T

he establishment of the Inter-Religious Council (IRC) in Indonesia recently, as reported in The Jakarta Post (Jan. 29) is very positive. 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”.

But, like the question raised by 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?” 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 elite. Why?

While paying attention to the inter-religious dialogue, attempts to develop this dialogue should be accompanied by intra-religious dialogue: Dialogue within each religion. Using academic terms, scholars often point out that in inter-religious dialogue we deal with our “far-other” and in intra-religious dialogue we deal with our “near-other”.

This point is raised because on a practical level, we cannot deny the fact that there are different traditions and practices within every religion.

In this context, intra-religious dialogue channels the internal conversation toward 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 inter-religious 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 (Kenneth Paul Kramer in the Buddhist-Christian Studies, 1990).

We can now turn to the second point about the secondary elite. It becomes evident that the success of any initiative does not just depend on the strong voice and position of the leaders, who are the primary elite, but also on the secondary elite. What is meant by “secondary elite” 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 elite”.

First, within religious communities, the secondary elite 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.  

Second, we may call our religious education teachers a secondary elite 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 alarm 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, as proposed by several Indonesian Muslim scholars.

Third, another group that we may call a secondary elite 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.

The establishment of the IRC in Indonesia deserves our support. 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 elite. The late former president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid often said the core of every religion is the genuine brotherhood of humanity.



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.