Hierarchies of Power: Evangelical Christianity and Adat Transformation in Indonesian Borneo [1 ed.] 9789811901713

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CONTESTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTHEAST ASIA

Hierarchies of Power Evangelical Christianity and Adat Transformation in Indonesian Borneo

Imam Ardhianto

Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia

Series Editors Vedi Hadiz, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia Jamie S. Davidson, Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Caroline Hughes, Kroc Institute for Int’l Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

This Palgrave Macmillan book series publishes research that displays strong interdisciplinary concerns to examine links between political conflict and broader socio-economic development and change. While the emphasis is on contemporary Southeast Asia, works included within the Series demonstrate an appreciation of how historical contexts help to shape present-day contested issues in political, economic, social and cultural spheres. The Series will be of interest to authors undertaking single country studies, multi-country comparisons in Southeast Asia or tackling political and socio-economic contestations that pertain to the region as a whole. Rather uniquely, the series welcomes works that seek to illuminate prominent issues in contemporary Southeast Asia by comparing experiences in the region to those in other parts of the world as well. Volumes in the series engage closely with the relevant academic literature on specific debates, and include a comparative dimension within even single country studies such that the work contributes insights to a broader literature. Researchers based in Southeast Asian focused institutions are encouraged to submit their work for consideration.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16279

Imam Ardhianto

Hierarchies of Power Evangelical Christianity and Adat Transformation in Indonesian Borneo

Imam Ardhianto Faculty of Social and Political Sciences Universitas Indonesia Depok, Jawa Barat, Indonesia

ISSN 2661-8354 ISSN 2661-8362 (electronic) Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia ISBN 978-981-19-0170-6 ISBN 978-981-19-0171-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Planet Observer/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

This book is dedicated to my father, Soesdiarto and my mother, Rochmah, for their struggle and hard work earning every penny to raise, educate, and teach me moral fiber and intellectual curiosity.

Acknowledgments

This book could never have materialized without advice, support, guidance, and critical comments from various people who have been influential since the beginning of the project. First, I would like to express my gratitude to all my informants at Long Nawang, Belaga, Sungai Asap, and Long Moh. Especially, I would like to thank We Lencau, who always generously opened his home for my visits, and Pe Gun Dian, who was influential in helping me during the fieldwork. In Sarawak, Simpson Njock Lenjau very generously accompanied me on a visit to his village at Long Moh Upper Baram. In Uma Kulit, Sungai Asap, Andreas Batok, and Cik Gu Juriah were very kind in welcoming me to stay in their homes during my interviews with the first generation of Uma Kulit local evangelists in central Borneo. In Tanjung Selor, I thank Rev. Musa Ageng, the North Kalimantan Province regional coordinator of the GKII Church who accepted me there and gave many historical insights into church transformation in central Borneo. I am also grateful to numerous other persons in the villages of Long Nawang, Nawang Baru, and Uma Kulit who were extremely helpful to me during the fieldwork. I am grateful to the Gerda Henkel Stiftung with its generous Lisa Maskell Fellowship PhD grant support during 2015–2018, which supported the fieldwork for this book, particularly the fellowship’s project manager Jens Schneider and Jana Frey, who were very helpful in supporting me in administrative tasks related to the research grant. In Freiburg, I would like to thank my Doktormutter, Prof. Dr. Judith Schlehe, for her patience, support, and critical suggestions from the vii

