1 Jesus in Java : an Orthodox experience (to appear in 2001 Studia Missionalia, Pontifica Università Gregoriana) Father Stephen C. Headley (Moscow Patriachate) One cannot expect a distinctive Indonesian Orthodox theology from a church founded just ten years ago. Furthermore, since the Orthodox Church, the church of the seven councils, is united by one theology, it is to be expected that any variations in that theology will be found in its cultural expression more than in its dogmatic content. In order to describe the conversion of a small number of Indonesians, mostly Javanese, to Jesus Christ and their entering the Orthodox Church (Metropolia of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia; Ecumenical Patriarchate) we need to listen to their witness, and to situate it in the context of the Orthodox in Asia1. We also need to understand something of the cultural milieu in which their journey took place. Peoples are very different and experience Christ in their own way. I have become sufficiently familiar with the island of Java in Indonesia over the last thirty years to willingly admit how much lies outside of my understanding, nonetheless I will discuss the following: - The relation between custom and religion. - The relation between family and religion. - Individual evaluations of faith. - Liturgy and cosmology. The relation between custom and religion in Java One can only approach the Holy Trinity through the voice of Christ. The guards sent by the Pharisees tocapture Christ, on returning empty-handed, said “Never man spake like this man (John 7:45). His voice is also unique for the Javanese Orthodox. In a country where religious practice is so important, and religious pluralism is so much in evidence, the distinctiveness of Christ’s voice is critical. He incarnates a different revelation and this difference creates the space for their communion with him. This dimension of personal evaluation of the quality and of the value of words of Christ has been, to my knowledge, the initial step of every conversion. Afterwards the involvement with the Orthodox spiritual fraternity across the island seems more important than it does in Western Europe. In Java one’s close friends, who are also in the process of 1 - cf. Stephen C. Headley, « Orthodoxies asiatiques » pp.242-60 in Contacts. Revue Française de l’Orthodoxie , no. 191, 3rd. trimestre, 2000. 1 2 deepening their faith in Allah (God) provide the “culture of conversion” in which one’s own faith forments and matures. This was especially the case during the founding of new parishes. In Java the first one (Sumber Surakarta, central Java) dates from 19902. The parish structure in Java is “downstream” from the religious practice of the believer carries out with his family and friends. In a society like the Javanese everyone believes in God. The content of their faith and the praxis of prayer differentiates one from other believers. An example: like the Javanese Protestants, Javanese Orthodox always bring their Bibles to church with them to read the words of Christ as they hear them preached. On the other hand unlike the Protestants, they expect from their priests a sermon that is not exclusively based on scripture, but one that also shows how the Church has experienced and understood the Word of God. To this extent it is a church / community specific exegesis. The Javanese who convert from Islam are especially sensitive to the uninterrupted apostolic succession in the Christian umat (community). It is the purity of faith and doctrine that the Orthodox church proposes which carries conviction. This unity of the faith down through the centuries around the unique person of the Messiah consolidates the Word of God, the sacred text of His teachings and their transmission across the continents. Given the very visible divisions between Protestant and Catholic churches in Java, for the majority of the local population who are Muslims, the Orthodox represent an insignificant numerical minority. Nonetheless since Islam is the majority faith in Indonesia and benefits from an immense prestige, comparisons between it and Christianity are unavoidable. To defend themselves the Orthodox not define themselves as Javanese, as we will show below, but sometimes stress that their faith also are from the Middle East. The common geographical Middle Eastern origin of the faith of Orthodox Christians and Muslims is valued since ninety per cent of Modern Javanese religious terminology is of Arabic origin. For theological debate Arabic terms, if not Arabic language is prevalent3. For all their capacities of assimilation and the cosmopolitan location of this archipelago (the great maritime route from India to China), Javanese society, religiously speaking, is very Java-centric. It is important to explain this last point succinctly. 2 - cf. Stephen C. Headley, 1990 « Naissance d’une Eglise Orthodoxe en Indonésie », 19 pp. Supplément au Service Orthdoxe de Presse no. 152, novembre, 1990. 3 - Cf. P. J. Zoetmulder, Pantheim and Monism in Javanese Suluk littérature. Islamic and Indian mysticism in an Indonesian setting ; 1935 (Dutch edition) / 1994KITLV Press, Leiden. 