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.