New churches show path to religious tolerance

The government should amend or revoke regulations that discriminate against religious minorities. 

Andreas Harsono 

The Jakarta Post

Cars are parked outside the new Gereja Bersama Protestant church in Citra Maja City housing complex in Lebak regency, Banten, on Dec. 7, 2025. Religious Affairs Minister Nasaruddin Umar inaugurated the church for various denominations in September of this year. (Courtesy of/Andreas Harsono) 

Christians in a district near Jakarta will celebrate this Christmas in a new and unusual church building. Citra Maja City, a 2,600-hectare real estate development in Maja district, Lebak regency, Banten, has built a two-story multi-denominational Protestant church with the approval of the local government.  

This is notable because ever since the government issued the 2006 “religious harmony” regulation, building churches in predominantly Muslim areas of Indonesia became extremely difficult. The regulation effectively gives the local religious majority power through a Religious Harmony Forum to veto providing minority places of worship. 

Some nongovernmental organizations documented that during the past two decades over 1,000 churches throughout Indonesia have been shut down, sealed or burned.  Lebak has long been a hot spot for religious intolerance. 

Even before the religious harmony regulation, it was not possible to get a permit to build a church in the regency. Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, not a single new church permit has been issued in the area.

In his 2021 book, Misionarisme di Banten (Missionary Work in Banten), the academic Mufti Ali wrote that French and Dutch missionaries during colonial rule had not succeeded in proselytizing among ethnic Banten in western Java because local rulers and Muslim clerics had used strict religious teaching, and sometimes violence, to discourage conversions to Christianity. 

In 2022, Lebak regent Iti Octavia Jayabaya banned a Christmas celebration in a sport hall in Citra Maja City, saying that Christians should worship in “registered” Dutch-inherited churches in faraway Rangkasbitung. This was apparently in response to concerns raised by hard-line Muslim groups over the very rapid growth of Bible study groups in Maja. 

According to the Religious Affairs Ministry, the Maja district has 101 mosques as of 2021, but no houses of worship for other religious groups. Various Christian denominations, for instance, used shop houses scattered around the area for their houses of prayer because they did not have a church building. 

To address this problem, Iti Octavia backed an innovative solution with the Ciputra real estate developer to build a joint Protestant church. The new building has six rooms downstairs and seven rooms upstairs. 

“It’s enough to accommodate 20 denominations,” said Arnold Hutabarat, the coordinator of the “Gereja Bersama” joint church for groups that include a Batak Christian Protestant Church and some Pentecostal churches. Each of them will have a separate time slot. 

Iti Octavia encouraged Lebak’s Religious Harmony Forum and the real estate developer to ensure that Christians complied with the strict criteria for obtaining permits. Arnold and his colleagues helped collect the approval and signatures of 60 Muslim neighbors. 

Catholics have followed that example and have also collected the 60 approvals of Muslim neighbors to build the Maria Rosa Mystica Catholic Church in Citra Maja City.  The Ciputra company also decided to build a second, larger mosque in the area. 

Zubaedy Haerudin is the chair of the 17-member Lebak Religious Harmony Forum, which consists of 12 Muslims, three Protestants, a Catholic and a Buddhist. The forum held multiple hearings on “changing demographics,” and hard-line Muslim clerics agreed to the two churches. 

“No new church has ever been built after Independence,” Haerudin told me. 

“Don’t we think that the Christians also have the right to worship in their own churches?”

Iti Octavia signed the building permits for the two churches and the mosque. Construction of the three buildings began in late 2023. Catholics built the church with their own funding, but the real estate company financed the Protestant church and the mosque. 

In September, Religious Affairs Minister Nasruddin Umar inaugurated the Ar-Rahman mosque and the multi-denominational Gereja Bersama, praising the Lebak administration for showing “religious tolerance.” 

The government should amend or revoke regulations that discriminate against religious minorities. But until that happens, Citra Maja City stands as an example of how Indonesians, including officials, religious leaders, business and local communities, can work together to ensure “religious harmony,” bypassing the discriminatory regulations that actually cause disharmony. 

And they have together ensured that, this year, Lebak’s Christians can celebrate Christmas as they wish.  

The writer is a researcher for Human Rights Watch on Indonesia.