Religion and Social Conflicts in Indonesia: An Effort to Build Theological Awareness

摘要

Indonesia with all its diversity is actually a rich country, both natural and human resources. The diversity of religion, ethnicity, culture and language is the most important asset of Indonesian to be a country that has political, social and economic strength. Nevertheless, this kind of diversity is often used by certain parties to create chaos in this country. They ignited conflict in the community which later turned into conflict among religious adherents, even though at first the conflict was actually pure criminal. Due to religious or tribal interest, conflicts aroused in a number of regions. Besides the provocation, and social inequality, religious adherents sometimes could not see the real differences in religious life. They thought the others were wrong and they were the only right. This paper aimed to capture the phenomenon of conflicts that occurred in Indonesia by exploring the objects of problem from several regions. This case study utilized documents in the form of newspaper articles, governmental official reports, seminar articles, and books as the primary data. The data were analyzed qualitatively using relevant theories and experts' judgments. The study revealed the religion and social conflicts were mainly triggered by the religion adherents misunderstanding of its teachings and doctrines. One of the alternative solutions is that every religion adherent must build theological awareness. It is not intended to change the belief system (religion) or not as apologetic, but just as a means to understand the functions and characteristics of human nature. All religions adherents have to maintain their theological awareness through many ways, such as formal and informal learning.