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CHAPTER NINETEEN CHINESE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN INDONESIA Chinese Christians are found all over the vast Indonesian archipelago: from strongly Muslim Aceh in the west to the mixed Muslim-Christian society of the Moluccas, in the outspoken Protestant Minahasa as well as in dominant Catholic Flores. In this chapter we will mostly concentrate on the distinct Chinese Protestant churches of Java, with additional notes about the pres- ence of Catholic Chinese in Java. For areas outside Java we add comparative notes, stressing the discrepancy between the Chinese majority communities of West Indonesia as diff erent from the much smaller groups in East Indonesia. Christianity in Indonesia has only in a few places (West Kalimantan, the islands of the Riau archipelago) a dominant Chinese face, but in most regions where the Christians are a minority, the Chinese are a signifi cant segment of this community. Th is also has strengthened the idea of Christians in Indonesia as somewhat richer than the average Indonesian, because of the larger number of rich people among the Chinese in general and also among the Christian Chinese. Although a Chinese ethnic identity cannot be concealed, and ethnic- ity remains a very important factor in Indonesian society, there never was a development towards a truly contextual Chinese Christianity because church leaders did not like to stress this identity. Javanese Chinese: from integration into a Muslim society to the preservation of an distinct culture Relations of trade and partly also of religion have for a very long time been established between China and Indonesia. In the cultural and religious fi eld Indonesia has been the receiver (as was also the case with infl uence from India and the Middle East). Chinese Buddhist pilgrims and even many more traders came to India through the Indonesian archipelago from the third century CE. Quite well documented are the Chinese Buddhist monks who came in the seventh century to the capital of Sriwijaya (now Palembang) to learn Sanskrit in the well-established monasteries before they continued their journey to India. One of the sources for the arrival of Islam in the archipelago, especially on the north coast of Java, was the Muslim community of southeast China. Most Chinese, however, who arrived in the archipelago were not Muslims, but until the beginning of the nineteenth century most of them converted to Islam if they stayed for any length of time. An eighteenth century Chinese traveller to Java, Ong Tae-hae, remarked: K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 06:19:11PM via free access 904 chapter nineteen When the Chinese have settled for several generations in foreign countries without ever returning to China, then they easily forget the teachings of their ancestors and Chinese sages. Th ey adopt the way natives eat and dress, read their books. Th ey do not object to call themselves Javanese and become Muslims.1 Th ere were several reasons why, from the nineteenth century on, conversion to Islam became less and less the rule. A majority of Chinese retained their own identity and a small but increasing number of them accepted Christianity as their new religion. Th is process was strengthened in the early twentieth century when Chinese women also migrated in larger numbers. Aft er the independence of Indonesia in 1945 the massive migration of Chinese for trade, and for work as coolies in the mines and plantations of western Indonesia, stopped, but the communities consolidated. Th ey remained an important fac- tor in Indonesian Christianity. During the colonial period the Chinese were oft en not identifi ed as ‘indig- enous’ and are to be found in the statistics on religion with the Europeans. Aft er Indonesian independence all Christians, Catholics and Protestants alike, have stressed local Indonesian identity. But the Chinese could not easily gain this privilege of a local expression of their Christian identity. Th is was most diffi cult in the Catholic Church, as Boelaars states, “We may suggest that the Chinese communities were asked to be more outspoken Indonesian than the other ethnic groups of Indonesia.”2 Th e only example of inculturation for Chinese that he could remember was the use of a typical Chinese sign of reverence: to show the right hand as a closed fi st, supported by the left hand. For the Protestants it was Hendrik Kraemer who wrote in the 1933 about ‘the Chinese problem’ To them masuk Islam meaning “embrace Islam” implies become native, and that they do not want. Th ey do not want it, because, being Orientals, they consider a change of religion a change of their socio-religious group. Th us, to embrace Islam means renouncing their Chinese identity for their Chinese identity and the socio-religious imprint they have received at birth are identical to them.3 Th e word ‘Orientals’ (Dutch: Vreemde Oosterlingen) as used here by Kraemer was the special legal category in the Dutch colony for Arabs and Chinese since 1854. Th e two groups were not identifi ed with Europeans or with the indigenous Indonesians. Th ey had a special status, some privileges, but also many limitations (like the prohibition to buy land in Java). On the whole their situation became uncertain with the rise of the nationalist movement aft er 1912. Th eir distinct position brought the Chinese in any case closer to 1 Quoted in Ong Hokham 1982:278. 