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beginning of this project. Her critical comments and sharp suggestions during the fieldwork and writing process were thought provoking and illuminated many issues in my empirical findings. At the institute of Social Anthropology and Faculty of Humanities in Freiburg, I would like to also thank Prof. Dr. Stefan Seitz, Anna Meiser, Prof. Gregor Dobler, and Prof. Jürgen Rüland for their valuable comments and critiques during many seminars and colloquia at various stages of this book. I would like to thank all my colleagues in Freiburg for their support, Mirjam Lücking, Eva Maria Sandkühler, Martin Budel, Yannick van Den Berg, and Melanie Nertz, Sita Hidayah and Burhan Ali, Fadhli Lukman and Muammar Zayn Khadafi. I would like to thank Vedi Hadiz for inviting me to publish my study in this series of contestation in Southeast Asia and who has since then always supported me in this publication process. I would like to thank Inaya Rakhmani for her constant encouragement and for pushing me to start writing and finishing this book. I thank also Diatyka Widya for her help in reading the initial draft of chapter one and providing one question that was pivotal to the evolution of the argument in this book. The most basic argument of this book came from a discussion with them during my short visits to the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, in 2019, and subsequent visits. In the final months of finishing this book, Jamie S. Davidson was supportive for providing me his critical comments and suggestions. Crucially important, I would like to thank Alec Crutchley for his help editing and proofreading the whole monograph. At Universitas Indonesia, I owe a great debt to Dave Lumenta for inviting me in 2013 to visit Long Busang and Belaga in Sarawak in his research project “Transnational Village Migrations in central Borneo.” His vast knowledge of Kenyah history is remarkable and provides a path for navigating social and religious trajectories in central Borneo. Without his continuous encouragement to do research on the “post-Bungan complex region,” this book would perhaps not exist. I also thank Sindhunata who was likewise very helpful as a colleague who shared his insights and updated information during his fieldwork in Apokayan in 2018– 2019. From the Department of Anthropology, Universitas Indonesia, I would like to thank Tony Rudyansjah, Irwan Martua Hidayana, Suraya Afiff, and Sri Murni, chairs of the Anthropology Department, and Semiarto Aji Purwanto, then the chair of the Undergraduate Program, for allowing me to leave from my teaching obligations for the research of this book. Thanks also to other colleagues that opened a vast theoretical and topical discussion at Universitas Indonesia. I thank Suraya

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Afiff, Yunita Winarto, Ezra M. Choesin, Rhino Ariefiansyah, Sundjaya, Hestu Prahara, Avyanthi Aziz, Geger Riyanto, Muhammad Rifki Damm, Mujtaba Hamdi, Aulia Dwi Nastiti, Hizkia Yosie Polimpung, and Iman Fachruliansyah. Numerous discussions with each of them shaped the direction of this research. I would also like to thank my father, my mother, my brothers, and little sisters, Budi Hartanto, Dody Prasetyo, Ary Hermawan, Dyna Rochmyaningsih, and Dwiyanti Kusumaningrum for their constant emotional and material support throughout the years that has made my academic career possible, the necessary basic support to finish this book. Finally, this book would never have been possible without the support of my wife, Putri Wulan Mayangsari, who had the great courage and fortitude to accompany me during the writing stage in Freiburg as well as in Depok. The basic materials of this book that came from my PhD dissertation were written while she was pregnant and at the same time was also taking care of our first son Pilar Kama Sadra. Without her painful caring labor for our family, everything that made this book materialize would be irrelevant.

Praise page for Hierarchies of Power

“This important ethnographic and ethnohistorical study of the interactions of Adat and Pentecostal-Evangelical Christianity among the Kenyah of Central Borneo cuts through the underbrush of now overfamiliar debates about Christian conversion and individualism to ask challenging new questions about how egalitarianism and hierarchy are negotiated by means of complex religious and political struggles. Opening up a fresh analytic perspective and posing a novel set of questions about religion and cultural change, this book is a major contribution to the anthropology of Christianity.” —Joel Robbins and Sigrid Rausing, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge “This highly original book takes readers on a journey into the history of religious conversion to Christianity as well as adat revitalization movements among the Kenyah of North Kalimantan, Indonesia. However, it is relevant far beyond its particular case study, as it offers inspiring theoretical reflections on the relationship between hierarchy and egalitarianism. New perspectives on religious change and its socio-political effects are combined with vivid ethnographic descriptions and critical questions about the continuous influences of hierarchical religious authority and local elites.” —Judith Schlehe, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, University of Freiburg, Germany xi

