A multi-billion-dollar government program to relocate millions of people to Indonesia’s less-populated islands could give Christians on the island of Irian Jaya a major opportunity for outreach among Muslims.
The resettlement project gained impetus last year with the Indonesian government’s announcement of a stepped-up, five-year program. Families willing to leave their overcrowded homelands for the rugged frontiers of the nation’s less-developed islands receive about five acres of land, a house, seed, and enough food to last until their first harvest. The resulting influx of homesteaders is forcing changes on Indonesia’s frontier areas. Perhaps nowhere do those changes promise to be more radical than in predominantly Christian Irian Jaya, a jungle-covered province three times the size of the densely populated Indonesian island of Java.
“Prior to last April, they were bringing them [homesteaders] in only a few at a time,” said Ronald Hill, chairman of the Irian Jaya field of The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM). “Now they are bringing in 250 Javanese people at a time on three or four flights per week.”
Some observers say the transmigration project is an attempt to Islamize Irian Jaya and other islands that have substantial Christian or animist populations. While many Christians in Irian Jaya view the influx of settlers with trepidation, others say it is a rare opportunity to evangelize a group that otherwise would be difficult to reach.
“We are seeing this as one of the greatest challenges of the Christian church, because the church had not been able to go before to minister in Java …,” Hill said. “Now the Lord is bringing … two million Muslim people into an area where we can minister to them. We want to prepare the church in Irian Jaya in every way, helping them to know how to work with these people.”
The Irian church already has begun to minister among the transmigrants, Hill said, experiencing “response greater than we had anticipated.” Many of the transmigrants are nominal Muslims. In the midst of uprooting their lives from all that is familiar and stable, they are more open to the gospel than they might be otherwise, Hill said.
A group of missionaries and national leaders has formed a committee to develop strategies for outreach and to prepare Christians to take advantage of ministry opportunities among their new neighbors. More than 53,000 people are living in transmigrant villages in Irian Jaya, according to figures released by Indonesia’s Provincial Transmigration Office. Another 700,000 are expected to be placed in seven coastal counties of Irian Jaya within the next five years. In addition to the transmigrants, business people, opportunists, farmers, and traders are pouring into the province. Eventually, the settlers are expected to outnumber the native Irian population.
For the Irianese, many of whom have hoped to gain independence from Indonesia, the prospect of having their homelands “taken over” by outsiders is not a pleasant one. The black-skinned Melanesian Irianese often have been looked down upon as uncivilized savages by the lighter-skinned Javanese, who are of predominantly Malay ancestry. Many Irianese say they could become second-class citizens in their own country.
The Indonesian government is trying to encourage the intermarriage of the two groups in order eventually to form a homogeneous Indonesian population. Some observers say the government encourages intermarriage in the hope that Christianity will be absorbed into the Muslim faith. About 85 percent of Irian Jaya’s population claim to be Christian, making it Indonesia’s most Christianized province. Only a few of the native Irians are Muslims.
Nationwide, Indonesia boasts the largest Muslim population in the world. The country’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the government is under pressure from Muslim fundamentalists in Indonesia and from Muslim countries in the Middle East. Both groups would like to see Indonesia become a Muslim state governed by Islamic law.
Although only 5 percent of Indonesia’s population are Christian, Christianity is spreading in nearly every province. In animist North Sumatra, 10,000 members of the Karos tribe have turned to Christianity in the last few years. The Methodist Church of Indonesia has been at the center of this revival, which has seen mass baptisms, including the baptism of 3,000 last month. Even in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and an Islamic stronghold, Christianity is growing through a house-church movement.
Said Don Richardson, director of the Institute of Tribal Peoples Studies, “More Muslims have turned to Christ in Indonesia since 1965 than in all other Muslim countries since Islam began.”
