Newell joked that he has been coming to Clonard longer than many of the Catholics who were attending the service, pointing out that he first came to Clonard in 1981.

Newell’s long-standing relationships with people at Clonard, and his impeccable, lived-out commitment to ecumenism over the years, enabled him to deliver a powerful message on the theme ‘What Does Communion Mean?’

You can watch a video of the Gospel reading, and Newell’s sermon, here. The Gospel relates the story of Jesus’ calling of the first disciples, fishermen who quickly left what they were doing to follow Jesus.

Newell reflects on that passage, emphasising that the fishermen brothers from Capernaum – Peter and Andrew; and James and John – had to leave prosperous and promising careers for Jesus’ sake. Then, they had to learn to get along with, and love, the once-hated tax collector Matthew. The following are excerpts from Newell’s sermon.

Ken Newell on ‘What Does Communion Mean?’

Jesus began to show them [Peter, Andrew, James and John] that they were all brothers, and even in the most unlikely people [Matthew] there are hidden treasures that Jesus can unlock.

… Jesus was teaching them about communion, with each other and with him. That the hands that must reach out to receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist are taken by Jesus … and expanded to reach out to the body of Christ in the other churches.

Now if there is a spiritual exercise I want you to take home that is revolutionary and life changing, here it is: when you reach out your hands in the Eucharist to take the body of Christ and draw it into yourself, automatically your hands will be stretched out to reach out to his body in all the other Christian churches. That’s the deal of the gospel, and that’s the story of the Christian faith.

… Peter discovered on the beach that day that the parochial spirit … was expanded by Jesus … Jesus [expanded Peter’s parochial spirit] … as wide as the new emerging universal church.

To be catholic is go be universal. … The heart of being catholic means the development and the expansion from the parochial to a universal heart. .. For Peter to be expanded he had to let something go …

If you don’t feel your Christian spirit to be expanding and to be reaching out to those of other Christian traditions in this city and in this country, I’m asking you is there something you need to let go to let Jesus expand your spirit?’

• Could it be fear? If I go there I’ll feel out of place and uncomfortable?
• … Could it be a hidden hurt, something was done to you in … your life? That someone from the other community put you down? And if they did can I apologise? From the bottom of my heart, for all the hurt and pain that my community has inflicted on yours, and on your church. … Is there a hurt there that you need to let go of?
• … Or is there in a back of your mind … a sense of pride … [that] I belong to a great big church, I’m not interested in these minnows? Well I’ll tell you something, Jesus is. Is there a pride that stops you connecting?
• … Or is there a feeling of indifference? … Why would I be interested in going to any other church or meeting any other people?

Jesus is not indifferent to our divisions and that’s why he prays for our unity.

I end with this radical truth at the very heart of our faith:

If tonight, you get down on your knees at your bedside and you say, our Father, who art in heaven; and if I get down by my bedside and pray to our Father in heaven, that means that we have one Father. Whatever church we come from.

Here’s the radical thing. If he’s our Father, what does that make us to each other? We are brothers and sisters. We are blood brothers and blood sisters through the cross. And when we make the sign of the cross we take up a lifestyle that is prepared to move out of a parish mentality and cross all the divisions that have separated Christians in this country for centuries.

We’re here to restore the family and bring it together again. We are here to win that battle. And friends, can I say to you, we’re not playing for a draw. And neither is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because communion means connecting.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Aldous is writing his master’s dissertation about the work of Peter Rollins and asked for comment around four questions:

1. What troubles you most about Rollins’ work or ideas?
2. What do you find most liberating or freeing about his writing/thoughts?
3. How much do you identify with his work personally?
4. Please comment on negative or positive missiological concerns that you feel Rollins provokes. What do you make of Rollins’ typical deconstructive notion that, ‘evangelism should be a powerless approach that breaks down the them and us thus creating space to become re-evangelised.’

Today I tackle the second question:

What do you find most liberating or freeing about his writing/thoughts?

I come from an evangelical Protestant background, where the emphasis is so often on figuring out what is ‘right’ belief. Rollins’ work challenges the idea that right belief is the be all and end all of Christianity, replacing it with the idea that living like a Christian in the real world is more important.

(Of course, I’m not saying that evangelical Christians are not concerned with living like Christians in the real world – they are of course. But there are times when living like Christians in the real world gets de-emphasised or obscured, especially in churches that emphasise getting ‘saved’ at the expense of much else.)

