Appreciating the Establishment of the Inter-Religious Council
Gabriel Faimau*
The establishment of the Inter-Religious Council (IRC) in Indonesia recently, as reported in The Jakarta Post (Jan. 29, 2010), deserves our appreciation. Indeed the launching of this forum is a timely response by our religious leaders to safeguard the spirit and the soul of our beloved country. The forum itself aims “to build communication among communities from various religions, promote peace and tackle horizontal conflicts, by developing an understanding of pluralism within Indonesian society.”
Inter-religious dialogue initiatives in fact are not new in our country. Such initiatives have been flourishing, at least for the past two decades. However, what makes the initiative of formalizing this IRC an important milestone is the fact that it embodies the spirit of good will and demonstrates a serious intention to protect our national harmony. Moreover, it tells us that we are a realistic nation that always faces up to the various challenges and never gives up in attempting to find creative ways for moving forward.
Echoing the question raised by The Rev. S.A.E. Nababan of the Council of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) at the launching of this forum, we might now simply ask, “So, what is next?” I would argue here that the success of the IRC depends on two basic developments: further advanced steps to strengthen our intra-religious dialogue and proper attention to the role of the secondary elites. Why?
While paying attention to the inter-religious dialogue, attempts to develop this dialogue should be accompanied also by intra-religious dialogue, that is, dialogue within each religious tradition. Using academic terms, scholars often point out that in the inter-religious dialogue we deal with our ‘far-other’ and in the intra-religious dialogue we deal with our ‘near-other’. This point is raised because on the practical level, we cannot deny the fact that there are also different traditions and practices within every religion.
In this context, intra-religious dialogue channels the internal conversation towards communicating the differences between the traditions, views, texts, teachings and practices within any one religion. The importance of intra-religious dialogue lies in the argument that it leads to the public arena of interreligious dialogue, through which conversation is generated from a renewed self-understanding on the one hand and a new understanding of the dialogue partner on the other hand (Kramer, 1990).
We can now turn to the second point about the secondary elites. It becomes evident that the success of any initiative does not simply depend on the strong voice and position of the top leaders who are the primary elites but also on the secondary elites. What I mean by the term ‘secondary elites’ is the local leaders who are in direct contact with people at the grassroots level on a regular basis.
In the context of our discussion, at least, there are three groups of ‘secondary elites’. Firstly, within religious communities, secondary elites include various positions such as local imams, priests, pastors and religious leaders from various faiths. These leaders play an important role because they are dealing directly with their people and therefore their voices carry a lot of influence.
Secondly, we may also call our religious education teachers secondary elites on the grounds that they are in direct contact with our future leaders and young citizens of our country. We might still remember the shocking findings of a survey in 2008 conducted by the Center for Islamic and Society Studies (PPIM) at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta. As reported by this newspaper (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 26, 2008), the survey indicated that most Islamic studies teachers in public and private schools in Java oppose pluralism while tending toward radicalism and conservatism.
Of course this survey should be followed by a qualitative study. However, it does give us an alarming call to deal seriously with the formation of our religious education teachers in connection with our undeniably pluralistic society. Moreover, this formation should be accompanied by the development of a creative and contextualized religious education system that is appreciative of our multicultural society.
Thirdly, another group that we may call secondary elites is our interfaith activists. They are the ‘soldiers’ on the front lines who know the real conditions and the real needs. Various studies indicate that the success of inter-religious dialogue is determined also by how inter-religious activists use religious language to define their civic relationships. This means that inter-religious activists have a special place in our efforts to safeguard our peaceful co-existence.
We applaud the establishment of the IRC in Indonesia. While the success of this council will depend on our willingness to work hard, special attention needs to be given to the discourse of intra-religious dialogue and the important role played by our secondary elites. The late Gus Dur often said that the core of every religion is the genuine brotherhood of humanity. With the establishment of the Inter-Religious Council (IRC), we are hopeful that our commitment to protect our pluralistic society may lead us to the realization of this truth.**
The writer is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Bristol, United Kingdom and is co-editor of the Journal of NTT Studies.
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