Rémy Madinier is a research director at the CNRS. A historian specializing in contemporary religious history in Indonesia, he works within the Institute of East Asian Studies (IAO) at the École normale supérieure (ENS) in Lyon. He is publishing La Java des Jésuites : Une autre histoire des relations islamo-chrétiennes - XIXe-XXIe siècles.
The Jesuits’ Java: Another History of Muslim-Christian Relations – 19th–21st Centuries
Rémy Madinier
Editions du Cerf
Through this richly illustrated and well-documented work—featuring numerous photographs and explanatory maps—Rémy Madinier invites both specialists and general readers to explore step by step the history of 19th- and 20th-century Indonesia. He highlights the unique character of a country that, “while home to the world’s largest Muslim population, is the only Muslim-majority nation to have experienced, in the 20th century and under Jesuit impetus, a significant wave of Christianization.” Indonesia thus became, in his words, “a crossroads of religions and spirituality” and “a religious landscape unlike any other in the world.” This is a work of history brimming with action and colorful characters—it reads like an adventure novel.
A short excerpt from the book: “At first glance, the story reads like an epic that has veered off the straight paths of hagiography. Let’s take a look: at the dawn of the 20th century, a Jesuit priest, Franciscus van Lith—rescued at the last minute from disgrace by a falsified baptismal register—officializes divorces, tolerates circumcision, and encourages ceremonies where spirits are invoked. Later hailed as the ‘Apostle of Java,’ his memory is evoked thirty years on by the future president Soekarno—father of Indonesian nationalism—during his trial for rebellion against colonial rule. In 1947, amid the war of independence, another Jesuit, Bishop Soegijapranata, Vicar Apostolic of Semarang and a disciple of van Lith, abandons his episcopal seat to join the territories of the young Indonesian republic, then besieged by the former colonial power. A few years later, in 1954, a third Jesuit, John Dijkstra, founds a powerful labor movement that, at its peak, brings together several million members.” (Translated from French)