I don’t think Rollins is saying that we can’t ever really figure anything out about God or scripture, so we should just give up. Far from it. His work is heavily philosophical and intellectual so if anything he is urging Christians to engage with their faith with their brains fully switched on.

But there is something liberating about realising that you don’t have all the answers, and that’s okay.

I also come from a background where the legitimacy of Catholics as ‘real’ Christians has been questioned, and continues to be questioned, by some. For example, when I was getting married I received letters from some friends questioning whether my marriage was really ‘God’s will’, based on the idea that a Catholic couldn’t really be a Christian. Or, perhaps more charitably, Catholics can be Christians but they should see how corrupted their church is and leave it, if they ‘really’ are …

Engaging with Rollins’ work, and with ecumenical Christians (unavoidable, once you start working in a place called the Irish School of Ecumenics, I suppose!), has also made me much more relaxed about the bigger picture of who’s included in the wider church.

The initiative, which began last year, is an opportunity for Christians from different traditions to celebrate communion/Eucharist together.

Those who attend observe the discipline of the Catholic Church. This means that Catholics and those from Protestant traditions do not actually share the bread and the wine. Rather, those who are not permitted by their church to partake in another’s service simply observe, or receive a blessing.

I think In Joyful Hope is an imperfect but powerful way to draw attention to the pain that many ‘ordinary’ Christians feel about the continued divisions in the church – and to express their desire to heal those divisions.

This is a subject Fr Gerry Reynolds of Clonard Monastery spoke about during a homily on 30 October.

Fr Gerry introduced the ‘Living Bells’ initiative for the upcoming Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in June.

The Eucharistic Congress is of course a major international event for the Catholic Church. Fr Reynolds is among those Irish Catholics who see it as an opportunity to invite Protestant Christians to join in the celebrations.

Since March, a special Eucharistic Congress Bell, from the Dominican Convent in Portstewart, has been travelling throughout Ireland. The idea behind ‘living bells’ is that Christians will joyfully spread the word about the Congress, and in the process have their faith and their relationships with other transformed.

You can watch Fr Gerry’s homily in full here.

Below, I’ve quoted liberally from his text:

Fr Gerry Reynolds on the Living Bells of the Eucharistic Congress

It’s 80 years since Ireland was host to an international Eucharistic Congress. And the congress will be so totally different … the church is in a new place … the old enmities are fading away … the various churches are growing in friendship with one another and that’s going to make things very different.

Cardinal Brady said the Congress would be an event for everyone. Why’s that?

First of all, because it is about Christ. Christ our saviour, our redeemer. Christ is for everyone. It’s a proclamation of his presence among us, a celebration of his gift of himself among us in the bread and wine.

[Second] … The congress is about our shared identity as Christians … all who are baptised are bounded in the body of Christ … we live in communion with Christ and with one another in him. So the congress is about that common shared identity, the grace of God that makes us one. [Though] not fully one, not fully reconciled …

Thirdly, the congress is about our common mission. All the churches share that mission to bring the good news of the gospel to all the peoples of the world. And for that mission Jesus prayed, may they all be one, so that the world may believe.

So the congress is about making an end to our divisions … We must hope, expect great transformation and cooperation together in our common mission to bring the good news of the gospel especially to the generation of younger Irish people … [We must] bring the experience of Christ to them that will transform their lives.

[Not long ago]… Pope Benedict … was speaking in Erfurt where Maritn Luther was a monk … He said in the 16^th century Christians emphasised what divided them. So what came of that, we know.

But in our time Christians are growing to emphasise what unites them: the grace of God, the communion in the Holy Spirit, the love of the Father, that sharing in the life of God. And our great task is to make visible the invisible bond that is between us. To make it visible in the way we work together and the way we celebrate.

… [The] call of the bell is to be converted to Christ, to live his life, to give our whole lives for him.

Fr Gerry then suggests ways that Christians can become ‘living bells’ of the Congress, including praying the ‘living bells’ prayer that was distributed on leaflets at that day’s mass. He also urged listeners to participate in ecumenical activities, listing those that are supported by Clonard such as the Unity Pilgrims, ecumenical day at the Clonard Novena, joint bible study, joint prayers of adoration, and the In Joyful Hope initiative.

He concludes by saying of the In Joyful Hope initiative:

We live with the discipline of the Catholic Church because at our grassroots level we can’t change it. But we long to see it changed and see the common Eucharist that Jesus destines for us all.

