A Congruent Approach: A Contribution to the Debate about Religion, Belief and/or Non-Religion in Indonesia

This paper examines historical issues before arriving at its proposed congruent approach. Historical studies are also deliberately used to understand the Indonesian context and map out the approaches that can be offered to address local needs. This paper tackles three major questions: 1) How are the terms religion, belief, and/or non-religion currently used in Indonesia? 2) What are the main characteristics that emerge from the concept of religion that prevails in Indonesia today? 3) How does the offer of a congruent approach contribute to the debate on the discriminatory situation that arises from the terms religion, belief, and/or nonreligion? This paper also presents five central ideas behind the history of the concept of religion in Indonesia and five working principles of a ‘congruent approach’ in reconstructing the understanding concerning the concept of religion. The literature study will be used as a data collection method and historical studies as a data analysis method.