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“The author and this books deserve to receive respect and high appreciation. This book very clearly how the author brilliantly and seriously his competency and expertise in anthropology and combining this with the study of mission as part of theology, like Lothar Schreiner in his Adat und Evangelium (Habilitation, 1972) and Sita T. van Bemmelen in her book, Christianity, Colonization, and Gender Relations in North Sumatra (2018). This book enriches and helps many people to understand the encounter, dialogue, and collaboration between culture (esp. adat) and Christianity, with socio-political and historical approach. Also the result and its benefit, not only for the Apokayan people in Central Borneo, not only for the Pentecostal-Evangelical churches (esp, GKII), but also for many people and churches around the world, at least in South East Asia. It will be very beneficial if—after this English edition—this book will be soon translated into Indonesian so that this book brings blessings for many students of anthropology and theology in Indonesia and helps them to continue the attempt and process of contextualization.” —Prof. Jan S. Aritonang, Ph.D., Professor of History of Christianity, Jakarta Philosophical & Theological School

Contents

1

Introduction P/E Church, Religious Change, and Globalization Value-Culturalist Approach Hierarchy, Religious Change, and Power Structures The Kenyah in Apokayan and Central Borneo The Fieldwork Outline of the Chapters References

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The End of Headhunting and the Globalizing Mission of Evangelical Christianity in Borneo Upland-Lowland Social Formation in Precolonial and Colonial Borneo The End of Headhunting Moral Frontiers and P/E Christian Ideology Conclusion References

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The Fall of Adat Pu’un and the Politics of Church Making The Fall of Old Adat, Bungan Malan, and Christianity as a Novel Form of Power The Emergence of the Indigenous Church and Local Evangelists

1 4 8 12 15 20 25 30 37 39 44 48 56 59 61 65 69

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Becoming Missionaries: Transnational Church Development in the Midst of Indonesia’s Revolution The Fall of Old Adat, Church, and Gendered Social Change Conclusion References 4

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The Spirit Went Upriver: Disenchanted Adat and the Politics of “Culture” The Return of Adat, Ladung Bio, and Politics of Pemekaran Christian Aristocrat: Pastor Raising a Belawing Uman Jenai as Disenchanted Rituals Beyond the Ritual, Gendered Adat, and Ethics of Everyday Life Conclusion References

75 80 83 87 89 93 96 99 101 105 107

Inter-Denominational Relations, Hierarchy, and Schism Bungan Malan Movement and Early Conversion Contrasting Liturgies and Polarized Villages Liturgy, Village Events, and Inter-Denominational Relations The Complete and Incomplete Church Conclusion References

109 113 118

Conclusion The Articulation of Socio-Religious Forms and the Development of P/E Christianity Reassessing Religious Change in Borneo, Southeast Asia, and Beyond References

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Index

122 124 128 133

139 142 146 149

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 5.1

Belawing construction in Long Nawang before ladung bio (Source Sindhunata, 2018) Pastor opening the annual ritual of uman jenai, 2016 A notes given to We Bangen at an adat meeting in 2016 Incomplete construction of GPIB church building

98 100 104 127

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Source Ardhianto & Lumenta (2018)

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

On the first day of my fieldwork, We Bangen, who was letting me stay a few nights in an unoccupied room in her house in Long Nawang, North Kalimantan, asked me a direct question: “What are you trying to find here?” I remember answering vaguely, perhaps with the kind of template remark used by anthropologists who are still uncertain about the specific question of their initial fieldwork. I replied, “I would like to study religion among the Kenyah.” She responded as follows: “If you want to study our religion, go find the older persons, not us, ask them the reason they ‘masuk Kristen’ (converted to Christianity or, literally, entered Christianity), and their troublesome experience of leaving our onerous and expensive traditional rituals of adat .” Then she surprised me momentarily, as she said, “it would be awkward and sensitive for some people in the villages if you ask them about religion. The problem nowadays with Christianity is that it looks like we are now divided; we belong to Gereja Protestan Indonesia Barat, [Calvinist Church] and are followers of agama petani (peasant religion), and people from Gereja Kemah Injil Indonesia (Pentecostal-Evangelist Church, P/E) are followers of agama pegawai (bureaucrat religion).” Her response intrigued me. I was surprised that she differentiated between the two denominations in a tone reminiscent of the early literature on the Kenyah (a community of about 40,000 people inhabiting both Sarawak, Malaysia, East Kalimantan, and North Kalimantan Province © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 I. Ardhianto, Hierarchies of Power, Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3_1

