Thianto Publishes Essay on Early Muslim-Calvinist Encounters in East Indies

Jul 01, 2020

Professor of Theology Yudha Thianto, Ph.D., recently published an essay in a new book, . His contribution, Muslim Calvinist Encounters and the Shaping of Reformed Protestantism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch East Indies, is part of a collection of essays edited by Prof. Matthias Pohlig, Professor of Early Modern European History at Humboldt-Universit瓣t in Berlin. The book was published by G羹tersloher Verlagshaus in G繹ttingen, Germany.

Thianto first presented the paper on the topic at a conference commemorating the 500thanniversary of the Reformation, which was held from July 18-21, 2017, at the Eckstein Haus in Nuremberg, Germany. The theme of the conference was Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Reformation Era, jointly organized by the Verein f羹r Reformationsgeschichte & The Society for Reformation Research. The organizers of the conference, headed by Prof. Pohlig, selected a handful of papers from the conference to be published in this volume, said Thianto. I was very delighted that my paper was selected.

In his essay, Thianto described the encounters between Calvinism and Islam as the Dutch transplanted Reformed Protestantism in the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) in the 17th century. Through these encounters, the Dutch adopted a significant number of Arabic words to be used in the Reformed churches that they established. In the article I discussed several reasons why the Dutch chose to do so, he said. These reasons were more politically, socio-culturally, and economically driven, and not merely religiously or theologically.