Navigating religious diversity: exploring young people’s lived religious citizenship in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Against the backdrop of several concerning reports which have noted growing socio-religious conservatism and intolerance amongst Indonesia youth, this study examined how school-aged Indonesian young people navigate encounters with religious difference in their everyday lives. Recognising the significance of religious and citizenship education curricula, the research included classroom observations and interviews with 20 religiously-diverse Indonesian young people in three purposively selected high schools in Jakarta. The paper reveals that participants in all three schools agreed that religious studies and their personal religious frameworks were central to their approaches toward religious tolerance. However, their lived everyday experiences of rubbing shoulders with religious ‘others’, expanded upon and critiqued the narrowness and rigidity of these frameworks and showed greater religious inclusivity. Through this analysis the paper integrates prior work on ‘lived religion’ and ‘lived citizenship’ to fuse a ‘lived religious citizenship’ concept, arguing that this adds depth to both fields by recognising that religion cannot be separated from the experience of being a citizen. A focus on lived religious citizenship provides a deeper account of individual identity and highlights the importance of qualitative studies focused on the living out of religion and citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• citizenship
• lived religious citizenship
• lived citizenship
• lived religion
• Indonesia

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the three Indonesian schools for their support and help for this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bronwyn E Wood http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3560-2194

Notes

1 This verse is also widely endorsed outside of schooling contexts in Indonesia by the government and Islamic religious leaders to encourage inter-religious relations as well as at times of religious intolerance to justify more of an acceptance of other religious beliefs. However the limits of this verse is still highly contested, contingent on the interpretations of a variety of Muslim leaders and scholars. See: Varieties of religious authority (2010) edited by Azyumardi Azra, Kees van Dijk, Nico J.G. Kaptein.

2 Schools in Indonesia are certified A, B, or C by the government as an assessment of quality.

3 Pronouns are ambiguous to protect the participant.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a New Zealand – ASEAN Scholarship award 2012–2014.