Institut Dialog Antar-Iman di Indonesia_
     Institute for Inter-Faith Dialogue in Indonesia

This division is started in 1997 as the startup of the second 5-year Interfidei program. It was began by a seminar and workshop in Yogyakarta, that carried a theme, "Pluralism, Conflict and Dialogue in the face of [Upcoming] General Election". The 35 participants at the event were coming from Yogyakarta and Central Java areas.

This startup event has been flourished and widespreaded to the similar activities held in other places such as Kupang, Makassar, Manado, Pontianak, Banjarmasin, Medan, Ende, Palangkaraya, Samarinda, Pematang Siantar, Bengkulu, Lampung, Jayapura, Sorong, Gorontalo, Padang, Bali. Several
places even organized such activities for several times, not only limited on the training/workshop activities, but also onto Religious Studies and Religion and Society Studies.

Both programs have been started in 1998 in Yogyakarta. It was starting with the Religious Studies. At the time, the participants were between 10 and 15 and it was conducted in a classroom where the lessons was guided by a "guru", a respectable scholar in her/his field.
In this program, the participants have an opportunity to learn about many aspects of religion, such as its history, theology/philosophy and ethics. All the known religions were covered by the study: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, Baha'ism, Confucianism, and Javanese mysticism.

Meanwhile, the Religion and Society Studies was conducted in thematic concern. For examples, there were themes such as "Religion and Discrimination Politics," "Religion and Human Rights," "Religion and HIV/AIDS," and etc. Practically, the form and process of this program is similar to the Religious Studies above, i.e. through the classroom and team teaching model. The participants were invited from various backgrounds (religion, ethnicity, social status, education, and specifically gender)

Since 2003, the program was conducted in places other than Yogyakarta, such as in Banjarmasin, Padang, Manado/Tomohon, Makassar, and Bali.

Future Prospects

This program is still considered relevant for Indonesian context and in need somewhere else in Indonesia. Therefore, it will still one of the Interfidei program in the future. This year (2006), the program is planned to be held in Padang, Ambon, Poso, Lombok, Balikpapan, Kupang, Central Java, and Yogyakarta.

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Background

Education is considered very important for Interfidei, in particular alternative educations, as the example Interfidei has been developed through the activities of trainings, short courses, group studies and team teachings.

The main aim of these enterprises is to empower general public through the process of making the awareness and to develop critical and active thinking in dealing with daily changing situation. Through this education process hopefully the transformation of universal humanism and values are at work. And also a more democratic society is being born; that is a society that respect plurality and diversity.

The Activities

1. Seminar/Workshop/Training
2. Short courses :

• Religious Studies
• Religion and Society Studies

In these activities, besides doing exploration and discourse analysis, the participants is expected to discuss insightfully the local potentials as the capital in dealing with 'pluralism, conflicts, and peace'. How a local context should put face to face with the above discourse, what should be done, and how to employ local potentials, those are questions we address in this activities. Therefore, the participants are equipped with basic tools in these activities, in order to manage the plural and diverse society.

Meanwhile, the Religion and Society Studies is a discourse elaboration program, in which it would stimulate people to explore their thinking and idea based on their daily experience and reality. In this program, the participants are hoped put their reflection on the reality and analyse it.

The above activities are meant to empower people to carry out studies and 'hermeneutical' actions in order to find the correlation between theories and praxis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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