7 - In Each Other's Shadow: Building Pentecostal Churches in Muslim Java

Summary

“For the pillars of the temple stand apart And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”

— Kahlil Gibran

INTRODUCTION

Home to the world's largest Muslim population, Indonesia would seem an unlikely destination for a Christian revival. The rapid growth of Pentecostal congregations across the archipelago in recent years, however, reveals just such a development. Today, Indonesia not only nourishes numerous vibrant Pentecostal communities, it also accommodates dozens of auditorium-size mega-churches filled with thousands of worshippers in several Muslimmajority cities. The historians Aritonang and Steenbrink suggest that among the 17 million Indonesian Protestants, at least 6 million are Pentecostals, including those who are still registered in mainline churches (2008, pp. 882–83). In its celebration of the Holy Spirit's gifts — speaking in tongues, healing, and prophesying — Pentecostalism is particularly successful in converting mainline Protestants and Catholics (Chao 2011; Nagata 2005; Robinson 2005). Over the last twenty years, almost in parallel to the children of Javanist Muslims turning into consciously orthodox Muslims, the offspring of Indonesian mainline ethnic church members have embraced the identity of born-again Christians in great numbers.

Charismatic churches are growing apace in Indonesia amidst rising tensions between religious communities. In West Java during the last decade, animosities between certain hardline Islamizers and aggressive evangelicals have triggered attacks against churches (Jones 2010, p. 1). On the other end of the archipelago, Pentecostalism has been a major rallying point among the Dani of Irian Jaya in opposition to the rising number of Muslim migrants (Farhadian 2007, p. 117). In 2011, a suicide bomber struck the Bethel Full Gospel Church in Surakarta in Central Java — a Pentecostal church affiliated with the best-selling author Rick Warren's megachurch in the United States — and injured 28 people (Kumar 2011). In the same region earlier that year, extremists had vandalized three churches in retaliation for the allegation that local Pentecostal churches were converting Muslims.

Despite these attacks, evangelical Christian and Pentecostal communities continue to find ways to erect churches throughout the country. As the renowned Indonesian evangelical preacher Stephen Tong commented defiantly when his new mega-church opened in Jakarta in 2008, “I've built a bigger one than all the destroyed churches combined” (Ng 2008). But it is difficult to predict whether the erection of megachurches would incite more anti-Christian sentiments.