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in Indonesia). These studies highlight the importance of the hierarchical dichotomy of adat traditional institutions that at the core of their practices differentiate between paren (local aristocrats) and panyin (commoners) (Conley, 1973; H. L. Whittier, 1973; P. R. Whittier, 1981). In contemporary Kenyah society, denominational polarization is intertwined with adat. My early observations, for example, found that P/E followers dominated the revitalized adat institutions after the fall of President Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order regime in 1998. While We Bangen told me to investigate adat or a pre-Christian religious system to study Kenyah religion, I found that the P/E Church had in fact been a leading institution in pushing for the revitalization of adat as an institution and discourse to legitimize local cultural identity, which was increasingly significant as a result of the twin processes of democratization and decentralization characteristic of the post-Suharto Indonesia. We Bangen’s story is one of many illustrating the complicated transformation involved in becoming Christian for the Kenyah people, whose relation to the religion in different periods of history is often intertwined with a withdrawal from or a return to what they call adat . As is the case with other communities across Indonesia, adat in its many forms has played a critical role in shaping the way the Kenyah people embrace Christianity. Adat has helped to determine whether local communities should change or retain their old religious practices or modify the “world religions.” Its roles, however, have been outlined by scholars with a certain degree of ambiguity. In much literature, adat is seen as contributing to the adoption of world religions by changing some of certain elements so that the locals can accept these foreign ideas (Picard, 2000; Schiller, 1986). From my observations of conversion narratives in Borneo, however, for many indigenous communities that have converted to P/E, adat is demonized. It serves as a symbol of an “immoral past” that should be left behind, thus allowing a new religion to assert its power and legitimacy during dramatic social and economic transformations. While there has been extensive analysis of the mutual relationship between adat and world religions in the literature on religious change in Indonesia (Atkinson, 1983; Erb, 2007; Howell, 2016; Picard, 2000; Schiller, 1986, 2009), there are few studies on the topic among the Kenyah. Those that exists have focused on adat and its close association with the central role of paren in Kenyah society (Conley, 1973; Urano, 2002; H. L. Whittier, 1973; P. R. Whittier, 1981). However,

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these studies have yet to detail the roles of paren during religious transformation, which include negotiating different forms of authority within the adat institutions and the P/E Church. Several works documenting the religious change of the Kenyah in Borneo from the perspective of former missionaries, including a few influential biographies. They describe individual and mass conversion in settlements across central Borneo, a transnational region comprised of Sarawak, Malaysia, and the Indonesian province of North Kalimantan (Conley, 1973; Cunningham, 2002). In these publications, the story of the withdrawal of the traditional adat system focuses on individuals’ change of religious affiliation and how they were able to escape the former burdens of the now taboo system (Southwell, 1999). Thus, these biographies emphasize individuality and the inner cultural-psychological change of the Kenyah as they converted to Christianity. This vantage point has inadvertently led the authors to overlook the socio-political aspects that have shaped the Kenyah’s decision to leave, maintain, and revitalize adat while observing their new religion. The relation between adat and Christianity illustrated briefly above is commonly found in cases of religious transformation in Indonesia. However, scholarly discussion of the term adat rarely covers the relation between adat and Christianity as a central focus. This discussion tends to focus on law and land, the politics of difference or recognition, social movements, and political struggles for natural resources in various periods of Indonesian history (Davidson & Henley, 2007; Li, 2001; Hauser-Schäublin, 2013; Moniaga, 2007; Tyson, 2014; Vollenhoven, 1987 [1928]). In their elaboration of the debate, Henley and Davidson address three aspects that have characterized adat. The first is adat as particular time-honored practices and institutions, inherited by communities rather than imposed by the state, which are seen as having continuing relevance to current political concerns. The second aspect is adat as rights and obligations that connect together three things: history, land, and law. The last is a powerful set of ideas or assumptions regarding what an ideal society should be like (Davidson & Henley, 2007, pp. 2– 3). While these three features remain integral to understanding the rise and fall of adat discourse and traditional institutions in Indonesia, their overview of adat, and most studies contained in the edited book, pay little attention to the relation of adat to the adoption or resistance to world religion as it centers on the political dynamics of the tradition and the conception of an ideal society. My observation on the dynamics of