2 H. Boelaars 1991:346–347. 3 Kraemer 1958:151. K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 06:19:11PM via free access chinese christian communities in indonesia 905 the dominating colonial European class than to the indigenous. At least dur- ing the late colonial period this was an obstacle for them to embrace Islam. Also during the second half of the twentieth century, in the independent Indonesian Republic, there were few conversions of Chinese to Islam, but many more to Christianity. On the whole, in all these periods Chinese preferred to remain somewhat independent from the leadership of their new religion when they converted to Christianity. In the Catholic Church they oft en established since the 1970s kelompok doa, charismatic prayer groups, under responsibility of lay people, as part of the charismatic movement. In chapter eighteen we have seen a num- ber of diffi cult incidents between Catholic Chinese and the clergy during an earlier period. Also among Protestants we will notice that Chinese preferred to organise things by themselves. When possible this was done in harmony with the European missionaries, but eventually they took their own decisions, in full conviction of being Christians. A quite strong example of this love for an independent direction was the foundation of THHK, Tiong Hwa Hwee Koan, the vibrant Chinese cultural organisation that since 1901 set up a large number of modern Chinese schools aft er the model of the schools of the Protestant mission. Th e fi rst school was constructed in Batavia/Jakarta in 1901. Its founders had studied at Protestant schools and they loved this style of school, so diff erent from the traditional Chinese system of learning. THHK schools introduced fi rstly, a new empha- sis on Mandarin for all young people of Chinese descent (no longer Hokien, Hakka or other dialects that were used in the Dutch East Indies); secondly, a modern Western curriculum as it was in use in modern education in China and Japan; and thirdly schools for girls. In 1908 there were already 75 THHK schools with 5,500 pupils. Th ese numbers rose to 442 THHK schools in 1915 with 19,636 pupils and 848 teachers, most of them educated in China and invited to the Dutch colony with a contract of labour.4 Th e government and the mission had to fi nd an answer and opened the HCS, Hollands-Chinese School, a school for Chinese pupils, where the language of instruction was not Malay (as for the indigenous population), but Dutch as used for the Europeans in the colony and for the highest class of the indigenous population. THHK schools were direct rivals of the mission and government schools, but they were not exclusive in the fi eld of religion. eTh fi rst Methodist missionaries could make contact in Medan (and make a living) thanks to teaching positions in English at THHK schools (see chapter thirteen). On the percentage of Chinese in general, and of Chinese Christians in particular, there are no hard fi gures. In the 1930 census the 1,233,214 Chinese 4 Groeneboer 1993:357. K.A. Steenbrink and J.S. Aritonang - 9789047441830 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 06:19:11PM via free access 906 chapter nineteen of the colony counted for 2.03% of the population. Foreign minister Adam Malik mentioned in 1973 a number of 5 million (out of a total of some 125 million) in that year, and since then this has oft en been repeated with a percentage between 4–5%. Serious researchers, however, suppose a declining percentage close to the 1.5% in 2000 or somewhat more then 3 million. One of the uncertain factors is the defi nition of ‘Chinese’ that is oft en taken very broadly. Even if only one in four grandparents is a true and full ethnic Chinese, a person oft en is taken as such. Until the late 1950s there were still 120,000 children in Chinese-language schools. Aft er the 1965 turn in politics these schools were closed, assimilation was required, and many received Indonesian citizenship. Th is was also the period when the new discriminative terminol- ogy of non-pribumi (non-indigenous) became common, replacing the Dutch ‘foreign Easterners.’ Somers Heidhues estimated that in the 1990s well under 10% of ethnic Chinese still lacked an Indonesian passport.

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