Banda Aceh Invites Christians’ Aid, But Not Their Proselytizing
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- Here, where mosques are ubiquitous and all the Muslim women wear head scarves, there's a street with three churches on it.
Potholes filled with foul-smelling water dot the black asphalt, and across from the churches, people line up at a recycling plant, exchanging scraps of metal for cash. Children orphaned by the tsunami stumble around with their hands out and their eyes glazed from sniffing glue.
Inside one church, Dean Bates preaches to the congregation about Jerry Garcia, the now-deceased singer for the Grateful Dead.
He tells them how Jesus was different from Jerry.
"It's more than a movement, more than temporary," he tells them in a voice like actor Billy Bob Thornton's. "We're here to proclaim. That's what God wants us focused on, that we are proclaimers of the God of the universe and his rulership over it."
The Indonesian words on the wall behind him read: "Allah Kasih Adanya." Or in English: "God is love."
Christians who have traveled halfway around the world worship in this church on Sundays. They've come from Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and California. Most came to help people in dire need, people who lost everything to the tsunami one year ago. Many have come to proclaim Jesus' name just as Dean Bates has described.
But not everyone.
Forbidden conversions
How Western Christians relate their faith is a serious concern in Aceh, where almost all the natives are Muslim. Proselytizing to anyone who's already a member of one of the five state-sanctioned religions is illegal, which means trying to convert Muslims to Christianity is forbidden - not only in sharia-ruled Aceh, but throughout the Indonesian archipelago. This is why, two months after the tsunami, Indonesian government officials warned against missionary efforts, prompting one group to officially discontinue its efforts at putting orphaned Muslim children in Christian boarding schools.
Since then, the government has said it is monitoring foreign faith-based groups. But critics contend that oversight is lax and that the only thing the government is really interested in is keeping monied foreign relief groups in the country.
The relationship between Acehnese Muslims and the foreigners helping them is complicated all the more by the addition of Muslim extremists and student groups that have vowed to take action if they catch Christians trying to gain converts.
Relief groups have protocols on how workers should navigate this social dynamic, but in the field, each individual is often forced to handle it the best way he or she can.
Just down the block from the Methodist church where Bates preaches, the Rev. Hasudungan Aritonang is finishing his sermon at Huria Kristen Batak Protestan, a Lutheran church with a congregation that consists mostly of people from the Batak ethnic group. The traditional home of Bataks is not in Aceh, but in the areas near Medan, in the adjacent province of North Sumatra. Here in Aceh, they are outsiders, and some worry that Christians from America, with their approaches to evangelism, could compound an already touchy situation.
After the Sunday service at Huria Kristen, men sit in the pews, talking and smoking kretek, Indonesian clove cigarettes. Pastor Aritonang doesn't smoke in the church but isn't bothered by those who do.
He worries more about what Americans are doing in Aceh.
"We disagree with the way they do evangelism here. They come from outside and don't understand the situation with the Aceh people," he says. "If we're not careful here, the established churches will have a confrontation with the Muslim people."
Americans' concern over this prospect varies.
Building for Christianity
Marcus Waldner attends services at the Methodist church in Banda Aceh, home to a relatively new congregation, people who came after the tsunami. He traveled all the way from Lancaster County, Pa., to build simple three-room houses in Deahbaro, a once-affluent Banda Aceh neighborhood that was destroyed in the flood. A year ago, this fishing community was bustling and famous for its seafood restaurants. Now, little is left to indicate it existed at all.
Waldner, a born-again Christian, is helping to fill in that rock-strewn space. What he does is simple. Every day, he and the men he traveled here with, most of them Mennonites, wake around 6 a.m. They eat a big breakfast and then climb into the back of a lorry that takes them to the job site. Each day, they challenge one another to top the past day's work.
They complete about six houses every week.
Waldner is broad-shouldered with a child's innocent smile and bright blue eyes. There's a hint of Low German in his accent, and his arms and clothing are covered in red dye. The hardwood they use weighs much more than the American two-by-fours he's used to, and it flakes off a bright powder the color of blood oranges. His skin itches; he says it's worse than poison ivy.
