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Berita Wednesday Forum

British Religious Plurality in the Age of Charles III

Berita Wednesday ForumWednesday Forum News Wednesday, 15 February 2023

British Religious Plurality in the Age of Charles III

Wednesday Forum – 15 February 2023

On 6th May King Charles III will be crowned in Westminster Abbey, a religious ceremony confirming his role, not just as Head of State, but as Supreme Governor of England’s Established Church. But he leads a kingdom that has seen both significant secularisation and growth in non-Christian minorities over the last twenty years. This lecture will explore the impact of these trends on British identity and the way in which the understanding of constitutional monarchy and state religion have evolved to accommodate a complexly secular and religiously plural modern nation. It examines an English pluralist school of political thought that King Charles sees as characterising the British understanding of nationhood.

Kauman as Current Little Mecca in Indonesia

Berita Wednesday ForumWednesday Forum News Thursday, 19 January 2023

Kauman as Current Little Mecca in Indonesia

Wednesday Forum – 7 December 2022

Kauman is one representation of Little Mecca that still existing in several cities in Java Island, Indonesia. It has been a center of Islamic teachings since the sultanates period until now. Kauman itself historically was a small kampong that next to the grand mosque. It was the home for ulama and his families to live and take care the mosques. After returning home from hajj pilgrimage, some ulama established their own boarding schools in Kauman. They would like to transfer knowledges from Middle East to their students. This makes Kauman emerged an Islamic enclave in urban areas. One prominent Kauman kampong is Kauman of Yogyakarta. It was well known for ulama’s residential area during Mataram Kingdom and early Yogyakarta Sultanate period in the late 18 century. But now it has been changed to be large kampong that inspired the birth of Muhammadiyah, the second mass Islamic organization in Indonesia. This kampong transformation historically show how the inter-linkage connection with Middle East especially pan-Islamism movement and reformist Islam spirit. These two values basically were inspired from the same movement in Arabian Peninsula. Some building itself still has an Islamic architecture that influenced by Middle East. This architecture basically showed the cultural connection with the middle eastern civilization, particularly mosques and boarding schools. More importantly, Kauman is entirely pedestrianized that ensure the quietness condition for students studying Islam inside the surau or langgar. This shows how Arab identity is important to preach Islam in Indonesia especially urban areas. This study would like to reveal the continuing connection between middle eastern influence and Islamic teachings in Kauman.

Lived Eco-Religion: How social movements in Indonesian local communities respond to environmental crises in creative ways

Berita Wednesday ForumWednesday Forum News Tuesday, 22 November 2022

Lived Eco-Religion: How social movements in Indonesian local communities respond to environmental crises in creative ways

Wednesday Forum – 23 November 2022

How do religions respond to environmental crises? Beyond debates about religion as destroying or saving the planet, we present a synthetic review of 244 qualitative studies (some written by CRCS/ICRS alumni) of 208 environmental social movements operating at the local community level in Indonesia between 1990 and 2022. Using this data, we present a conceptual model for how environmental movements employ creative adaptation of religious beliefs and practices to motivate changes in environmental behavior. We share three findings and their implications: 1) high levels of synthesis between official religions, adat systems and local wisdom; 2) contextual factors that directly influence environmental movements to adopt blended environmental and lived religious responses; 3) intense contestation within local communities shaping the creative process.

Planetary Thinking in a Post-Human World

Berita Wednesday ForumWednesday Forum News Wednesday, 9 November 2022

Planetary Thinking in a Post-Human World

Wednesday Forum – 09 November 2022

In his book, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, Walter Mignolo outlines several options for a future of the planet beyond the western, modern colonial world. He spends most of that book talking about the decolonial option, with only fragments spent on what he calls “the spiritual option.” In brief, the spiritual option is about decolonizing religious traditions through more embodied spiritualities that focus people on the human and more-than-human communities in which they live. As such, the spiritual option has affinities with both “liberation” style religious strands and with animisms found in indigenous communities. In addition, recent scholarship around “New Materialisms” also suggests that there is agency and value in the rest of the natural world: much like in animist traditions, everything on the planet is alive, acts, and is acted upon. In my contribution to this discussion, I make an argument for the ethics of a post-human world from animist and new materialist perspectives. Such an argument depends on something like a planetary spirituality, which may be a supplement to Mignolo’s “spiritual option.”

Divorce and Muslim Women’s Empowerment in Indonesia

Berita Wednesday ForumWednesday Forum News Monday, 31 October 2022

Divorce and Muslim Women’s Empowerment in Indonesia

Wednesday Forum – 02 November 2022

Muslim family law is a crucial determinant of women’s rights in many Muslim settings. Muslim family law is commonly interpreted to stipulate a family structure in which husbands are breadwinners and household leaders while wives are responsible for the domestic realm and may be expected to obey their husbands. However, gender norms and practices in majority Muslim societies have changed, with increasing numbers of women pursuing higher education and careers. This study examines Indonesian Muslim women’s divorce narratives during a period of increasing divorce cases. I find that by facilitating women’s exit from marriages, Indonesia’s Islamic courts accommodate women’s changing expectations of marriage. The case of Indonesia illuminates how a religious legal system may have unintended consequences, promoting women’s higher aspirations for marriage and potentially shifting gender norms more broadly.

What’s Wrong with Our Theology: Towards a Contextual Epistemology

Berita Wednesday ForumWednesday Forum News Tuesday, 25 October 2022

What’s Wrong with Our Theology: Towards a Contextual Epistemology

Wednesday Forum – 26 October 2022

Theologies of the major religions have over the centuries so colluded with empires that untangling its first principles from those that legitimize the oppressions of empires is difficult, if not impossible. This is a Christian theologian’s reflection on an alternative theological epistemology, based primarily on the principles proposed by Paulo Freire more than fifty years ago. Is it too late for religions, or can they listen to, learn from and live in deep solidarity with those in the margins? An innovate approach – Interfaith Peacemaker Teams – that combine the best practices of interreligious dialogue and Alinskian (as in Saul Alinsky) community organizing proposes an answer.