Title | : | Interreligious Dialogue: Case Study on BKSAUA in Manado, North Sulawesi |
Author | : | Samsi Pomalingo (CRCS, 2004) |
Keywords | : | BKSAUA, dialogue, liberation and global responsibility. |
Abstract | ||
This thesis tries to describe and analyze the role of BKSAUA on interreligious life in Manado, North Sulawesi. Formation of interreligious activities developed by BKSAUA is to keep the image of collaboration and interreligious harmony on that island. BKSAUA is an organization that has delegation members from the five religions that are allowed by the government, for example; Islam, Protestant Christian, Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Also, this organization is formed in every region, such as in the province, regencies and the level of village. Its mission and orientation is to create interreligious harmony in North Sulawesi. Therefore, this research is to describe what is the form of interreligious activities and dialogue developed by BKSAUA in Manado. This thesis is written based on sociology of religious study that uses a functional approach like done by Robert Merton (1957), Talcott Parson (1937), and Kingsley Davis (1937). This approach is to analyze the function of BKSAUA in interreligious life in Manado, North Sulawesi. The result of research indicates the role of BKSAUA is to unify the heterogeneous communities and religions in Manado based on “the principle of unity”. In the spirit of unity, BKSAUA have executed the form of interreligious activities. One of the activities by this organization is interreligious dialogue. There are three forms of interreligious dialogue, consisting of: (1) Dialogue at the level of heads of religions (2) life dialogue, and (3) collaboration dialogue. But, from the result of research, the dialogue movement is still co-existence and has not yet moved to pro-existence in religious people. Transformation from co-existence into pro-existence is not only in ideas as a result of dialogue, but also in attitude, formula and format of social education. So, pro-existence means that dialogue is not only limited to the confession that we are different, but more important is how dialogue discusses global responsibility toward human suffering and ecological crisis. Then, collectively, they have to begin something to change the reality of destitution, starvation, exploitation and ecological crisis. Here, a freeing model dialogue that has global responsibility is needed to be formulated. This dialogue namely is “liberation dialogue”. |