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adat among the Kenyah in central Borneo shows how the third aspect of adat as a set of ideas or assumptions of what an ideal society should be like is closely related to the articulation of tradition, world religion ideology, and their socio-religious dynamics. However, in Davidson and Henley’s book, only one chapter covers the relation between adat and Catholicism (Erb, 2007). In other works, the issues of adat , religion, and their dynamics in Indonesia have been studied by a few scholars with different perspectives and emphases (Benda-Beckmann, 2006; Erb, 2007; Howell, 2016). Picard and Madinier’s important study emphasizes the transformation of local religious tradition in Indonesia’s and their accommodation of states criteria and definition of Agama (religion) in practicing such religious practices in different political regimes (Picard & Madinier, 2011; Picard, 2017). Despite not focusing solely on the socio-discursive construction of the terms “agama” and “adat,” other studies argue that the two terms are mutually constitutive; they are a cultural response contingent to the transition from colonial governance to modern state intervention into religious affairs (Atkinson, 1983; Aragon, 2000). This book builds on these studies but more deeply explores the mutual relation of adat and world religion as generated by state formation and the colonial legacy. It also traces how both adat and world religion had opened the social-political sphere by allowing people from different social classes to navigate and contest their political-religious aspirations. Thus, the hierarchies of power aim to provide a novel way of understanding the dynamics of adat and religion beyond socio-discursive and cultural-functionalist approaches and to take seriously the internal structure and class antagonism pivotal to religious transformation, expansion, or the persistence of particular religious traditions. In so doing, this book further sheds light on broader debates in the discussion of religious change, tradition, and the globalizing effect of P/E Christianity.

P/E Church, Religious Change, and Globalization The Pentecostal-Evangelical denomination (P/E) is the fastest-growing Christian denomination in the world. Reasons for its expansion figure prominently within some of the fiercest debates about globalization, modernity, religion, and cultural change (Coleman et al., 2015; Marshall, 2009; Meyer, 1999; Robbins, 2004b). Several studies have elaborated upon the significant social function of this particular denomination

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in responding to socio-economic crises in a range of changing societies (Anderson, 1979; Bradfield, 1979; Freston, 1998). Their approach utilizes deprivation and disorganization theory1 in analyzing the appeal of the P/E Church as a result of psycho-social crises, wherein people from different social classes experience social displacement and become morally adrift and unsure of their social links. In this kind of analysis, the institutions of the P/E church fulfill the need for tight-knit communities, moral codes, and a sense of direction among large segments of society. In his extensive review on globalization and Pentecostalism, the charismatic movement, and the evangelical church, Robbins notes that for many analysts such forms of Christianity provide ecstatic escape and an egalitarian environment in which everyone is eligible to receive the greatest religious rewards from the church (Robbins, 2004a, p. 124). Other scholars writing from cultural and value-oriented approaches consider that the role of P/E ideology in enabling radical cultural breaks with religious tradition provides novel cultural conceptions and interpretations of social contradictions brought by colonialism, globalization, and economic growth, and the values of evangelizing processes that drive the expansion of this movement (Haynes, 2012, 2017; Robbins, 2004b). These aspects are considered as main drivers of the rapid development of P/E and characterize its cultural capacity to become a global religion. Also, taking this same perspective, similar studies elaborate the centrality of a “rupture” paradigm in which the P/E ideological framework provides orientation toward the future and demonizes everything related to the past. As this paradigm grew from the anthropological discourse, the variation and the local appropriation of these cultural features of P/E were also central, especially in analyzing how communities view, relate to, and maintain pre-existing religious tradition in relation to their changing religious affiliation and contemporary social situation (Chua, 2012; Coleman, 2000; Keane, 2007; Meyer, 1999; Robbins, 2004a; Robbins et al., 2014). This book seeks to contribute to this large literature on Pentecostalism. While previous studies focus on the role of social/economic/moral crises in religious change or how P/E provides cultural-religious values to navigate a more integrated and globalized modern world through the notion of individualistic-egalitarian religious ideas and practices, this work argues that the development of Pentecostal-Evangelicalism in central Borneo has occurred not solely as a result of the power of this cultural feature that enables people to cope with modernity. Instead, I posit that the development of the P/E church is in large part influenced by

