Oral Dimension of Interreligious Relationships1 Izak Lattu
ilattu@ses.gtu.edu
The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley Satya Wacana Christian University, Indonesia
This presentation explores the role orality: oral narratives, folksongs, and ritual performances in the civic engagement for peacebuilding in a strong oral society like Maluku or Moluccas, Indonesia. In 1999 to 2003 the colonial spices island
underwent an immense interreligious conflict between Muslim and Christian communities. My research focuses on collective memory and identity through kinship networking named pela in Maluku as social cements to re-enact social relationships. As it calling for cultural imagination of community through oral forms of engagement, the research criticizes central and local government’s elite and written base conflict resolution.
In this research I argue that the oral forms of collective memory in Christian-Muslim engagements in Maluku are more appropriate than scriptural and elite-based
concepts of interreligious dialogue that have dominated the interreligious interactions in many places. This dissertation will investigate interreligious engagements using the local time-tested practices of pela-gandong relationships preserved in ritual, narrative, and folksong to articulate a contextualized
interreligious engagement grounded in local cultural practices
