RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

“[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

~ John Adams (1735-1826), Founding Father and Second President of the United States of America

Working Group 9 on giving voice to religion in the public square through political engagement seeks to rediscover and reinvigorate religion’s civic role which, at its best, has contributed to the distinct character and flourishing of the world’s great civilizations.

As R20 Founder and Chairman KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf observed in an address delivered in the historic Senate Building of Gadjah Mada University — Indonesia’s premier seat of higher learning — during the official launch of the volume, Proceedings of the R20 International Summit of Religious Leaders in Bali, Indonesia:

Are we permitted to bring religion into public and social life, or not? If we contemplate this question deeply, it is clear that religion is not merely or solely a threat to social stability. On the contrary, it has long been the very bedrock upon which society itself is constructed. Over a history spanning thousands of years, religions have given birth to great and noble civilizations. Religion played a vital role — perhaps even the most fundamental role — in the rise of Egyptian civilization, ancient Rome, Christian Rome, Islamic civilization, Persia, India, China, and so on. 

It is obvious to believers like me and my colleagues that religion is meant to build civilization. Religion is given to us by God to help develop civilization, which necessarily entails developing society in its entirety, including its manifold social structures….

Given this fact, how can we preserve the beneficent functions of religion in our civilization while at the same time preventing the dangers that may accompany the public expression of religion itself? 

This deep concern — this genuine concern of believers — motivated us to found the G20 Religion Forum (R20) and its various initiatives. We are seeking a way to continue to uphold our religion and contribute to the emergence of the global civilization towards which humanity is striving, while at the same time preventing religion from creating problems. That is why the creed of the R20 is to “help ensure that religion functions as a genuine and dynamic source of solutions, rather than problems.”

In January 2023, an academic program affiliated with Sciences Po (the Paris Institute of Political Studies) and supported by the French Ministry of Armed Forces published an article examining the geopolitical significance of the G20 Religion Forum (R20). As the article notes, “the largest Muslim civil society organization in the world initiated [the R20] in conjunction with the Indonesian Presidency… of the Group of 20 political and economic summit.”

Coverage of the R20 by Sciences Po is significant, as it suggests that the French academic, political, and military establishment may have begun to seriously analyze the geopolitical ramifications of Nahdlatul Ulama’s Humanitarian Islam movement and the R20. Five of the eight presidents of the French Fifth Republic (1958 – present) have been alumni of Sciences Po, as are countless other prominent members of the French political and business elite.

Established at the height of the Islamic State movement, when over 4,000 French citizens joined ISIS, L’Observatoire International du Religieux is a research program that seeks to clarify contemporary religious phenomena and their interaction with politics. Since its creation in 2016, L’Observatoire has published 41 bulletins on themes as diverse as the religions of the Middle East, the relationship between Christianity and governments in Asia, Islam in North Africa, and Pentecostalism in Brazil.

The Observatory is financially supported by the Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy of France’s Ministry of Armed Forces.

In a scholarly white paper titled “R20: the G20 Religion Forum led by Indonesia,” Dr. Jonathan Benthall observed:

In late 2022, the Indonesian organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Muslim civil society movement in the world, initiated the Religion Forum (R20) in conjunction with the Indonesian presidency, from 1 December 2021 to 30 November 2022, of the Group of 20 political and economic summit (G20). The R20 convened an interfaith meeting of some 300 religious leaders in Bali, oriented towards peacemaking, two weeks before the G20 meeting last November. The NU is legally independent of government, but the forum was supported by the Indonesian state and inaugurated by the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo….

This article argues that the concept underpinning the R20, and the extent of its support, are new and deserve attention from those who study the intersection of religion and geopolitics in our day^[1]. It would be truly a game changer, I will suggest, if the R20 were to stimulate the world’s most important religious authorities to reform their traditions from within and become forces for peace, carrying along with them the huge number of adherents that each of them could mobilize.