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its accommodating response to both individualistic religious autonomy and hierarchical modes of religious authority. By utilizing a more micropolitical and historical approach, we can see the withdrawal, modification, and revitalization of traditional hierarchical adat 2 mobilized by local elites since early twentieth century as a requirement in the development of Christianity in central Borneo. The P/E church represents a form of Christianity characterized by distrust of fixed and hierarchical liturgies, emphasis on the need to proselytize, desire to develop a “personal relationship” with God and scripture, and distinctions between those who have and those who have not given themselves to Christ (Coleman, 2000, p. 10). The P/E church may also be analyzed in terms of its institutional model, as providing a loose form of ecclesiastical polity that includes a combination of the congregational and Presbyterian (collegial) models. It is often organized by dispensing with titled positions, such as bishops, as a requirement of church structure. A local congregation establishes itself as a “self-governed voluntary institution” elects its own leaders, both clergy and laity, and ordains its own clergy. By developing this mode of institution, the P/E church has been able to expand massively in many places as it helps the recently converted to localize egalitarian religious authority. At the same time, believers do not need specialized education to preach or run a church; only spiritual inspiration is required (Robbins, 2004b: 130). In contrast to this basic premise of a horizontal church institution, the Kenyah have been described as one among many ethnic groups in central Borneo with a stratified society (Rousseau, 1990; Rousseau, 1998; H. L. Whittier, 1973). Their hierarchical social life is considered a prominent feature of local cultural institutions that have emerged and then abated since the introduction of the P/E denomination in 1933. However, this study reveals that both the fixed form of the egalitarian and loose structure of the evangelical church and the strict aristocratic relations of adat institutions coexisted during the transformation of Kenyah religious life. Crucially these two socio-religious forms have been articulated both in church and adat, in the late Dutch colonial period, early post-colonial era, New Order regime, and post-Soeharto Indonesia. This is a result of how diverse subjects obtain and maintain social and religious power within various political and cultural spheres across different periods in history. As such, the whole narratives in the following chapters explore the historical transformations and inter-relationships within the mutually

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changing socio-religious transformation of adat and the P/E church among the Kenyah. In doing so, I demonstrate the link between the dynamic resistance of various actors in different periods of time in favor of a social and material articulation of a traditional institution, adat, and the development of the church, which, despite its ideals of an individualegalitarian religious authority, nevertheless has had to accommodate the hierarchical structure of adat. Although the evangelical church still maintains hierarchical relations between the pastor and the congregation, the opportunities for Kenyah laypeople (both men and women) from different social classes to participate in church committees as well as in the church liturgy and sermon signify the egalitarian spirit of its religious structure. Yet the experience of many Kenyah with their adat institutions, which are well-known for their hierarchical religious forms, indicates that in periods of particular national and regional political transitions adat has served both individualistic and egalitarian functions. This work then is not about religion per se but is a socio-historical elaboration of power structures, class antagonism, and social possibilities that are mutually constitutive with particular religious transformations. It is also an exploration of how the development of evangelical Christianity in central Borneo is intertwined with the demise and the revitalization of adat . It takes an approach that elaborates on shifting power structures between social class, age, and gender structures as a pivotal entry point to analyze the separation or juxtaposition of church and local cultural institutions, and its close relation to the dynamics of aristocracy and the spirit of egalitarianism. Below I explain the theoretical underpinnings of my basic framework by explaining two different ways of exploring religious change and Christianity. The first orientation, which emerges from an anthropological cultural approaches, is a critical review of recent debates on cultural analysis of religious change, specifically in relation to P/E, and its relationship to globalization and cultural transformation. This perspective emphasizes the legacies of colonialism on religious conversion, the cultural experience of being modern, state intervention, and the religious response to social crises brought about by radical socio-economic transformation. The second orientation, which is also largely anthropological in scope, places greater emphasis on socio-historical structures that foreground the institutional form, internal contradictions, power structures, and local and regional dynamics that form the socio-political arena within which religious change takes place. The following chapters will using primarily the latter approach as it usefully reveals key aspects that the former approach tends to neglect.

