Can religious education enhance peace, harmony?

Can religious education enhance peace, harmony?

Zakiyuddin Baidhawy, Surakarta, Central Java

For more than three decades now, Indonesia's education system
did little to teach an appreciation and respect for our religious
and cultural diversity. The trend was toward homogenization in
the guise of protecting the national culture, as systematically
introduced through our schools. Javanese culture was considered
the central paradigm, and other cultures were marginalized. In
addition, the reorganization of groups in a number of provinces
resulted in de-emphasizing the variety of cultural identities.
The process of homogenization and cultural hegemony was taught in
civic education and even religious education.

Consequently, to maintain the stability of the nation-state,
the government maintains a de facto policy of limiting the
freedom of religion. Only religions officially acknowledged by
the government have the right to be practiced in Indonesia. To
create a harmonious life among religious communities, the
government has initiated many dialogs among religious leaders and
scholars.

To achieve the stated objective of maintaining stability, the
government has used religious education to indoctrinate students
with state-sanctioned concepts of religious freedom.
Confucianism, which had the misfortune of being associated with
communism during the Soeharto era, is still not recognized as an
official religion. This model of religious education
systematically negated mutual respect and neglected the
contributions of minority groups to Indonesian culture.

Religious education in public and religious schools adopted an
exclusive model, teaching their own systems of religion as the
truth and the only path to salvation. They dealt superficially
with the importance of harmony among religious communities.

The term "harmony," when introduced by indoctrination, is
artificial because it does not reflect dialectic dynamics or
cooperation among religious communities. During the New Order era
-- and even until now -- harmony was configured in passive terms
because religious encounters were permitted in only one framework
designed by the government, without the participation of civil
religious leaders.

When the state or schools teach about official religions, it
means that education has failed to promote the values of
democratic pluralism. By not teaching about the values of
democracy, the state and the schools diminish the role of
diversity and limit their pupils' and people's political freedom.

During the last decade Indonesia has experienced a paradigm
shift in the framework of managing social diversity. This shift
impacts education because school curricula must address issues of
living together as a united nation despite differences in
religion and ethnicity. This is especially true of the religious
education curriculum.

Religious education is an essential building block for a
multicultural theological framework. It must lead the way toward
minimizing a dogmatic, indoctrinating approach to the education
process. Religious education should exemplify a dialog approach
with materials that can support pupils' and teachers' diverse
religious beliefs and practices.

To constitute this model of religious education for peace and
harmony, some new duties await our attention.

First, religious education must accept various approaches. It
must treat every religion as a unique system of faith and
religious practice, while understanding and appreciating the
realities of inter and intra-religious differences.

Second, this step requires recognizing that no tradition
exists in isolation. All religious traditions are shaped in
dialog and competition with others. They influence and transform
each other.

This raises two challenges: Each system of theology must
recognize others as partners in dialog, and religious education
needs to develop appropriate and suitable methods to promote an
understanding of inter-religious relationships and the process of
intra-religious transformation.

Third, a contextual approach to religious education is needed.
It is important to consider social anthropology as a basis of an
interpretive approach to religious education. Religion must be
studied in context, considering cultural issues, inter-religious
differences and various levels of interaction in religions and
religious traditions that are practiced in a particular region.

Fourth, religious education curricula must respect plurality
at an individual level. Many people experience layers of
identities in terms of culture and religion. In real life, the
effort to structure exclusive, individual identities often
competes with the experience of a plural identity. At the level
of society, many different traditions contribute to our national
identity. On the personal level this is also true.

If we accept that no tradition has exclusive rights in the
community of faith and that most people are inspired by more than
one source of religion or belief, religious education will need
to embrace a more open and experience-based approach.

Last but not least, religious education must combine theology
and scientific study, tradition and criticism. To achieve this
goal, religious education must approach religion from two
perspectives: From within as a living source of faith, morality
and life orientation, and from without as the object of critical
investigation.

Thus, religious education requires a dialectic between the
insider and the outsider, an ethos both in theology and religious
education, and a vehicle of interdisciplinary collaboration
between religious traditions and scholarship.

The writer is a researcher at the Center for Cultural Studies
and Social Change at Muhammadiyah University in Surakarta,
Central Java. He can be contacted at profetika@yahoo.com.