The remaining In Joyful Hope Celebrations for 2011-2012 are:

St Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church, 23 November 2011

Joanmount Methodist Church, 7 February 2012

Fitzroy Presbyterian Church, 23 May 2012

(Image: St Malachy’s, sourced on Wikipedia)

Further discussion is encouraged on the Living Church Facebook page. Each day this week, one of the five themes is to be discussed. Yesterday took up the theme of lay participation, while today the topic is open, welcoming, community.

This is my final post on the book, intended as a general review of the book. It’s my hope that the review will prompt others to revisit – or to consider for the first time – some of Hurley’s ideas. I’d encourage people to try and get their hands on a copy of the book and read it for themselves.

I work at the Irish School of Ecumenics, and I am often greeted with a blank stare when I tell people where I work. I know that it can’t be taken for granted that people actually know what Ecumenics is. So, it’s helpful that significant chapters in the book are taken up with definitions, which I have explored in earlier posts on this blog:

Fr Michael Hurley on Ecumenical Tithing

Fr Michael Hurley on Ecumenical Theology and Ecumenics

Fr Michael Hurley on Ecumenism

Although published more than a decade ago, the concern that motivated Hurley to write the book is strikingly contemporary – the sense that the ecumenical movement is in the doldrums.

The words Hurley writes in the introduction (p. 1) could have been written today:

‘But despite some remarkable success … ecumenical efforts have not only failed to achieve their goal but the whole movement has, it would seem, failed to maintain its momentum. It has lost its drive, its nerve, its sense of direction. It is now like a ship becalmed needing the mighty wind of the Spirit to get under way again.’

Indeed, last year I reflected on a 2008 article in Doctrine and Life by my Irish School of Ecumenics colleague Andrew Pierce, in which he argued that ecumenism in Ireland remained uninspired and uninspiring.

There are also several chapters that bemoan the shortcomings in the Irish churches’ contributions to peace on this island, and aspects of these read as if they could be written today.

A chapter called ‘The Church of Ireland: Challenges for the Future’ considers the difficulties posed by its relationship with the Orange Order, difficulties that have not yet gone away. Other chapters deal with the challenges of churches caught up in Ireland’s sectarian system can meaningfully promote. forgiveness and reconciliation.

Given this diagnosis, much of the rest of the book could be understood as Hurley’s plea to get people excited about ecumenism and, in the Irish context, reconciliation. This is done through an eclectic mix of chapters, organised into three sections:

Ecumenical Vision

Ecumenical Issues

Ecumenical Initiatives

The section on ecumenical initiatives offers fascinating insights into the history of the churches in Ireland. Chapter topics ranged from the Milltown Park Public Lecture Series 1960-1969, the publication of the book Irish Anglicanism 1869-1969, and the formation of the Irish School of Ecumenics and the now-defunct Columbanus Community of Reconciliation (which was housed in the building now occupied by the Belfast campus of the Irish School of Ecumenics).

Reading the chapters on the Milltown Park Lectures and Irish Anglicanism was like stepping back in time. The socio-religious world Hurley described seems alien in contrast to the Ireland of today.

Can you imagine a church service to celebrate the launch of a book on Anglicanism being broadcast live during prime time on RTE today? Or can you imagine 700 people turning up at Milltown Park on a winter’s evening to hear talks on ‘drugs, brainwashing and the self’ and ‘psychiatry, the moralist and sin’, both delivered by Catholic priests (p. 243)?

Hurley also writes that Eamon DeValera attended several of the Milltown Park lectures, which made me wonder to what extent this founding father of the Irish state realised that the Ireland that he ‘dreamed of’ was fading away?

The historical chapters also provided some perspective on the challenges faced by ecumenists of that generation. While the challenges for Christians committed to Christian unity today might be different, the qualities of patience and perseverance needed then are also surely needed now.

In the other sections, Hurley considers themes of both general ecumenical interest, and others specific to the Irish context. He offers suggestions on how to make baptism and Eucharist more ecumenically meaningful. But again, today, it seems that the practice of both remain as divided as ever in our churches.

Other chapters are Hurley’s own reflections on how the wider church can honour the contributions of Christians of other traditions. So as a Catholic, he praises the insights of Presbyterian John Calvin (in a chapter called ‘Catholicity: The Witness of Calvin’s Institutes’), Methodist John Wesley (in a chapter called ‘Wesley Today and Evangelisation Today’), and Anglican George Otto Simms (in a chapter called ‘George Otto Simms: Ecumenical Examplar 1910-1991’).