It's worth it, though. The itching, the working in the rain and the hot sun. In Aceh, good works are how many Christians demonstrate their faith.
"You have to win someone's respect. They know how far we came. They know we're volunteering," he says over the sound of a nail gun popping against beams behind him. "I'm thankful that God opened up the way for people to come in here."
Like most Christians working to rebuild Aceh, Waldner knows how delicate discussions about faith can be. The group that helped sponsor his trip, Christian Aid Ministries, warned him about the possibility of being expelled for proselytizing, and Waldner says he's taken care to be guarded in how he expresses himself. He'll discuss his faith, but only when people ask.
One Muslim boy who began hanging around the construction sites asked questions one day. He did kid work, fetching tools, holding wood in place. The tsunami left him homeless and full of doubt. Waldner and the boy once talked about God.
"He told me, 'I love Allah, but Allah doesn't love me,'" Waldner says. For him, this illustrates a fundamental difference between their beliefs in God. "There're two different motivations: One is out of fear and servitude; one is out of love and respect."
Waldner, 24, says he became familiar with both motivations as a teenager. Growing up in South Dakota and Manitoba, he was raised in the Hutterite faith, a strict Anabaptist strain of Christianity whose communities are typically closed off from mainstream society. As a teenager he was born again, which caused problems in his Hutterite colony. Eventually, he was cast out.
"A lot of religions are like that. There are always the zealous ones who want things to remain the same," he says. "But God gave us freedom, and they should have that freedom here, too."
The social costs of converting are high for Muslims, though, a fact of life to which Waldner also can relate.
"Your family will reject you," he says. "For a Muslim, for these people here, they really have to count the cost. It takes a faith in God."
Unlike many who are born-again, Waldner doesn't place much emphasis on the belief that one path exists to salvation. In fact, he discourages that, and when speaking of religion, he focuses instead on choice. His was Jesus, and it's now led him to share his beliefs.
The laws in Aceh and throughout Indonesia make this difficult, but Waldner doesn't get discouraged.
"I've learned one thing with witnessing to Muslims. You don't argue," he says. "You don't convince them. You have to show them."
Showing them
Fifty yards from the wooden frame Waldner helps to erect, Muslims sweep a tile floor without the protection of walls. Last December, the wall of water that barreled ashore brought them tumbling down.
This was once their mosque, Al Hydayah. They're now preparing it for worship.
A cluster of three men rise and bend at the hip, their arms like pistons, pulling weeds from the gravesites of past imams. Another man burns what they've gathered in a pile. The dry grass crackles in the flames, and the smoke billows out toward the ocean, to where the waves came from last December.
Out of the 2,500 people who lived here before the tsunami, about 300 survived.
Ahmad Fauzi helps sweep the floor. He says that, although foreign humanitarian groups have helped rebuild much of his neighborhood, none have offered to fund the mosque's reconstruction.
"We go to another mosque, in another village," he says and gestures to where Waldner and the other men work. He smiles. His bright teeth gleam white beneath a moustache.
"They're perfect. They kept their promise and work very fast. They're the best ones," he says.
If his feelings extend beyond gratitude and respect, Fauzi does not betray them. He says he's not opposed to Christians working and remaining in Aceh but adds he isn't interested in becoming Christian, either.
"We don't care what they think about religion," he says. "We think they build good homes."
Good deeds or frustration
Not far from where Fauzi and Waldner and the Mennonites work, there are Christians who care deeply about what the Muslims think. They build homes, too. When they tell stories of the work they've done and how locals have reacted, they sound wistful and frustrated, like soldiers uncertain of a war they're already in knee-deep.
Jackie Blevins and Dane Neufeld work for Samaritan's Purse, an evangelical group based in Boone, N.C. Both see themselves as doing God's work, but often they've found it frustrating.
Before joining Samaritan's, Neufeld played semi-pro football with the Brno Alligators in the Czech Republic. After one season there, he came to the conclusion he didn't like football, that he never really liked it at all. He became more interested in religion and eventually felt more comfortable expressing his spiritual side. He saw Samaritan's Purse as a good way to put this into practice, a way to help people in need, both materially and spiritually.
