They flocked to the open field by the hundreds to praise Allah.
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A religious revolution is transforming Indonesia. Part of the
spiritual blossoming entails Muslims embracing a more conservative form
of faith, mirroring global trends that have meant a proliferation of
headscarves and beards in modern Islamic capitals. More surprising,
though, is the boom in Christianity -- officially Indonesia's second
largest faith and a growing force throughout Asia. Indeed, the number
of Asian Christian faithful exploded to 351 million adherents in 2005,
up from 101 million in 1970, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and
Public Life, based in Washington, D.C.
(See pictures of spiritual healing around the world.)
Much of the growth comes from Pentecostal and evangelical conversions, which have spread charismatic Christianity across the globe and are a large reason for estimates that by 2050 a majority of Christians will be living in developing nations. Already, less than a quarter of the world's 600 million Pentecostals reside in the West, where the modern movement has its roots. Indeed, Pentecostalism is believed by some to be the fastest-growing faith in the world, if measured by conversions as opposed to births.
Because of the relative youth of these evangelical sects, they are less bound by the history of colonial conversion that has complicated the legacy of, say, Roman Catholicism or mainstream Protestantism. Instead, by focusing on personal salvation adapted to local environments, evangelicals, especially Pentecostals, have found great success across Asia in recent years, from Indian metropolises like Chennai to rural China where homegrown sects are drawing in tens of thousands of people each year. The world's largest megachurch is the Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea, which claims a membership of 830,000 people. Its Pentecostal Sunday services regularly attract a quarter of a million people to an upscale neighborhood of Seoul. In poorer regions of Asia, as well as within many ethnic Chinese communities, converts are lured by the so-called prosperity gospel, an American theology linked to charismatic Christianity that promises riches to those who follow a moral path. (Read "The Biology of Belief.")
For many in the global evangelical community, though, it is the faith's inroads in Indonesia -- a nation with some 215 million Muslim adherents -- that are most riveting. Exact figures are hard to gather in a country where conversions from Islam to Christianity face a stigma and likely lead to an underreporting of Christian believers. The 2000 census counted just under 10% of Indonesians as Christians, a figure many Christian leaders believe is too low. Anecdotal evidence paints a compelling picture of the faith's rapid rise. In the early 1960s, for instance, there were no evangelical churches in Temanggung, where the soccer-field revival took place; now there are more than 40. In the capital Jakarta, newly built megachurches that might seem more at home in Texas send steeples into the sky. Other Christians worship at unofficial churches based in hotels and malls, where Sunday services rival shopping as a popular weekend activity. Asia's tallest statue of Jesus Christ, built in 2007, presides over Manado city in eastern Indonesia, while Indonesian cable TV beams 24-hour Christian channels.
State of Grace -- and Disgrace
What is it about evangelical
Christianity that has so resonated in Indonesia? As in many other
crowded, developing-world countries where a person can feel lost in a
teeming slum, the concept of individual salvation is a powerful one. At
the same time, the attempted hijacking of Muslim theology by a small
band of homegrown terrorists who have killed hundreds of Indonesians in
recent years has led some to question their nation's majority faith.
So, too, has the general trend toward a more conservative Islam that
has given rise to hundreds of religiously inspired bylaws, from caning
for beer-drinking to enforced dress codes for women.
Not everyone, though, is celebrating Christianity's boom. Some Muslims view the faith as an unwanted foreign influence, even though Islam, too, is an imported religion. Since the country exchanged dictatorship for democracy more than a decade ago, a great diversity of voices has arisen. But an unfortunate by-product of this pluralism has been an uptick in religious conflict, which has affected unorthodox offshoots of Islam and Christian sects alike. Although bloody outpourings -- like the communal riots that claimed more than 1,000 Christian and Muslim lives in Poso and Ambon around a decade ago -- have ceased, spasms of violence are still occurring.
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SOURCE: TIME Magazine
Hannah Beech
