Learning to Navigate the Ethics of Boundaries: Schools, Youth, and Inter-Religious Relationships in North Sulawesi

To enhance the academic atmosphere during the covid-19 pandemic and to support our mission in promoting academic and research collaboration among scholars, The American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) and the Center for Area Studies-Indonesia Institute of Science (LIPI) as the biggest research institute in Indonesia will jointly organize a monthly webinar on Southeast Asian studies. This monthly webinar discusses various topics related to Southeast Asian studies include religion studies, education, politics, society, ecology, culture, and so on.

The webinar is conducted in English, open for the public; broadcasted through LIPI YouTube channel. It is usually held with the first 45 minutes for power point presentation and the rest for discussion.

ORGANIZER AND DATE

This event is jointly organized by AIFIS and Center for Area Studies-LIPI and will be conducted on:

Date                : Wednesday, 24 February 2021

Time : 2.30 – 4.30 PM (Jakarta Time/GMT+7:00)

ABSTRACT of the Speaker:

In this talk, I considers the complex conjunction of ethical frames that youth in majority-Protestant North Sulawesi are exposed to from the national and local political debates, religious teachings, and their social experiences at school that shape their understandings of and approaches toward inter-religious boundaries. In response to national concerns about the moral failings of Indonesian youth and social issues like rising religious intolerance, the revised 2013 Curriculum promised an increased focus on character and religious education. Educational goals toward developing social competencies in youth, including tolerance, have translated into strong imperatives for youth to acquire friends from various religious backgrounds. At the same time, as youth consider possibilities for dating and marriage, Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic religious education courses all stress the importance of marrying someone from the same religious background. In North Sulawesi, inter-religious marriages are often cited as providing a framework of tolerance that sustains harmonious inter-religious relations in the region. On the other hand, discourses about the threat of inter-religious marriages and their association with proselytization also inform fears of religious conversion a de-stabilization of identities. I demonstrate how two broad ethical frames used to make sense of inter-religious encounters depend on alternate understandings of personhood and subjectivity as either individualized or community-oriented.

Online registration can be accessed via the registration page below:

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