Theological Education in Indonesia

Zakaria J. Ngelow^[1]

Christianity was introduced in Indonesia as a Roman Catholic tradition in the 16th century. In the following century, as the Calvinist Dutch conquered the Catholic Portuguese and took control of the archipelago, Calvinist Protestantism was introduced. But theological education in Indonesia only began in the last decades of the 19th century. It was given as part of a training program for native Christians to be helpers of foreign missionaries � as teachers and evangelists. Schools for such purpose were opened in Eastern Indonesia: Ambon (Maluku), Tomohon (North Sulawesi) and Rote (Timor). The trained natives worked as missionary staff to open basic Christian schools in different places. It was in the late 1920s that a strong suggestion was made to foreign missionaries to develop Indonesian Christian leadership.

Comparatively speaking, native Christian leaders from China and India had already been represented in the ecumenical conference of the first International Missionary Council in 1910 in Edinburgh, while Indonesia sent one to Jerusalem in 1928 and some to Tambaram in 1937. In 1934, mission boards and churches founded a higher theological school in Bogor. This was subsequently moved to Jakarta and which eventually became the STT JAKARTA. Another school at a lower level was founded in Makassar in 1948 (now STT INTIM MAKASSAR) to train church ministers for churches and mission field in Eastern Indonesia. Other schools were founded much later to provide more ministers according to the need of the related churches. Assisted by the National Council of Churches, some theological institutions founded an association of theological schools (PERSETIA) in 1963. Although its membership as of 2005 is only 33 institutions out of more than 100 institutions, it covers major institutions supported by major mainstream churches. Its main function is to assist member institutions to develop quality contextual theological education in Indonesia.

Double Wrestle

A consultation on theology in 1971 dealt with the need to develop relevant theology in Indonesia and coined the phrase, "double wrestle". In the statement of the consultation it was formulated:

Rethinking of theology should produce relevant theology, i. e. structured theological thoughts based on the Word of God, reflecting the double-wrestle of the Church. The double-wrestle is the Church wrestling with her Lord in the sense of understanding the truth and grace of God in Jesus Christ on the one hand; and at the same time, on the other hand, is wrestling with the culture and society where the church lives.

This contextual approach to theology can be put in a context of national and ecumenical development. The national context of Indonesia in the early 1970s entered the New Order with its economic development program as an alternative focus to the long political disputes which ended in the tragedy of 1965. New Order regime under Suharto mobilized the nation to participate in economic development of the nation. Churches which were assisted financially by overseas partners were actively engaged in rural reconstructions and other social services. The churches, then, needed relevant theological thoughts as framework for socio-economic activities. The ecumenical context was the development of "Asian theology" as an alternative to the inherited or imitated Western theology. Thoughts generated by Asian theologians such as Shoki Coe, C. S. Song, K. Koyama, Kim Yong Bock, and some Asian feminist theologians echoed in theological classrooms or church conferences just as their books colored library shelves. It is also relevant to relate the development of contextual theology in Indonesia to the political theology in the West and the emergence of Liberation Theology in Latin America and to the development of social commitment in the circle of WCC as reflected in ecumenical conferences themes.

A significant development of theological education in Indonesia was through the program of Christian Education in theological schools to educate Christian teachers for government schools. The program opened in the early 1980s as a joint program of theological schools and the Christian Section of the Religious Affairs Ministry of the country, assisted by the National Council of Churches. Its curriculum was a combination of theological and pedagogical disciplines. This program eventually put theological education under two different government supervision agencies of the Ministry of Education and of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The main policy of the government with regards to all programs at university level is accreditation by a National Accreditation Body. However, only a few theological schools achieved accredited status.

Towards the end of the last decade, some major theological schools developed their respective post-graduate program. It was an alternative to SEAGST, a post-graduate program run by ATESEA. PERSETIA facilitated the development by initiating a common basic curriculum and assigned ten schools to develop specific concentrations relevant to the need of their respective contexts. The post-graduate program is also an offshoot of the government�s decision to endorse (Christian) theology as a branch of science.

Main Challenges

Classical problems of theological education in Indonesia can be labeled as 3Ms of (hu)man, management and money. Human resources for theological education relate to quality and quantity of faculty and administrative staff. Most of the schools could not provide expertise in different basic theological disciplines while the need for scholars under non-theological disciplines seemed unavoidable. There was this grave problem of faculty overloaded with structural responsibilities. As a means of solution, the schools have their respective faculty development programs, while PERSETIA assists in conducting regular theological conference and faculty exchange. In recent years, a specific way to develop human resources for churches and theological institutions was launched through the program of "training the new breed of young Indonesian theologians". PERSETIA, supported by the National Council of Churches and overseas partners, facilitate opportunities for brilliant students to study abroad. Some students are now in the process of recruitment. The objectives are as follows:

• Quality of leadership with a deep concern and strong commitment to the mission of the Indonesian churches in the context of plurality of religions and cultures and of social change of Indonesian and global society.
   

