May 26, 2009

Villagers in Indonesia are drawing on pre-Christian traditions to shape modern Christian responses to community problems. Through a project in a rural area of South Sulawesi, a Reformed church theologian is working with subsistence farmers to transform ancient traditions into solutions to modern day challenges.

Zakaria Jusuf Ngelow believes that traditional ways of dealing with conflict can be merged with Christian beliefs to be used in contemporary ministry. To prove his point, Ngelow, an academic with a doctorate in Indonesian church history, has left a position with a theological faculty in South Sulawesi to launch a project working to develop theology with ordinary people in their own settings.

"We don't start with the Bible," he says. "We start with a ‘lived' problem: an issue such as the destruction of forests around the village or interfaith conflict in the community. Then we analyze the problem for its root causes."

When the problem and its causes are clearly identified, the villagers draw on their Christian faith to shape and guide their response.

Ngelow, a member of the Mission Advisory Committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), says the objective of the project is to develop local church leaders with the skills for "doing theology" with local resources.

For Ngelow doing theology no longer means studying text books. Today he prefers developing "contextual theologies" for local community contexts, a process based on meeting with clergy and lay members to identify their needs and encouraging them to learn from each other and to explore the community's traditional customs and beliefs. This, he says, is doing theology with local resources, theology that is non-academic and not based on foreign theology.

Through this process, people rediscover traditional agricultural practices based on respect for nature which prohibit a "slash and burn" approach to clearing the land. Or they learn to once again use the power of ancient peace symbols in conflict resolution, recognizing that in some settings these symbols are better recognized as signs of peace than the presence of religious leaders.

By working with people in their home communities and encouraging them to draw on local customs for resolving conflict or for responsible use of natural resources, Ngelow believes that a new form of Christianity will emerge that directly addresses local problems and allows Christians to find local solutions to those problems.

Ngelow acknowledges that his approach is the opposite of that of early missionaries from Europe who sought to erase local beliefs and practices by doing away with traditional cultures and arts, a process he calls "cultural colonialism." By contrast, contextual theology encourages people to express their Christian faith in local cultural and artistic ways: drawing on art forms such as epic poems and weaving to tell Christian stories.

"Cultural traditions can help us do theology," he says. "Before Christian missionaries came, God was already there, engaged with the people."

In a region of Indonesia where ten percent of the population is Christian and ninety percent Muslim, local church leaders must work with interfaith groups to identify and implement effective response to issues affecting the whole community. Ngelow's approach which encourages Christians to be open to the values and beliefs of other traditions equips them for this dialogue and increases the chances that the two faith communities can work together to find solutions to their common problems.

World Alliance of Reformed Churches