Electoral workers inspect a ballot during the vote counting at a polling station in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2007.
(AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)
According to Union of Catholic Asian News, the Bishops' Conference of Indonesia – representing the Catholic Church in the country – and the Communion of Churches – representing the Protestants – have issued a joint statement in which they urged all Indonesian Christians to participate in the April 2009 general election.
Church leaders expressed in a statement issued in late October that politics “should be a manifestation of God’s love”.
“God’s love is made visible in the effort of each citizen to create a common welfare,” they noted. “In such a spirit, the Church supports the carrying out of a well-run general election, which, it is hoped, will generate representatives and officials who really have the will to work with all people for the common good.”
Thus, they urged all Christians to exercise their political rights “to vote responsibly and according to their conscience”.
Capuchin Bishop Martinus Dogma Situmorang of Padang, head of the bishops’ conference and Rev Andreas A Yewangoe, chairman of the Protestant communion, signed the joint statement.
The letter pointed out that the upcoming general election provides an opportunity to bring about change and improvement by “voting for the right persons”, quoting Exodus 18:21 which says, “Look among all the people for able and God-fearing men, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain”.
The politicising of Christians by the Church bodies comes at a time that Christians in the West Indonesian Province of Papua are hard pressed to respond to what they perceive to be the government’s disrespect of religious minority groups.
Last week, Papuan religious leaders threatened a boycott of the general elections after the government approved a controversial anti-pornography bill which minority religious groups including Christians and Hindus say poses a threat to their artistic, religious, and cultural freedom, and issued a decree that determined Sunday to be a working day in an effort to save energy in Java and Bali, which prevents Christians from worshipping on that day, according to Tempo Interactive and Radio Australia.
In the same breath, there has been an apparent rise of Islamic fundamentalism in steering politics. Detractors of the anti-pornography law say that the new regulation was pushed by a small group of Islamist parties who say it is needed to protect the young and raise society’s moral standards, but detractors say the law is in fact an avenue giving the small but very vocal Islamic fundamentalist groups license to infringe on cultural and religious freedom, reported Voice of America.
The Church leaders also specified that the believers need not all support the same person or party, affirming that “their communion is not based on making the same political choices but on faithfulness to the One God”, by which individual believers should make choices following their own consciences.
