Problems of Dutch Mission Policy in Indonesia

Abstract

The acceleration of the Westernization process in the world today has particularly accentuated the problems of cultural change in many underdeveloped countries. Indonesia affords a case study of an area where, according to the thesis of this article, the attempt to propagate a Western religious value system (in this instance the Protestant missionary effort) led to notable failure in the culture contact pattern and demonstrated some of the peculiar obstacles confronting such missionary endeavor in Islamic societies. The history of the modern missionary movement is long in Indonesia. It differs, sometimes in detail, sometimes in fundamental assumptions and approaches, from other missionary traditions. But whatever its differences from other instances of missionary activity, it well illustrates many of the conflicts which have accompanied the spread of the gospel in colonial and newly independent areas, as well as basic problems of all missionary activity.