I think these reflections can be understood as part of Hurley’s own process of ecumenical formation – really delving into the thought and the spiritual life of Christians of other traditions, and finding there real insight and common ground.

His ideas were put forward in his 1998 book, Christian Unity: An Ecumenical Second Spring? (Dublin: Veritas). I was prompted to take this book off the shelf in the library where I work – the Irish School of Ecumenics (itself one of Hurley’s creations) – after his death earlier this year.

Hurley doesn’t take sole credit for developing the concept of ecumenical tithing. In a chapter of the book titled ‘Ecumenical Tithing,’ Hurley notes that (p. 78):

In 1997 ‘ecumenical tithing’ was the third of three suggestions put forward as an agenda for the Church in Ireland by the Department of Theological Questions of the Irish Inter-Church Meeting (cf. Freedom, Justice & Responsibility in Ireland Today, published by Veritas, Dublin, 1997, p. 94).

But what is ecumenical tithing?

After reading Hurley, my very basic definition is:

a commitment for Christians to pledge to spend a significant percentage of their time in worship and service with Christians from a tradition other than their own.

It sounds like a good idea to me, especially since I think that over the years Christians in Ireland have tended to reduce ecumenism to something that the clergy do; or simply attending a service for the Week for Prayer for Christian Unity.

Similarly, Hurley sets his discussion of ecumenical tithing in a context where ecumenism seems to be on the wane, both in Ireland and internationally. He sees the encouragement of ecumenical tithing as a way to start putting some ‘buoyancy’ back into the ‘movement for promoting Christian unity’ (p. 78). So he writes:

‘Why the buoyancy has gone out of the ecumenical movement is of course a complex question to which there can be no single, certainly no simple answer. But one part of the answer must surely be the sad fact that too little attention has been given too late to the need for ecumenical formation.’

Hurley’s fixation on the word ‘formation’ is important. Like other aspects of Christian discipleship and spirituality, he sees ecumenism as something that Christians need to work on and develop.

Ecumenism requires more than a vague commitment to be civil to other Christians in the public sphere.

For Hurley, a commitment to ecumenical tithing is a way to encourage the ‘formation’ of a more fully-rounded Christian character. So he writes (p. 83):

‘Each of us devotes a certain amount of our time, our energies, our resources, our services, our money to our own Church – to its worship and its various other religious activities. The question is: could we withdraw a tenth of that time and energy and money from our own and devote it to another Church? Is it possible that, however we view our responsibilities as Christians, we might exercise them in more than one Church: partly in one, partly in another; mostly in our own, of course, but also, to some extent, to the extent of a tithe, in another? For most of us these responsibilities as Christians include worship, engaging in some form of social work and giving financial support to the Church at home and overseas.’

He goes on to provide specific examples (p. 83-84);

‘But could Presbyterians tithe their Sundays to the Church of Ireland, i.e. go to the Church with the Anglicans rather than with their fellow-Presbyterians some five times a year? Could a member of the Church of Ireland reciprocate this ecumenical gesture or do likewise with the Methodists, worshipping with them on the occasional Sunday and also transferring the tithe of their support for the Church Missionary Society to the Methodist Missionary Society? Could Roman Catholics transfer a tithe of their support for Trócaire to Christian Aid? And sometimes buy and read the Church of Ireland Gazette instead of the Irish Catholic or Catholic Herald? Could Roman Catholic ordinands tithe their theological studies to another Church? In other words, could they study and live with Anglican, Orthodox or Presbyterian ordinands for a part of their course?’

Hurley also addresses the particular concerns of Roman Catholics, who might be concerned about missing mass in their parish on a Sunday (p. 85):

‘There is … no rule obliging Roman Catholics to receive communion every Sunday. Missing communion on certain Sundays would be a great spiritual loss but no breach of rule. Some would be able to see it as the making of a personal sacrifice perfecting in keeping with the ecumenical principle that, so long as no essential of the faith is endangered, the Church must be ready to make every sacrifice to promote Christian unity so that the world may believe.’

Further, Hurley recommends that Christians embarking on a disciplined programme of ecumenical tithing do so in groups and receive appropriate pastoral care from church leaders.

One of the most obvious examples of ecumenical tithing here in Ireland are the Unity Pilgrims of Clonard Monastery, who visit various Protestant churches in and around Belfast to share in their Sunday morning services.