Robert W. Hefner, Professor of Anthropology at Boston University and President of the American Institute for Indonesian Studies speaking at the launch of the R20 volume at Gadjah Mada University on 4 August 2023

The G20 Religion Forum (R20) emerged from the global Humanitarian Islam movement; Nahdlatul Ulama’s efforts to bring Islamic teachings into alignment with the modern world of democracy and human rights through its fiqh al-hadarah (“Islamic Jurisprudence for a Global Civilization”) initiative; and the Movement for Shared Civilizational Values. In a speech titled “A Transformative Moment in World Affairs: Nahdlatul Ulama and the R20 International Summit of Religious Leaders,” Prof. Robert Hefner — who is among the world’s foremost academic experts on Indonesian politics and society — observed at the launch of the R20 volume:

The R20 Summit represented a new and, in the view of many of us, welcome moment in our global awareness, one that recognizes that history has proved secularization forecasts wrong. As my late colleague Peter L. Berger put it some thirty years ago, the world’s populations are arguably as religious as ever. But the R20 conference and Proceedings went beyond my dear colleague’s sage observation. The Summit and Proceedings remind us that for the great promise of public religion for peace and citizenship to be fulfilled, scholars and religious leaders from all faith traditions must acknowledge not only the social goods their faith communities promote but their shortcomings and insufficiencies as well. It is this twin dynamic — a dialectic of both religious empowerment and courageous self-critique — that makes the R20 event and its published proceedings timely and unique.

Inasmuch as these twin aims animated the R20 conference in Bali, it was both fortunate and appropriate that Indonesia played the leading role in the conference organization. It was no less fortunate and appropriate that Nahdlatul Ulama, under the executive directorship of Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf, provided the intellectual vision and social organization at the heart of the Religion Forum (R20) conference.

Naturally, there was a measure of serendipity to Indonesia and Nahdlatul Ulama’s role. In 2022, Indonesia had assumed the presidency of the G20. That role brings with it the opportunity to give the G20 proceedings a measure of local color, which is to say concerns that in some measure reflect the host country’s self-perception and global priorities. When Indonesia assumed the G20 role, then, most observers assumed there would be some measure of thematic coloring, like batik curtains on an otherwise familiar G20 window.

Under the joint direction of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf, however, Indonesia’s hosting of the G20 did more than play this window-dressing role. Aware of the role played by the Centrist Democrat International, formerly Christian Democrat International, or CDI, in the original establishment of the G20 forum, Indonesia decided to incorporate the R20 into the G20 proceedings in 2022 as an official main event, with the enthusiastic support of religious communities and civil society leaders around the world, including the leadership of CDI. This achievement itself was no less than a world-transforming event.

For those of us familiar with Indonesian political and religious history, we understand that what I have referred to as historical serendipity was in fact richly contingent and culturally embedded. The contingency and embedding had to do with the fact that Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. No less decisively, Indonesia is also a country in which the majority of Muslims — once again with NU scholars and leaders in the vanguard — have demonstrated an unwavering spirit of generosity and inclusivity by opting to position religiosity or ketuhanan (“God-mindedness”) rather than Islam alone at the top of the country’s five core political principles, the “Pancasila.” Both the promise and the practice of Indonesian nationhood, in other words, are religion-affirming but theistically inclusive.   Abstracted from the specificity of Indonesian culture and history, a similarly pluralistic and inclusive spirit — the spirit of Indonesia and the NU — underlay the R20 summit.

WG-9 on religion in the public square also builds upon a joint initiative launched by the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and Nahdlatul Ulama in April 2020, as may be seen from a contemporaneous joint press release issued by the two organizations:

Global Evangelical and Muslim Organizations Launch Major Joint Religious Freedom Project

“Evangelical Christians and Humanitarian Muslims are committing to help protect each others’ religious communities, guided by a moral compass that is rooted in universal ethics and values.”

World Evangelical Alliance and Humanitarian Islam leaders sit beneath a painting that depicts Indonesia’s founding father, Sukarno, cradling a barefoot independence martyr slain by Dutch colonial forces in late-1940s Java. A cross dangles from the young man’s neck. Sri Ayati’s Legacy hangs in the Jakarta headquarters of Nahdlatul Ulama’s young adults organization, GP Ansor, and has become a potent symbol of the Humanitarian Islam movement.

JAKARTA, Indonesia and NEW YORK, USA: 22 April 2020 — Leading figures in the world’s largest Muslim organization and the world’s largest Evangelical Christian organization announced today that they are undertaking an ambitious joint effort to reshape how the world thinks about religion and to counter two threats to religious freedom and to society more broadly: religious and secular extremism.

The Muslim participants represent Humanitarian Islam, which is rooted in the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), with an estimated membership of more than 90 million, primarily in its home country of Indonesia. Since its founding almost a century ago, NU has gained wide recognition for its promotion of a version of Islamic orthodoxy characterized by respect for religious pluralism and tolerance. Its members are now found in most major cities around the globe.

The 2017 Gerakan Pemuda Ansor Declaration on Humanitarian Islam and the 2018 Nusantara Manifesto — both promulgated by NU’s young adults organization — argue that certain obsolete tenets of Islamic orthodoxy lend themselves to the weaponization of religion for political purposes, and are being systematically exploited by state and non-state actors including ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan.

