Christianity and the Chinese in Indonesia: Ethnicity, Education and Enterprise

The field of religions of Indonesia is dominated by the sheer size of the population of Muslims, which represent 87 percent of the Indonesian population. Christians form the second largest religious group and represent the largest concentration of members of minority ethnic groups with 7 percent represented by Protestants, 3 percent by Catholics. Christianity in Indonesia is an understudied topic; comprehensive works on the topic were published over a decade ago and despite the growing importance of Christianity as a minority religion in the country, there has been little published work in English on the subject in the last decade. If Christianity in Indonesia has not been sufficiently considered, works published in English on Christianity among the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia are even scarcer, notwithstanding the fact that almost half of the Chinese minority are either Protestant or Catholic. This volume fills a scholarly gap by addressing three aspects of Christianity in urban Indonesia: ethnicity (focusing on the ethnic Chinese), education (on private Christian schools) and enterprise (on the capital and class featured in charismatic/ Pentecostal churches). The author addresses issues of state-religion relations and state policy on religion; contested religious space; elite Chinese philanthropy; evangelism and multiculturalism; citizenship education; and Christian faith aspirations. The thirteen essays, which include material previously published in journals, narrate the social reality of urban Christians in contemporary Indonesia, and is essential reading for Asian Studies scholars.