• A well founded theological scholarship with its academic and scientific substance and methodology, and communication, based on ecumenical, missiological, pastoral and dialogical-reconciliatory Christian spiritualities.
   

• Diversity of expertise in theological fields with one vision and commitment to the mission of the Indonesian church in society, and related to a clear understanding of current affairs and development in ecumenical movement.

The management problem of theological education can be summed up as the leadership crises in most Christian institutions. In some cases, organizational relationship to support churches as well as internal conflicts complicates the situation. Financial problems speak for themselves. Poor facilities and limited library holdings, and insufficient number of full-time faculty are common to theological schools. Underpayment of theological faculties averted them from developing more seriously their teaching quality, such as research and writing. An unhealthy phenomenon in most of theological institutions is the policy of increasing the number of students to get more cash from their school fees. This tend to lower the standard of admission, produce low quality output, and, in the long run, affect the churches� life. Churches have to be more pro-active and take greater responsibility in providing financial support to theological education. The relation of the two parties (church and theological institution) should be repositioned to be mutually supportive in their common mission. Both parties should work out more serious programs towards the ideal of financial self-reliance of theological institutions.

New Paradigm

For some time, doing theology in Indonesia was in the form of an "implanted theology". This way of adapting imported theological thoughts into the local context is still a common practice. Genuine contextual theology emerged as genuine Christian response to the actual local situation. Its main characters are the double wrestling actions and the socio-cultural ways to formulate or express theology. A genuine contextual theology consists of two aspects: Christian theological response to social humanity and ecological situations of local community, and local cultural creativity in doing theology.

Bipolar base of context and text to do contextual theology needs a different methodology. In order to get a better understanding of the context it is inevitable to employ methodology of related disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, etc. More subjects of such disciplines were thus added to theology curriculum. Skills in social research became a common requirement for both students and faculty.

Judo Poerwowidagdo, a prominent Indonesian theologian and ecumenical leader, sketched a new paradigm for theological education in a booklet, Towards the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities for Theological Education (Geneva: WCC, 1994). He compared 13 different aspects of the old and the new paradigms as follows:

As had been mentioned, contextual theology in Indonesia began in the 1970s as a double wrestle of church to text and to context. At the national level, the main concern was the participation of churches in national "social-economic development ideology" of the New Order. The churches then in ecumenical circles addressed the ideology by two main concerns of developing human resources, and of the basic principle of national development � which was formally adopted by the nation: "National development as implementation of Pancasila". In line with ecumenical discussion on Church and Society, basic characters of church participation were formulated in a conference of National Church and Society in 1974 in two pairs of catchwords, "positive-critic and creative-realistic". These well-known words, coined by the late Gen. T. B. Simatupang, the prominent Indonesian ecumenical Christian leader, functioned as guidelines of church engagement in national development. They mean positive but critical towards any developmental idea or activity, and proactive-creative but realistic in engagement.

Some critical evaluation comments about Indonesian churches� participation in the period of the New Order (1967-1997) can be mentioned. First, while the economic priority of the New Order was relevant for the country, the churches did not develop a serious prophetic resistance to state economy, rather than people economy. Neither did the churches critique the anti-democratic political policy of the New Order. The pseudo-military regime systematically applied social peace and order approach for economic development, while people were not given chances to develop genuine harmonious relationship and political maturity.

Another major critique is that most of the churches conducted activities using the top-down approach. The churches worked for � not with � the communities. This approach caused not only constant financial dependence upon partner institutions overseas, but also systematically erased active participation of local communities in both financial and creative initiations, and even developed a kind of mendicant mentality. It was much later that communities were treated as co-subject in the development work.

There was also a discrepancy in theological formulations adopted in the churches� conferences or consultations at various levels. While the findings were so neatly formulated in theologically sound arguments, practical participation betrayed the spirit of inclusiveness, of ecumenical cooperation, or of holistic ministries.

Social Issues

Developing contextual theology in Indonesia is not just concerned with socio-economic issues of the country. Indonesia recently showed an increased index of poverty, mass unemployment, women migrant workers, under-nutrition, etc. Other classic problems to be addressed are, to name a few, the imposition of global values through the modern media upon traditional cultures, inter-faith relations, and struggle for social justice and democracy. In the recent decade, theological education is exposed to the emerging problems of communal conflict and religious radicalism, ecological crises caused by unwise exploitation of natural resources, and modern social maladies of HIV and AIDS, and drugs. As a country with a vast majority of Muslims, a specific concern is to develop better understanding of Islam in order to develop relevant Christian theological and missiological perspectives for interfaith relations. Faculty and students of some theological schools are already engaged in interfaith dialogues in academia and in social services.

