07059
January 30, 2007

‘A purifying fire’

A PC(USA) missionary letter from Indonesia

by Bernie and Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta
PC(USA) mission co-workers

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — This morning I arose at 4:00 a.m. as the call to prayer shattered the silence. “Rise up! Rise up! Prayer is better than sleep!”

     Sleepily, I climbed with my coffee to our crows nest, which looks out towards the volcano. I began my day in silence and prayer, following the example of my gentle Muslim neighbors. I love to watch the sun come up and ignite the tropical colors.

     Suddenly, fiery lava shot down the slopes in the darkness. Power and energy slumber fitfully beneath our feet. The fire both destroys and creates this tropical paradise.

     Similarly, there is power in this beautiful people, power to create and destroy. Sometimes we wonder which is stronger. The earthquake of last May and the religious violence of some years ago are still vivid memories.

     Farsijana is director of LPPM (Institute for Research and Community Development) at Duta Wacana Christian University (UKDW). She works with faculty from all the university departments to develop “action-based” research projects all over Indonesia. “Action-based” means the research is designed to address real problems and lead to real action. She is a fountain of ideas and empowers many people to carry them out. Recently, she won a major grant from the government for a project to empower poor communities in Papua.

     This semester, Farsijana will co-teach a new course for the Technical Faculty on technology and social change.  She continues teaching anthropology and sociology of religion to huge classes of theology students. After work, she is the district head of the Indonesian Women’s Coalition (KPI).  Several women from KPI work at our house every day on the long-term task of earthquake recovery.

     Farsijana led a series of workshops for women survivors, pairing village women with intellectuals. Each team prepared a chapter based on their experience of surviving the quake. The resulting book, on women and disaster, is now in preparation for publication.

     Most of the women in KPI are Muslims. They have grown very close as they work together for others. Farsijana shows the love of Christ to them and learns from the richness of their faith. This Christmas she showed another side. Our families gathered from around Indonesia and the world. With a house full of children and young people, Farsijana reveled in cooking and caring for our many guests.

     Four years ago, I relinquished my administrative duties at UKDW and concentrated on teaching at UKDW, the State Islamic University (UIN), and Gadjah Mada University (UGM). I love teaching philosophy, social science, and ethics to mainly Muslim graduate students. It is like a whole new career, learning to see the world with different eyes. In March 2006, with the support of PCUSA, UKDW, UGM, and UIN, I agreed to become the director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS-Yogya).

     ICRS-Yogya sponsors an international, interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in inter-religious studies. It’s the first religious studies doctoral program in the world that is co-sponsored by major Muslim, Christian, and national-secular universities. We defied long traditions of mutual distrust and separation in order to build a program that integrates Islamic studies, Christian theology, and the social scientific study of religions. Perhaps only in Indonesia, the largest and most dynamic Muslim population in the world, could such an experiment succeed.

     The rectors of the three universities and the Sultan legally established ICRS-Yogya on Oct. 6, 2006, by signing a detailed Certificate of Agreement. In November, I traveled with the rector of UIN, Prof. Amin Abdullah, to the American Academy of Religion in Washington, DC, to meet with representatives of prominent universities to establish partnerships for exchanging students and faculty. We are developing relationships with universities such as Berkeley, Duke, Georgetown, Hartford, Harvard, Leiden, Nijmegen, Princeton, Singapore, and Temple. In January we welcomed religious scholars from all over Indonesia and several other countries for an international conference to launch ICRS-Yogya..

     For centuries, Westerners have come to Indonesia to study the unique religious communities of this country, where major religions are protected by law but atheism is illegal. Most Indonesians who want to study religions descriptively go to the West. In Indonesia, religions are usually studied apologetically, to prove the superiority of one religion. ICRS-Yogya studies religions descriptively, by listening to the convictions and observing the practices of real believers. There’s a long history of religious tolerance in Indonesia that is threatened by a small but growing number of religious radicals. ICRS-Yogya will develop religious leaders from all religions who understand the sincere practices of other groups.

     There is creative power behind ICRS-Yogya. Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists gather around a new gash in the earth that reveals a purifying fire. Like Moses before the burning bush, we take off our shoes and ask each other what we see. Each one believes that his or her revelation is true. But we are learning to bear witness to what we see of the power and beauty of God, without neglecting to listen to our neighbors.