CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHRISTIANITY IN JAVANESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY

Java is by far the most populous of the islands of . In 2000 out of a total population of nearly 206 million some 121 million lived in the very densely populated island of , some 830 per km2 (about 60 in , 10 for Central and East Kalimantan, 140 in North Sulawesi and slightly over 4 for Papua).1 Th e numbers for in Java in 2000 were;

Statistics for Javanese Christians in 20002 Province Number of Percentage Total population Christians Jakarta 837,682 10.04% 8,361,079 West Java 703,604 1.9% 35,724,092 213,135 2.63% 8,098,277 874,245 2.83% 31,223,259 245,062 7.85% 3,121,045 799,276 2.3% 34,765,998 Total 3,673,004 3.03% 121,293,750

Totalling 3,673,004, the Christians in Java represent a mere 20.5% of the sum of Indonesian Christians, while about 60% of the whole population live in Java. Th is fi gure alone is already a good indication of the minority position of in this most important island of the archipelago. In 1800 there were virtually no native Christians in Java. Besides the white Christians there was a much larger number of Eurasian baptised, but the real growth of these communities took place during the last two centuries. Still, the vast majority of Javanese are Muslim. Th e capital of Jakarta, a melting pot of the various ethnic identities of the country, showed in 2000 slightly higher than the national overall number of Christians or 8.92%. Besides, there was a signifi cantly higher number of Christians in the region of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, while the province of West Java had by far the lowest number for the Christians. Th is chapter seeks to sketch a picture of the history of these communities.

1 Cribb 2000:70, with some modifi cations. 2 Leo Suryadinata 2003:3, 115–116. 640 chapter fourteen

In the fi rst half of the nineteenth century there were no indigenous Javanese Christian communities. Th ere were also no coordinated and continuing mis- sionary eff orts. Between 1822 and 1843 three missionaries of the London Missionary Society (LMS) worked in Batavia and some other cities. Th ey were William Milne, Robert Morrison and Walter Henry Medhurst. Th e Dutch Indies was their second choice. Th ey wanted to start a mission in China and they used the Chinese community of Batavia and other towns in the colony as a starting point for their fi nal goal. Medhurst joined the British army during the fi rst Opium War of 1843, as a translator, and had remained in China since then. Th e small Malay and Chinese congregations were left behind.3 Another missionary was the German Gottlob Brückner, who worked for the Baptist Mission Society of Britain and translated the New Testament into Javanese, had it printed (in Javanese characters) in Serampore between 1828 and 1831 and worked until 1857 in without many visible results. His trans- lation of the Gospel of Mark was printed in 1831 but initially forbidden by the colonial authorities, fearing that active missionising among the Javanese might cause troubles. Only in 1848 permission was given to sell sections of the New Testament among the Javanese.4 Th e real beginning of Javanese Christianity started with some local initia- tives by Eurasians. Th e fi rst was Coenraad Laurens Coolen, born in 1775 of a Russian father and a Javanese mother of noble descent. In 1816, while still a soldier in the colonial army, he came into contact with a small group of pious commoners who were nicknamed “the Saints,” with the German born watchmaker Johannes Emde (1774–1859) as their central fi gure. Th e colonial government did not like the activities of this small group and in 1820 Emde was even sent to prison at the instigation of a minister of the Protestant Church (Indische Kerk). Aft er serving for some years in the colonial army and the forestry service, Coolen managed to get permission to clear a forest in the isolated region of Ngoro, close to Mojoagung, some 80 km southwest of Surabaya. Coolen became the founder of a new village that attracted many Javanese from the region. In the mid-1840s there were already about 1000 people. Coolen was a pious Christian, but also continued much of Javanese tradition and wisdom in his life. He was convinced that his son was the incarnation of the local saint whose grave was found in the forest of Ngoro. He was acknowledged as a kiyahi, a traditional wise and holy man, albeit in a Christian version, but still one who could give advice and receive visions. He did not urge the new villagers to become Christian, and accepted that many of them remained Muslim. But he set a number of specifi c rules

3 Steenbrink 2002. 4 Swellengrebel 1974:45.