Religion in Indonesia

This was the most religion-oriented trip I’ve been on in a very long time. It’s not that the travel company focused on it. It’s that the country is very intense about religion.

It’s the kind of place where “What is your religion?” tends to come up soon after “Hello.” Normally that kind of environment makes me uncomfortable. In this case, I just kind of fell into the groove and let it go.

Not everyone in our group felt that way. There was some grumbling about proselytizing, particularly when we hit Bali. I’ve been subjected to much, much worse, and took the grumbles with a grain of salt.

We were told that the country had very good diversity in religion, and that for the most part they all got along. To me, it looked more like religion was stratified by principality.

Indonesia is a combination of countries. It has swallowed up Java, Bali, and a variety of island nations. Most of the people in Java are Muslim. Most in Bali are Hindu. We were told that Rinca was Christian, but we only passed a couple of churches. In one village they told us they had official sanction to combine their traditional animism with the Catholic Mass.

Most of the historical sites we visited were temples. Unlike Mongolia, we didn’t visit museums. Between the hijabs and the offerings, we could easily see the predominant religion simply by going down the street.

At one point we asked about the course of studies available at the universities. Apparently religion is always included. My knee-jerk reaction was to remind myself it isn’t illegal for Indonesia to require religious training in their school systems. They may even consider it a good thing.