The Christian partner in this project is the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), which — thanks to the global growth of evangelical Christianity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries — has become one of the most prominent world-wide Christian bodies, representing over 600 million Christians with national evangelical alliances in 130 countries.

“We seek to lay the foundation for a peaceful and stable global civilization, and look forward to working with our friends from the World Evangelical Alliance to help bring this about,” said Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Secretary of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama Supreme Council. “Certain obsolete and problematic tenets do indeed exist within Islamic orthodoxy and continue to shape the mindset of many Muslims. These problematic elements are the legacy of a past civilizational reality, which was characterized by persistent religious conflict. They are no longer relevant nor compatible with the geopolitical and demographic realities of the 21st century. Hence, we need to develop a new normative platform of religious orthodoxy, which does not legitimize hatred, supremacy and violence.”

In response Thomas Schirrmacher, WEA Associate Secretary General for Theological Concerns and Religious Freedom, commented, “Even though the WEA has a large dialogue program with top Muslim leaders worldwide, we especially seek a close cooperation with those Muslim leaders and theologians who join us in fighting for human rights and against racism, religious extremism outside Islam, and religious extremism inside Islam, and any way to subordinate the State under any religious group. We have studied in depth the reasons why Indonesia takes a different and positive road in its relation to religious minorities and are convinced that it would be helpful if Indonesia could present its experience to as many other states as possible.”

High-level representatives of NU and the WEA have met in Jakarta and agreed to form a joint working group (JWG). The Muslim delegation in the Joint Working Group will be led by C. Holland Taylor, Emissary for the UN, Americas and Europe of Gerakan Pemuda Ansor, NU’s 5-million-strong young adults movement. Ansor and Bayt ar-Rahmah — a U.S.-based religious organization that helps coordinate the global expansion of Nahdlatul Ulama operations — serve as the organizational home for the Humanitarian Islam movement. The Christian delegation in the Joint Working Group will be led by the human rights theorist and ethicist Dr. Thomas K. Johnson, who serves the World Evangelical Alliance as senior advisor for theology and religious freedom and who will continue his role as WEA Special Envoy to the Vatican.

After extensive discussions, Taylor and Johnson issued the following statement:

Many thoughtful observers have expressed concern about a renewed clash between Christian and Muslim civilizations and view every act of aggression between Muslims and Christians as another step in this direction. In these circumstances, the world needs to know that a major Christian body and a major Muslim body are not only at peace with one another, but they have pledged to actively cooperate for the betterment of humanity. Rather than being on opposing sides in a potential clash, Evangelical Christians and Humanitarian Muslims are committing to help protect each other’s religious communities, guided by a moral compass that is rooted in universal ethics and values. This is not the peace of shared religious beliefs; it is the peace of compatible approaches to life in society.

Though we may always understand God and relate to God in very different ways, Humanitarian Muslims and Evangelical Christians agree that human life, family, faith, reason and property are fundamental human goods essential to comprehensive well-being in this world. We know these human goods are vulnerable and require protection from various threats, including both religious extremism and forms of secular extremism that seek to marginalize or even eradicate the presence of religion in social and public life. We therefore pledge to work together to strengthen and advance those social and legal norms, including basic human rights and liberties, that are essential to safeguard these fundamental human goods. We also believe in the existence of universal ethical standards, which will inform and inspire our collaboration in the realms of theology, politics, conflict resolution, and education, as well as in the pursuit of shared humanitarian goals.

Members of the Humanitarian Islam/WEA Joint Working Group continue to pursue these objectives in conjunction with R20 Working Group 9 on giving voice to religion in the public square through political engagement (WG-9 on Religion in the Public Square).

Sri Ayati’s Legacy
Artist: John van der Sterren
Oil on Canvas, 200 x 130 cm., 2006

“The imposing, six-foot-tall painting is a potent symbol of modern Indonesian history: the country’s founding father, Sukarno, cradling a dead, barefoot rebel killed by Dutch colonial forces amid rice fields and smoldering volcanoes in late-1940s Java.

“The fighter’s bloodied shirt draws immediate attention — but so does a necklace dangling from the body: a Christian cross, worn by the independence martyr for the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

“The 2006 painting has become the symbol of a global initiative [the Humanitarian Islam movement]… that seeks to reinterpret Islamic law dating from the Middle Ages in ways that conform to 21st-century norms.”

~ New York Times, “Indonesians Seek to Export a Modernized Vision of Islam”

Moahim, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons