan orchestra and the dances take too much time to be performed weekly. In the whole debate on inculturation in Bali, there is an always-recurring argument about the close relationship between Balinese culture (art, dance,

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access 742 chapter fifteen artistic expressions, sculptures, music) and Hinduism as a religion. Th e most common argument in favour of the use of Balinese elements within Christian expressions is that the artistic and cultural Balinese elements can be separated from Hinduism as a religion. Th e lack of knowledge of Balinese language and its classical heritage on the part of many of the Catholic leaders also may have infl uenced a rather superfi cial accommodation to elements of Balinese art, evading a direct confrontation with the real essence of Balinese religion and spirituality. A complicating factor, certainly in the Catholic community, was the tendency to promote the Catholics as true Indonesians. For several decades since the 1950s the Catholics were more strongly in favour of an Indonesian style for a Catholic identity than of promoting regional Balinese culture.17 A quite peculiar development can be seen in the person of Norbert Anthony Shadeg, born in 1921 in Farming, USA. He arrived in Bali in 1950 and founded the minor seminary in the village of Tangeb. In 1956 the seminary moved to Tuka, west of Denpasar, where Shadeg more and more became the scholar- theologian, collecting in the foundation Widya Wahana one of the largest libraries of things Balinese. Th e library, starting in 1981, was also called the ‘Bali Mission Library’ and ‘Th e Simon Buis Memorial’ aft er the SVD priest who initiated the grand cathedral of Palasari. Shadeg published a Balinese- English dictionary (aft er Van der Tuuk, and missionaries Van Eck, Kersten, and Swellengrebel had published other dictionaries). He received, in January 2005, the K. Nadha Anugra Award for his contribution to the preservation of Balinese culture. In the late 1980s the Rumah Khalwat Tegaljaya was established in a suburb of Denpasar as a retreat centre for Christian, but also non-Christian groups. Like its Protestant counterpart Dhyana Pura, this well-built place in Balinese style is open for international tourists who spend their holidays in the island.

Th e partial reception of Christianity among Balinese Hindu intellectuals

Christianity has much more impact on Balinese society than can be shown through formal membership of Balinese who embraced the new religion since 1930. Aft er 1950 Balinese religion and culture experienced a drastic change due to the new religious and political conditions in independent Indonesia. Th e proclamation of Pancasila, with its important fi rst pillar of the confes- sion of the One and Supreme Divinity, has brought Balinese religion much closer to Islam and Christianity than it was before. Hinduism was recognised as one of the fi ve offi cial religions but under condition that it should behave

17 Sudhiarsa 2001:173.

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access a small christian flock in bali 743 like an international religion. Th erefore part of the classical Hindu scripture was translated from Sanskrit into Indonesian (not Balinese!) by command of the Ministry of Religion. Monotheism also became a much more prominent aspect of Balinese religion than it ever was before. To give an example of this kind of infl uence we want to mention a promi- nent modern Balinese Hindu intellectual, Mrs. Gedong Bagoes Oka. Mrs Gedong was born in 1921 in the elite of the petty kingdom of Karangasem, East Bali. Aft er the village school in Bali she continued the prestigious Dutch language HIS schooling and teachers’ training college in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, aft er her father received the guarantee that she would be safe in the house of a pedanda or religious person. In fact she stayed in Yogyakarta in the house of Dr. J.H. Bavinck, Protestant minister and lecturer at the Protestant Th eological School (now Duta Wacana). Also in Batavia she found lodging with a pious Protestant family. In both places she regularly joined the church service, but fi nally she did not convert to Christianity as her brother, physi- cian Wajan Makes did. Besides working as a teacher, she organised courses on the spiritual heritage of Mahatma Gandhi. She started workshops and in 1976 she established an ashram where she founded a community that could live according to the principles of Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave. In the line of Gandhi she saw the essence of Christianity in the Sermon on the Mount and accepted Jesus as an avatar or incarnation of the supreme divinity. For Gedong the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all three preachers of a non-violent way of life who basically preached the same doctrine. For Balinese people, however, Christianity was in her thinking a rather boring religion, with few festivals, rituals and processions and therefore Christianity would not fi nd much acceptance on the island.18 Aft er 1945 Balinese religiosity underwent drastic changes. Scripture was no longer the privilege of the religious elite, the caste of Brahmans. Religious activities were also no longer bound to special hours. In public schools Hindu Holy Scripture was taught to all social classes, to boys and girls, and texts were read in original Sanskrit and in Indonesian translation by all students during their school period. Th e academic institute for Balinese religion, the Institut Hindu Dharma, also was open for male and female students from all sections of society. Th ese and many other changes in Balinese religion were executed under infl uence of the national Muslim majority and also in line with the practice of the other monotheist religion, Christianity. On this revolutionary change Sudhiarsa wrote: In former time it was taboo to teach religion or the mystery of Niskala [essential religion] to the non-priestly group, like ‘throwing pearls to swine’ (Mt 7:6). For

18 Bakker 1993:210–221.

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access 744 chapter fifteen

centuries this ajawera [taboo] was being practised, hence to keep the common people religiously illiterate and away from the centre of their life. Th erefore it was ‘subversive’ when Christianity started its mission works among those in the periphery, in the rural area, among the underprivileged, away from the ‘centres of the society’, which were the puris (palaces) and the grias (priestly houses).19 Further elements that have been taken over in some Balinese Hindu temples from Christian ways of church worship are the singing of hymns, reading of scripture, oft en in the Sanskrit original with translation into Indonesian, and the sermon, that now is called Upanishad in a quite peculiar transformation of the original meaning of the word. In order to accommodate to Muslim and Christian practice and the Western calendar, quite a few Hindu-Balinese temples now organise communal prayers on Th ursday evening, following the modern week rather than the full and new moon of the traditional Balinese calendar. Friday is in this schedule reserved for Muslims, Saturday and Sunday for Christians, while the new institutions of a weekly service in several temples has started on the Th ursday evening. Outside Bali tribal or traditional religions in various parts of the archipelago, especially the Kaharingan of Kalimantan and the Parmalim of Sumatra, could survive as traditional religion under the umbrella of formal acceptance of Hinduism. Both traditional religions were already subject to large-scale con- version to Christianity and Islam. Th is trend of conversion has been halted since the 1980s. Also in Toraja and in Java (Tengger area) traditional religion could fi nd a safe shelter under the formal umbrella of Hinduism. In this way Balinese Hinduism is still a major player on the religious map of Indonesia, not only confi ned to the island of Bali itself, but also found in some other islands. Details of this development are discussed in chapters twelve and thirteen.

Karel Steenbrink

References

Bakker, Freek L. 1993 Th e Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals. Amsterdam: Free University Press. Beyer, Ulrich 1998 Bali—Der Morgen der Welt. Evangelium und Kirche auf Bali. Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck. Kersten, J. 1940 Bali. Hoe een missionaris het ziet. Eindhoven: De Pelgrim. Kraemer, Hendrik 1933 De Strijd over Bali en de Zending. Amsterdam: Paris.

19 Sudhiarsa 2001:245.

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Sudhiarsa, Rai 2001 “Balinese Christianity and its Identity. A Th eological Articulation from a Minority and Marginal Perspective.” [Ph.D. Th esis], Birmingham University. Sundermeier, Th eo & Volker Küster 1991 Das Schöne Evangelium. Christliche Kunst im balinesischen Kontext. Nettetal: Steyler Verlag. Suyaga Ayub, I Ketut 1999 Sejarah Gereja Bali dalam tahap permulaan. Malang: YPPII. Swellengrebel, J.L. 1948 Kerk en Tempel op Bali. ’s-Gravenhage: W. van Hoeve. 1978 In Leijdeckers Voetspoor. Anderhalve eeuw bijbelvertaling en taalkunde in de Indonesische talen. vol. II. ’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff . Wijaya, Nyoman 2003 Serat Salib dalam Lintas Bali: menapak jejak pengalaman keluarga GKBP, 1931–2001. Denpasar: Yayasan Samaritan.

K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 04:49:20AM via free access