ZAINAL ABIDIN BAGIR

The Happy Theologian 

                              

Studying other religions hasn’t led to a dilution of Zainal Abidin Bagir’s faith.

“My experiences and reading of concepts from Buddhism and Christianity have enriched my understanding of Islam,” said the Director of the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies [CRCS] at Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University [UGM].

“Many religious leaders fear that people will change their beliefs if they learn about other faiths. They are suspicious and fear competition.  They make everything political.

“It’s probably a cliché, but dialogue dispels concerns. It’s unfortunate that our education system puts children in boxes based on faith.  When we group students on the basis of their interests and not their religion they are motivated to understand more.

“We don’t need to preach pluralism.  When there’s open space it becomes natural.”

This year Dr Bagir has been a visiting lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington.  It’s the second time he’s been in New Zealand, having been involved in an inter-faith conference several years ago.

He’s been running two undergraduate units – Islam in the Contemporary World and Political Islam. An earlier unit on Democracy and Pluralism raised questions like: ‘When religion is said to be compatible with democracy, does it refer only to the liberal kind? Can democracy live with a conservative religion? If diversity is a mark of today’s democracy, what kind of pluralism is required by a pluralist democratic polity?’

Back at UGM he teaches postgraduates in the academic study of religion, and the philosophy of science and religion and contemporary issues.  He said there were no restrictions on class discussions because his students knew what to expect and were attracted by inquiry.

However In 2012 the university banned Canadian liberal Muslim author Irshad Manji from speaking at the CRCS after threats of violence from extremists.

The prohibition angered Dr Bagir and others who condemned the decision. “Better some shattered glass than our broken integrity,” he said.  “We should not give leeway to people who claim to represent certain religious views.  If it’s a crime, it’s a crime. [Since then a new rector has been elected.]

“If I could give a message to president elect Joko Widodo then it’s to re-establish the rule of law and give equality to all citizens, to support their human rights regardless of religion.  By not acting against intolerance we privilege intolerance.”

Dr Bagir’s early interest was mathematics, a subject he studied for his first degree before switching to religious studies.  “I thought I needed to learn about other things,” he said. “I was more interested in intellectual issues. Moving from maths to philosophy was not so big a jump as people imagine.”

He was born in Solo, Central Java, to “well-off, though not rich” parents with a batik factory. It was a liberal family where his father, a writer on faith issues who later opened a free school, encouraged broad discussion of religion among his eight children. 

This upbringing nurtured an inquiring mind, which led the young man away from calculus and into philosophy.  As a teenager he started to wrestle with the troubling ‘what’s it all about?’ and ‘why am I here?’ questions of life.

He moved to the West Java capital so he could study at the prestigious Institut Teknologi Bandung [ITB] – a tertiary educator with “a better intellectual atmosphere and the opportunity to be critical.” 

That was in 1984 when he was 18 and General Soeharto’s Orde Baru [New Order] government exercised total control.  In that year the military opened fire on anti-government protestors at Tanjung Priok in Jakarta, officially killing 24, though this figure is disputed. 

There were allegations that a Christian soldier entering a mosque while wearing boots had triggered rioting. At the time the media was strictly controlled but the ITB students were getting information about the incident through underground publications.  It was a disturbing discovery about the reality of religion and politics.

At ITB Dr Bagir came across the work of British philosopher and Nobel prizewinner Bertrand Russell.  He also started out as a mathematician, publishing the classic Principles of Mathematics when he was 31.  Later he became a famous leader of anti-war protests.

Like Russell Dr Bagir was drawn to logic.  He won a scholarship to study for a master’s degree at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization in Kuala Lumpur, and then went to the US, taking a doctorate at Indiana University.

In 2005 his book Science and Religion in the Post Colonial World: Interfaith Perspectives was published in English, though most of his writings are in Indonesian.  Four years later he was appointed Indonesian associate for an UNESCO Chair in Inter-religious and Intercultural Relations.

One of the major differences between Indonesia and the West is the separation of faith and state. Dr Bagir said he recognized the difficulty in changing government policy on matters like the inclusion of religion on citizens’ identification cards but said the option to put ‘other’ on the cards was already available. 

However he acknowledged this was not always easy in small communities where officials made Islam the default religion for the non-religious. The assumption that a person who didn’t follow a religion was a communist, or had no morality, still persisted.

“This is the result of more than 30 years of government propaganda and the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren,” he said.

“I’m a pluralist, though not in the MUI [Indonesian Ulema Council] sense.”  In 2005 the MUI issued a fatwa, or prohibition, against pluralism defined as seeing all religions as equal.

“Not all religions are the same, but we need to respect diversity.  It contributes to the richness of life.  All the major religions accept submission to the will of God.

“My father once asked me to do ‘what makes you happy’.  Religion should be about doing good to others, how you deal with other people.  That’s more important than faith as a personal issue.”  