Unfortunately, such initiatives are few and far between, forcing me to ask why – in a society divided along religious lines – the churches have not implemented, or perhaps even considered, ecumenical tithing?

Other posts:

Fr Michael Hurley on Ecumenical Theology and Ecumenics

Fr Michael Hurley on Ecumenism

Remembering Fr Michael Hurley in Belfast

Michael Hurley – Remembering the Father of Irish Ecumenism

My talk is titled ‘Surveying Religion’s Public Role: Perspectives on Diversity, Reconciliation and Ecumenism.’ It will draw on some of the research conducted for my School’s Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism research project.

The seminar is a joint venture of Dublintellectual and the Hugh Lane, and the purpose is to explore representations of conflict and post conflict in art and culture. The event is in conjunction with the Rita Donagh & Richard Hamilton Civil Rights etc. and Willie Doherty: DISTURBANCE exhibition running to Jan 15th 2011.

This is the programme line-up:

WELCOME ADDRESS
Jessica O’Donnell & Barbara Dawson, Hugh Lane
Dr. Marisa Ronan, Director, Dublintellectual
SPEAKERS
Dr. Declan Long, NCAD, “Spectres of the Political: Art and Aftermath in Northern Ireland.”
Dr. Eamonn Hughes, Queens University, “Conflict & Popular Culture.”
Dr. Gladys Ganiel, Trinity, “Surveying Religion’s Public Role: Perspectives on Diversity, Reconciliation and Ecumenism.”
Prof. Liam Kennedy, UCD, “Historicising Photography & Conflict”
Wine Reception 9:00-9:30

Please book in advance at: www.hughlane.ie/education

The material I presented at the talk is still very much ‘work in progress,’ but I’m posting the powerpoint I used here. My powerpoint is of course mostly images and bullet points, so looking at it doesn’t  make the content of my talk self-explanatory. But I will offer some brief reflections on the research now.

First, I want to point out that the title of the talk ends with a Question Mark. It is titled ‘The End of Irish Catholicism?’ NOT ‘The End of Irish Catholicism!’

It is a deliberately provocative title, but that doesn’t mean that it is somehow declaring the end of a faith that has survived for centuries on this island.

Rather, one of the broad arguments of my talk is that a particular form of Irish Catholicism has ended. This is the traditional, perhaps now stereotypical, Irish Catholicism of generations past.

This is an Irish Catholicism that had a close link with political power in terms of its relationship with the Irish state, that controlled social institutions such as schools, hospitals and children’s homes, and that informed the identity, culture, and everyday religious practices of countless Irish people over the centuries.

I’m not the first person to argue that we have seen the end of this type of Irish Catholicism. The social and political processes, as well as the recent scandals, that have seen this type of Catholicism wane are well-documented elsewhere by scholars such as Tom Inglis and Roy Foster.

There were of course positive and negative components of traditional Irish Catholicism – but that was beyond the scope of my talk and certainly beyond the scope of this blog post.

Another of my talk’s broad arguments is that as traditional Irish Catholicism has declined, the institutional church has responded by:

• trying to defend the institution (this is seen in its careful apologies to victims of clerical sexual abuse, which never seem to go far enough to console the victims) and
• by trying to empower lay people through mechanisms such as lay parish councils and diocesan level initiatives such as ‘listening processes.’

But what my research has been primarily concerned with is how what I call ‘extra-institutional’ spaces are developing within the Irish Catholic Church.

I came up with the idea of extra-institutional spaces while conducting research for my School’s Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism research project. This project has involved eight case studies of various faith communities on the island of Ireland, not all of which are Catholic.

I see two of those case studies – Holy Cross Benedictine Monastery in Rostrevor, Co. Down and Slí Eile, the Jesuit Centre for Young Adults based in Dublin (now called Magis Ireland) – as examples of extra-institutional spaces.

How do I define extra-institutional spaces?

They are organisations or religious orders that, while very much part of the Catholic Church, are seen by the people who participate in them, or avail of their services, to operate outside of the institutional Irish Catholic Church.

So in the eyes of those who are involved with them, they remain untainted by the scandals that have rocked the Irish Catholic Church. Some people I interviewed during these case studies said they offered more meaningful inspiration for how to practice their faith than the Catholic Church they had been raised in. These people often contrasted their involvement with Holy Cross or Slí Eile to their rather dull and uninspiring experiences of Catholic education and/or parish life.