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Value-Culturalist Approach Anthropological accounts of religious forms and practices—and of the various social and cultural processes attached to these—have commonly addressed the questions of religious change, revitalization, and conversion as issues central to their inquiries (Vokes, 2007, p. 312). This has been the case because religious change and conversion intersect with two signal phenomena that have been a major focus for anthropologists and social scientists in general: colonialism and modernity. These phenomena represent the ethnographic realities of contemporary and transnational religions such as Christianity and Islam, which pave the way for the study of globalization and socio-cultural change. The study of religious change has thus received widespread interest as a primary focus in the anthropology of religion (Coleman, 2000, 2015; Hefner, 1993; Comaroff & Comaroff, 2008). In terms of religious change brought about by Christian missions and colonialism, scholars have focused on different aspects of cultural processes of Christianization. In his introduction to an influential edited volume on conversion to Christianity, Robert Hefner employed a Weberian account to explain such processes as a shift of many societies toward the world-building aspect of Christianity and its role in the rationalization of religious life where structural change is confronted within specific cultural contexts (Hefner, 1993, pp. 3–4). The perspective that emphasizes change in individual modern personhood and identity-making is likewise influential (Bialecki & Daswani, 2015; Bielo, 2007). This approach focuses on change, often in post-colonial societies and among their marginalized communities. It stems from the question of how a world religion is chosen by individuals as a way to engage with the world as modern citizens, voluntarily or involuntarily, and at the same time incorporate their pre-existing cultural identity into modern life. In doing so, they allow themselves to be detached and uprooted from their preexisting logics of sociality and cultural conceptions of world order, usually identified as traditional and hierarchical, as they reposition themselves as egalitarian and individual religious subjects. This approach explains the whole process as a result of the ways people culturally cope with the power structures of colonialism and state building, which in turn enables the locals to expand their social affiliations through rationalizing their existing social and political contradictions and pressures through Christian ideas. At the same time, it opens space for a contestation of ideas regarding

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cosmology, worldviews, modern citizenship, and individualism (Aragon, 2000; Atkinson, 1983; Chua, 2012; Comaroff & Comaroff, 2008; Kipp, 1995). In more specific debates, especially in the subfield of the anthropology of Christianity,3 studies have been pre-occupied with the attempt to compare cultural aspects of social transformation, including ontological, ideational, and radical transformation. This is often represented in the discussion about transition from a hierarchical and holistic conception of human sociality to the ideology of individualism (Robbins, 2004a, 2015). Taking culture and values transformation as an entry point, this approach describes the process of becoming Christian, in which people adopt it as a novel paramount value, in this case the notion of individualism originating from the idea of salvation and sin in Christianity, and consider that value as the primary objective of life. Joel Robbins, for example, specifically addresses the issues of discontinuity and rupture to analyze the shifting religious experiences of followers of Pentecostal and Evangelical Christianity. In this subfield, cultural ideas, introduced by the P/E Church, such as the preservation of indigenous spiritual ontologies and the call for people to proselytize after they are baptized, have enabled this denomination to grow exponentially throughout the world (Robbins, 2003). The study of Christianity and religious change in Southeast Asia has been influenced by larger theoretical developments within the social sciences and mirrors the orientation and development of the study of Christianity in anthropology in general. The influence of cultural change and indigenization as a response to colonialism, state formation, and Christian missionary work has been the primary focus of almost all research about religion in the region. In the context of Southeast Asian societies, religious conversion, specifically to Christianity, and postconversion practices have been explained mostly as either processes of incorporating Christianity into pre-existing systems of belief and practices, or as creative dialogues between local tradition and a world religion that results in syncretic, assimilated, or hybrid religious beliefs and practices (Keyes, 1996). In his classic study of Tagalogs conversion to Catholicism, Rafael revealed that the arrival of Christianity and the process of its translation to Tagalogs were closely related to the development of colonial order (Rafael, 1992). Taking different emphasis, Cannell exploration on intimacies and sociality in the transformation of spirit mediumship and rituals among Catholics in the Philippines also reveal the cultural transformation brought by world religion (Cannell, 1999). Danilyn Rutherford’s explication of the relation between the myth of Koreri and the arrival