For Neufeld, theory and practice proved starkly divergent after living in Banda Aceh for a few weeks. He and some other Samaritan's employees live in a relatively large house in Banda Aceh. Servants cook their meals, but living here can be alienating.
People he helps often don't appreciate his work, he says.
"When you come here, it's far more complicated than you thought. It's a huge operation, a lot of money involved," he says. "You can't always give people what they want."
Blevins, an Ohio native and North Carolina resident, puts it more bluntly.
"They don't want us here," she says. "They're going to take all we can give them and then kick us out. They see bules and they see dollars."
Bule is a term Indonesians use to describe white people. Whether it's derogatory depends on the context. Blevins gets a kick out of saying it and peppers her talk with it. "It's hard to see sharia law lasting too long here," she says. "I wonder how much the bule is going to take the blame for that."
But sharia law is not all that plays on her mind.
Even now, members of Samaritan's Purse feel they're taking the blame for a controversial comment made by the group's leader, Franklin Graham. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Graham, a son of world-famous evangelist Billy Graham, told news reporters, "Islam is evil."
In Aceh, Samaritan's workers don't receive many questions from natives about the remark, but it still follows them. Blevins tries to explain the context when people ask her about it. Neufeld doesn't fault Graham for the comment or see it as particularly problematic.
In fact, he disagrees with the apologetics and reverts to something similar to the old "love the sinner, not the sin" refrain.
"We love them as people," he says, referring to Acehnese Muslims. "But we fundamentally disagree with the core of what they believe. Christians are coming dangerously close to compromising that."
Other members of Samaritan's have stated their intention to evangelize the Acehnese, but Blevins feels that, at least in terms of preaching, she can compromise in that respect. She won't preach, but she'll continue to do works with the hope that the Acehnese will let Christians stay after reconstruction.
"They would not be able to accuse me of going out on the street corner and trying to convert people," she says. "Everybody's here for the same reasons - humanitarian reasons. The faith-based are using that to get in the door."
Of course, this is what many Muslims and some Indonesian Christians fear; some refer to it as an American Christian "hidden agenda," and many want no part of it.
Different purposes
But Indonesian Christians have their agendas, too. Some would like to see conversions in Aceh, too. Others would like to use relief and reconstruction as a way to improve relations between Christians and Muslims.
Johannes Sudarman would like both.
The 37-year-old Java native works with Aceh Relief, a locally based humanitarian group that receives money from the American Christian charity Compassion International. He was born Muslim but converted to Christianity at the age of 17.
"The Holy Spirit helped me become a Christian," he says. "Many Acehnese, before the tsunami, they didn't know what it is to be a Christian. Maybe through our presence here we can slowly change their mind about Christians. Not their religion, just the way they think."
Eventually though, conversion is the goal. To Sudarman that's the logical conclusion to relief efforts. He thinks God brought the tsunami to open Aceh to Christianity.
Muslims, of course, disagree. They see that mode of thought as condescending and see Christians who look for converts as opportunists taking advantage of tragedy.
Raihan Iskander leads the Acehnese wing of the conservative Muslim Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS as it's more commonly known. He described clandestine evangelism here as a time bomb that will keep ticking, either until the government gets involved and stops it, or until it goes off.
"If missionaries come into Aceh, they have to understand the culture in here. They have to respect that," he says. "The last thing we need now is a conflict of religion."
In private, conflict is exactly the framework within which some American Christians view the spiritual situation in Aceh. Larry Vaughan worked as a missionary in eastern Indonesia, in Papua, during the 1970s and '80s. Now, he's the Samaritan's Purse operations manager in Meulaboh, a town south of Banda Aceh.
If conversions do occur, he predicts they would lead to violence. Still, he says, he would encourage people in Aceh to become Christian. In one sermon, he tells a Meulaboh Christian congregation: "Don't get lazy in your attentiveness. Remember, we're in warfare."
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