(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 November 2014)

SIR LLOYD GEERING

The last Western heretic     

                               

Can a Christian remain true to her or his faith while rejecting the resurrection of Jesus?

This Easter Christians around the world, including millions in Indonesia, recognised their calendar’s high point.  For many, worship at Easter identifies commitment to their faith.

Professor Sir Lloyd Geering was among them for he’s a regular churchgoer.  But the New Zealand theologian doesn’t accept any of the great tenets of the faith he follows, virgin birth, the Holy Trinity and the Resurrection.

“My own theological journey through life has been one of continual change and development,” he told a congregation celebrating his 70 years as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church.

“I have slowly come to realise that there is no such thing as unchangeable Christian truths.” 

Such comments would result in banishment from many pulpits, even charges of heresy.  This is what happened to Sir Lloyd in 1967 when he was accused of ‘doctrinal error.. and disturbing the peace and unity of the church.’

Earlier he had written that the church had long misinterpreted the resurrection story as resuscitation, and that the bones of Jesus still lie in Palestine.  Not surprisingly the reaction was white hot.

The trial made media headlines around the world with Sir Lloyd labelled as ‘the last Western heretic’.  The charges collapsed after the accused mounted a vigorous defence based on his scholarship and reasoning.

Although Sir Lloyd has visited and lectured in several countries it’s unlikely any church in Indonesia would welcome his presence, even though the Archipelago is on the speaking circuit for overseas preachers, often from the US.

These evangelicals draw thousands to big rallies.  They don’t inspire Sir Lloyd who has been outspoken in his hostility towards zealots of any faith.

“Fundamentalists are people who see traditional religions being challenged and fear the change,” he said. “They feel their own ways are under threat and react because they are too lazy to think.”

Sir Lloyd said he’d learned more from Buddhism than any other faith outside Christianity. Buddhism had survived for 2,500 years without belief in God, and could point the way to Christianity without God

He also paid respect to Islam, saying that the faith in its early days, particularly in Andalusia (a region in Southern Spain once controlled by Muslim Moors), had contributed much to the world’s learning. This included mathematics, the West’s numbering system, science and “a new burst of theology.”

“If it hadn’t been for the contribution of Islam, Christianity might have died a natural death,” he said. “Religions provide the time-tested frameworks of values. They help us learn how to be human beings and live with one another.

“Diversity of religions is a very good thing. What we’ve learned through ecology is that life evolved because of diversity. As humans we are an unified organism, not separate bodies.

“Religion must be relevant to the times in which we live. Christianity in its classical form had already died when I was a student – it was preached as a way of life. Unfortunately ‘religion’ is a blocking word. It’s associated with the supernatural.”

Attempts to find a bookstore in Indonesia’s major cities stocking any of Sir Lloyd’s 16 books, including titles like Christianity without God and In Praise of the Secular, was a doomed exercise.

Sir Lloyd, who has just turned 95, has been a widower twice. He was knighted in 2009, remains physically spry and drives to St Andrews’s on The Terrace, a Wellington Presbyterian church where he is the theologian in residence and a regular speaker and debater.

The church supports same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian clergy.  It’s part of the Progressive Christianity movement popular in the US and Australasia, though unlikely to take root in Indonesia until criticism of religion is accepted and divorced from atheism.

Although Christianity in Indonesia is reported to be expanding it tends to be charismatic and conservative, with Protestant congregations sometimes splitting and forming new denominations.

In Australasia congregations are shrinking and churches closing, helping energize ecumenism.  Doctrinal differences matter less when the prayerful depart the pews.

Preachers from other faiths, including Islam, Judaism and Buddhism have spoken at St Andrew’s and read their holy books at the lectern. An Indonesian gamelan orchestra has played in the church.

Lloyd Geering was born in New Zealand’s South Island where Presbyterians from Scotland first settled in the 19^th century.  His family was only mildly religious.

A brilliant mathematician he later turned to theology and became a university lecturer in his homeland and Australia.  He remains Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington and is a drawcard for theologians of all faiths from across the world.

Attitudes towards him have mellowed over the decades from vilification as the most divisive man in the country to praise as the nation’s leading public intellectual.

He is a member of the Jesus Seminar, a select group of largely Western Biblical scholars that’s been re-examining and re-translating the scriptures.  They’ve been seeking what they call the ‘historical Jesus’ as opposed to the figure constructed by later contributors to the Bible.

Sir Lloyd’s lectures and preaching are intellectual exercises, not happy clapping and calls to prayer, which he doesn’t support. He has made a series of TV programs about his philosophy set in the Holy Land.  He says he has no expectation of an afterlife.

“The Biblical witness to the path of faith starts with the story of Abraham, a figure who is equally honored in what later became three great faith traditions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” he said.

“Like Abraham of old I am not at all clear about the way ahead, either for the church or for the human race as a whole.

“But I continue to go into the unknown, walking the path of faith that started in his time and drawing my values and inspiration from all who have followed in his steps.”

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