Agama and Kepercayaan as a Case of Religion-Making

Wednesday Forum – 26 February 2020

The Indonesian discourse on religion and state since 1945 concerns not only whether or not the state should be based on a religion, but also, more deeply, involves a process of religion-making. An example of this is the debate on how to define “agama” (religion) and “kepercayaan” (beliefs). This talk traces the process of religion-making since the 1945 Constitutional Debate through the debates during the Constitutional Amendments (1999-2002) and in the Constitutional Court (2016-2017). While there have indeed been significant progresses, state paradigm of governance of religion has actually not changed significantly. The presentation will end with a theoretical reflection of religion-making and its implications on religious communities in Indonesia.

Zainal Abidin Bagir is the Director of Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) – Yogyakarta and teaches at the M.A. Program in Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS), Graduate School, Universitas Gadjah Mada. His latest publications include a chapter in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia (2018) and a chapter in on Islam and ecology in Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2017).

Look at the full poster of this event here.