They also said that Holy Cross and Slí Eile seemed to them to be focusing on issues that the wider Irish Catholic Church is ignoring, as it tries to preserve itself in the face of the scandals. These issues included ecumenism, social justice, and spirituality.

Indeed, some of my interviewees said that they believed that organisations or places such as Slí Eile, Holy Cross, and other similar extra-institutional spaces are keeping the Irish Catholic Church alive in this time of scandal and decline.

So we may be seeing the end of Irish Catholicism as we have known it, but also seeing the beginning of new types of Irish Catholicism ..

These are types of Irish Catholicism that offer more meaningful participation to lay people, a greater emphasis on spiritual formation through prayer and bible study, and a renewed commitment to the social justice tradition in Irish Catholicism, which has perhaps been best exemplified in the work of Irish missionaries down the years.

Of course, to say that they are renewing and re-forming the Irish Catholic Church is to claim a lot for these extra-institutional spaces, which appeal to only a limited number of people. I don’t have enough sociological data or evidence to make informed comment on how significant or wide-ranging their influence may be. Further research is needed.

When giving a version of this talk at the bi-annual meeting of the European Sociological Association in Geneva last month, a member of the audience pointed out that the two cases I had analysed were examples of religious organisations whose values seemed in line with my School’s (the Irish School of Ecumenics) history. And she is absolutely right.

Holy Cross has an explicit vocation for Ecumenism, and one of the principal founders of the Irish School of Ecumenics was a Jesuit!

Of course there are other examples of extra-institutional spaces in the Catholic Church whose values would not be in-line with those  associated with the Irish School of Ecumenics: organisations, groups or orders who would advocate a more traditional form of Catholicism. These groups might think the Irish Catholic Church has sold out to liberalism or modernism, and see it as their duty to call the Irish Catholic Church back to what they see as ‘true’ Catholicism.

But sociologically, the concept of an extra-institutional space doesn’t depend on the ideas put forward within those spaces. What’s important is their position as a religious structure: 

The people occupying those spaces believe they need to somehow operate outside of the normal structures of the institution – while remaining uncomfortably within it – if they are to contribute to its re-formation.

And for me, that means that plenty of questions remain for future research. I’ll end with the questions I posed on one of the final slides in my powerpoint:

• How significant is the role of these extra-institutional spaces in reforming the church in light of scandal?
• To what extent do lay Catholics become more ‘empowered’ to participate in the church through these extra-institutional spaces?
• To what extent is there interaction between the institutional and extra-institutional spaces?

In line with the theme of my blog, I consider Burrows’ work a concrete example of what ‘building a church without walls’ would look like.

I’ve never met Fr Burrows, but he stumbled across my blog post and he emailed me to comment on it. With thanks to Fr Burrows, I reproduce his thoughts on ‘Witness’ below.

Fr Charlie Burrows on Christian Witness

I would like to provide just a little more information as the documentary may be misleading on some points. It pointed out we do not “proselytise” as we believe “religion” is  between the person and God.

However we hope we “witness” and since we come here in 1973 the number of Catholics in the parish has gone from 3,000 to 18,000 and there are now four parishes with plans to create four more.

When we came many were only nominal  Muslims  and some had accepted religion through fear as after the 1965 coup many “so called ”  communists professed to be Islam and when an alternative appeared they changed over.

We continue to encounter people who have  a “Jesus experience” and ask for baptism.  A positive perception of Christianity  continues to grow as does the perception  of Catholics to what it means to be  a Christian – a personal relationship with Jesus and His father.

The place of the Holy Spirit  is less understand but there are strong “charismatic groups” . The state philosophy is “Pancasila” five principles*:

1. Belief in the one and only God, (in Indonesian, Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa).
2. Just and civilized humanity, (in Indonesian, Kemanusiaan Yang Adil dan Beradab).
3. The unity of Indonesia, (in Indonesian, Persatuan Indonesia).
4. Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives (in Indonesian, Kerakyatan Yang Dipimpin oleh Hikmat Kebijaksanaan, Dalam Permusyawaratan dan Perwakilan)
5. Social justice for the all of the people of Indonesia (in Indonesian, Keadilan Sosial bagi seluruh Rakyat Indonesia)

This philosophy is “inclusive” – Unity in Diversity -  and those who visit our institutions often state “This is real Pancasila”.

* Definitions of five principles sourced on wikipedia