Theological education and doing theology in Indonesia, as elsewhere, must deal with its ecclesiastical context. There are at least four major areas of concern. First is ecumenical networking amidst the cleavages of mainstream and narrow fundamentalist churches. Institutional relations as well as more profound theological dialogues should be developed between the two parties. Second, the organizational set-up of churches as ethnic or regional churches should be given a theological insight to avoid an introvert primordial character of their mission. Third has to do with issues that arise from leadership crisis in the local and ecumenical levels, including the role of women. Concern for women�s leadership and gender and feminist issues should not be confined to having a certain number of women in structural positions, but in developing genuine feminist leadership characters in management perspective and commitment. A common phenomenon in theological education in Indonesia in the recent decade is having a small number of female faculty, whereas there is an increased number of women in the student body. In time, women will outnumber their male colleagues. Ritualistic character of the churches with its demand to construct exclusive church buildings is another concern which should be put under theological judgment and renewal. These concerns call for the need to de-construct theological traditions inherited from Western missionaries.

Theological education in Indonesia and its contextual orientation should address Indonesian social and ecclesiastical context in four interrelated perspectives: of humanity to religions and interfaith relations, of justice to socio-economics and politics, of environmental preservation to cultural modernization and globalization, and of gender to male-dominated relations in society.

An example of doing contextual theology in Indonesian context was adopted in a consultation on "disaster theology" by Oase Intim � an institution to promote contextual theology in Eastern Indonesia � in July 2005 in Makassar, South Sulawesi. Dr. Robinson Butarbutar, one of the participants, wrote a short account of the consultation:

The consultation was done in a participatory manner which gave the participants ample time to share the existing and (traditionally) held views of theodicy in relation to natural and man-made calamities (both by those away from the disasters themselves and by those directly affected by the disasters). The participatory plenary, group discussion and drama methods were used by the participants to de-construct (traditionally) held theological views on disasters, and then reconstruct them. The reconstruction process was just a beginning. Only some materials for a comprehensive theology of natural disasters were gathered. It was discovered that there are theological understandings that have to be thrown away (into a rubbish bucket); there are theological understandings that have to be put into a workshop to be recycled; and there are theological materials that can be used for a reconstruction of theology of disasters. Thereafter, the participants were also asked to write their own confession on disasters. The participants were asked to bring home stones of theological reconstruction they have already gathered for their use in building up their own proper and sound theology of disasters in their own context. Throughout the consultation the idea that the position of the victims as the starting point for reconstruction of the theology of disaster guided the participants. Top-down or elite theological reconstruction was not favoured.

The process of deconstruction-reconstruction, of bottom-up approach and of positive attitude to living theologies in the grassroots was also employed in a previous consultation on "Rethinking Critical Asian Principle" � the main perspective developed in the ATESEA, since 1970s � by representatives of ATESEA member schools in Eastern Indonesia. In fact, it is a common approach among some Indonesian theologians.

Cyber Resources?

While doing theology in the Indonesian context, a major drawback is the scarcity of contextual theological books. Published theological books that are available are either translation of traditional theologies, or imported foreign contextual theologies. There are hardly any new publications. Even books written by missionaries in the 1950s were reprinted. Indonesian theologians do not write or, if they do, they do not write books; they only write articles. Some articles are usually published by compiling it into a book to honor a dignitary or commemorate an important event. Some theological dissertations or theses were also published. It seems true that a culture of oral tradition still prevails among Indonesian Protestant theologians, as compared to Roman Catholic or Muslim scholars. There should be more programs related to faculty development, such as sabbatical leave, post doctoral research or any such programs that would facilitate opportunities for Indonesian theologians to write and publish their theological thoughts.

Theological education in this era of information and sophisticated technologies such as internet is giving possibilities for communicating and sharing activities and materials in theological education. Some major schools have websites where theological thoughts are shared to visitors. Some schools set up networking for common library catalogues. Internet, indeed, provides very rich materials for theological education. Lack of written materials such as books and journals can be supplemented by materials from the internet. Both students and faculty should equip themselves with skills and tools of information technology. The association of theological schools in Indonesia motivated its member schools to provide IT facilities on their campus, including tools for audio-visual aids in learning process. In the website of the association a page is dedicated to links of its member schools and some Asian theological schools and resources (visit http://www.persetia.org then click "Link" or "Webresources").

In closing, theological education in Indonesia functions to train servant-leaders and to develop relevant theological thoughts for church and society. The traditional functions of theological schools as exclusive centers for training church ministers have eventually changed as the need of church leadership opened to a broader spectrum, including participation in developing religious discourses for the public. The concern and commitment of theological education in Indonesia to contextual theology has opened a great possibility for the country�s history and rich socio-cultural background to contribute significant thoughts and leadership for the nation and ecumenical life. Furthering this cause depends on the works of visionary leadership in theological institutions and in the churches.

1. Zakaria J. Ngelow is instructor of Church History and Islam at Sekolah Tinggi Teologi Rantepao (STT) , in Toraja, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The former Rector of STT INTIM, Makassar, South Sulawesi, he is the Eastern Indonesia Area Dean of SEAGST and Chairperson of the Association for Theological Education in Indonesia (PERSETIA).