2 3 Islam was the last pre-colonial religion and the first monotheistic religion to reach Indonesia4. These “eastern” Indonesian Christians sometimes stress their Middle Eastern, as opposed to the Greek, origin of their faith. Aramaic / Syrian / Antiochian Christianity comes from the same region that fostered Islam and dissociates one from the colonial period of mission that brought the two forms of western Christianity. Almost all the Orthodox priests have all been trained in Greek Orthodox seminaries, and their bishop, Metropolitan Nikitas, is of Greek extraction, so the Middle Eastern strain of Javanese Orthodoxy is more an affinity than real Antiochian expression of faith. This cultural complexity creates centripetal forces that work against an integral religious ethos in Java. Yet this ethos, the total manner of living the Orthodox Christian life is what most Javanese Orthodox are looking for. Not just parishes or a “church”. Orthodoxy is not supposed to be a part time religion, expressed in part time values. This claim necessitates presenting some background information. The basic ethos of Javanese culture are capable of devaluating or strengthening confessional norms. Despite the last hundred years of state terror (colonial, Japanese, the military dictatorship of Soeharto, 1996-19985) and the disintegration of social order since May 1998, the Javanese have been seeking to re-deploy their own profoundly communitarian social ethos. The exploitation of the so-called Pancasila ideology as a social/religious ethic by the Soeharto dictatorship to create a civil religion standing over and above the monotheisms of Islam and Christianity. This kind of secularization was disavowed by the Indonesian population during the recent Reformation period (1998-2001). This is a society is seeking to rediscover its common ethos. Western individualism seems to them to create more problems than solutions. Anyhow individualist values have had little impact on the social mores of the Javanese. This does not mean that families are always close knit and that their intimacy is a constant constraint on personal expression and behavior. What it does means is that procedure of consensus and mechanisms of communal integration are highly valued. Christianity is judged by this criterion. In their search for a praxis of social harmony, the Javanese have scaled down their ambitions. Before, the kingdom was the unity in which social harmony was expressed. Now the Javanese only hope that social harmony may be realised in local residence communities. It is no longer expected that this 4 - A supposed Nestorian community on the west coast of Sumatra (Barus), has not been confirmed by the recent archeolgical work their. Cf. Claude Guillot, Histoire de Barus. Le Site de Loba Tua, vol. I. Chaiers d’Archipel no. 30, Paris 1998. 5 - Cf. Violence in Indonesia, edited by Ingrid Wessel and Georgie Wimhöfer. Abera, Hamburg, 2000. 3 4 ethos will be shared by the entire population of the one hundred million people living on Java. Clearly Orthodox parishes are too few and far between to be able to feel as if they are “the Church” and challenge widely accepted Javanese custom. At best they can discouraged behaviour that is incompatible with fundamental Christian beliefs. Otherwise they attempt to express the Christian message in those positive culture forms that are dearest to them Their Savior is the Lord of heaven and earth, but their community is the territorial one based on where their house stands6. Thus their neighbors are unlikely to be other Orthodox or even other Christians. One’s neighbors expect friendliness, intimacy and mutual help (guyub) as opposed to business relations, based on pecuniary interest (tembaya). The normal cycle of life rituals, from childhood, the founding of a family through to death, are observed according to Javanese custom by all (Muslims, Christians and polytheists), but with confessional adaptations. The Muslim marriage will be celebrated alongside a “Javanese” marriage for a Muslim couple, while the Christians will incorporate many traditions from Javanese adat (custom) to their sacrament, modifying them to incorporate the Christian perspectives of that sacrament. Almost every Javanese Orthodox couple can show you elaborate photograph albums of their ritual vigil (lenggah midodarèni), bath (siraman : adusan), and wedding dressing which precede the extremely large reception that it is usual to hold. The Christian marriage rite is sandwiched in between. Nothing tellt us to which the greater importance is attributed. To deal with these ambiguities, one finds Puritan movements among both Christians (especially Protestants, i.e. Pentecostals, etc.) and Muslims (Muhammadiyah) who refuse the continuation of traditional Javanese customs in these religious contexts. Even if this is theoloigcally justified, it is understood by many Javanese as a disavowal of their society in its inclusive dimension. Exclusiveness is considered to deny the universality of the kingdom of God as expressed in the Javanese sense of fraternity.