Book Review: Michel Picard and Rémy Madinier (Eds.) The Politics of religion in Indonesia: syncretism, orthodoxy, and religious contention in Java and Bali. London and New York: Routledge. 2011 (original) (raw)

This volume, edited by two French scholars associated with the École Français d'Etrême Orient (EFEO) in Indonesia, adds some much needed detail to the grand narrative of religion in this largest Muslim nation-state of the world. Most of the relevant accounts so far have been dominated by speculations over the history of the Islamization process, the role of Islam in resisting colonialism and in post-independence state-building, and present-day challenges of the country's religious pluralism. The present work provides a number of case studies from Java and Bali arguing, that even in this age of the globalized practice of religion, the local performance of ritual and localized manifestations of religious practice still matter deeply. Subscribing to the thesis that religion is always "mediatized by the state and its religious politics" (p. xi), the editors detail the complexity of Indonesia's religious situation; in the introduction, editor Michel Picard problematizes the use of the Sanskrit-derived term agama as the equivalent of "religion." Criticizing the Eurocentric normative character of the term, he also contends that it lacks descriptive and analytical accuracy, as the term is typically reserved exclusively for scriptural religions with universalist pretences (i.e. Christianity and Islam) and excludes Indonesia's many indigenous belief systems (kepercayaan). Specifically, Picard claims that the use of the term agama disregards the significance and resilience of indigenous systems of belief and the ways in which such systems have influenced the practices of Christianity and Islam in Indonesia, namely by creating unique, local forms of these "world religions." For example, says Picard, the enduring indigenous beliefs of Javanism (kejawen), when incorporated into the practice of Islam, create a religious performance referred to as kebatinan, a local form of Islam that the term agama fails to capture. Other forms of co-mingled religious practices similarly influenced by indigenous beliefs emerged in the 1970s under the names kejiwaan and kerohanian. From the 1980s onward, however, these local manifestations of religion have been challenged as less than "authentic" Islam by traditionalist , modernist-and increasingly Islamist-Muslims. Even these recent developments continue to reflect the-in the eyes of the editors-felicity of the term 'mystical synthesis,' introduced by the leading expert on Javanese history, Merle Ricklefs. Whereas Javanism felt the squeeze of both state authority and (self-proclaimed) Islamic orthodoxy in both colonial and post-colonial times, the Balinese fared only slightly better as they managed to receive recognition for their religious practices as agama. The first part of the volume is dedicated to Java and opens with co-editor Rémy Madinier's discussion of the spread of Christianity in the early twentieth century. The narrative revolves around the Jesuit missionary Franciscus van Lith, a staunch advocate of the adaptation of Catholicism to the cultural settings of Java. Van Lith favored an emphasis on Christianity's "animist-Hindu-Buddhist (that is, non-Islamic) dimension" (p. 32). Stressing continuities between religious practices rather than differences, this strategy enabled van Lith to bridge the Kristen Londo and Kristen Jowo varieties of Javanese Christianity. Opposed to swift baptism of the indigenous population, he focused instead on education and, in particular, the training of a new Catholic elite. In spite of the Church's suspicions of van Lith's "flexible spiritual identity" (p. 43), his approach proved to be highly successful, contributing in no small measure to the saint-like standing he still enjoys among Indonesia's Catholic minority, which attributes its disproportionately large political influence largely to van Lith. The merging of Islam with local religious practice has not been quite as seamless. Andrée Feillard's "The constrained place of local tradition" examines the discourse of the