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of Manarmakeri, a millenarian mythological subject analogous to Jesus in Christianity, in the contemporary modern life of the Biak People of West Papua, is a prominent example of a hybridization process by which modern ideas, seeping through Christianity, evolved through locally constructed meaning-making (Rutherford, 2000). In a similar vein, Lorraine Aragon’s study among the Tobaku in upland Central Sulawesi describes what she calls “religious reconciliation.” It explains how missionaries’ redefinition of the criteria for valid religion, reclassification of deities, and rerouting of communication with transformed deities coincides with how the Tobaku interpret Christian theology while still practicing the core rituals of animal sacrifice (Aragon, 2000, pp. 21–22). For the Akha ethnic group of Myanmar, a similar situation prevailed when Christianity was accepted in the context of broader ethnic relations. Here, the manner of acceptance of Christianity was influenced by the nature of the strong association of the Western category of “religion,” which in this case is Christianity, with the category of ethnic identity (Kammerer, 1990). Despite the theoretical significance of these studies in explaining what conversion to a world religion means, their focus on a dramatic change of local belief and globalized religion in their cultural-ideological form is rather persistent. They commonly explain conversion to Christianity as involving the appropriation of local tradition in the initial practices of adopting world religion, or as the way local religion is transformed into a system of practices that imitate the modern features of a world religion (Picard, 2017). This process involves “multiple modernities,” in which religion and modern culture are seen as intertwined, resulting in a creative adaptation of ideas and practices in different places and times (Gottowik, 2014, p. 14). Even in the context of the nation states of Southeast Asia, the incorporation of pre-existing local indigenous rituals and sets of beliefs has been seen, to some extent, as a characteristic of nation-state practices signifying the role of a “primordial” attachment to religion in a modern context (Keyes et al., 1994, p. 15). The analytical emphasis in Southeast Asian studies on cultural continuity and the transformation brought about by colonialism and state formation can also be found in two edited volumes of comparative project of Borneo societies (Arenz et al., 2017; King et al., 2017). With regard to religious change, this emphasis is also the result of an expectation to observe and record the durability and creative responses of local religious cultural forms to outside forces, as represented by states and missionaries, resulting from the inventive action of indigenizing major religious texts

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or modernizing local indigenous beliefs. Interaction between indigenization and a world religion such as Christianity is reflected in the idea of local religious revitalization. This approach includes the elaboration of Bungan religion in central Borneo as a response to Christianity (Ardhianto, 2017; Jérôme Rousseau, 1998) and the case of the Kaharingan religion in Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia (Schiller, 1986, 1996). Anthropological studies of Christianity in Borneo also consider engagement between state-making/citizenship and religious change, and continuity and dialogue among world religions, modernity, and local indigenous religions (Chua, 2012). Tan, for example, elaborates on the roles of migration and kinship in the decision of many Kenyah Badeng to accept Christianity as an “easier ethic and life-conduct” compared to the former traditional religious system for the Kenyah Badeng in Belaga, Sarawak (Chee-Beng, 2016). In another case, the frequent overlapping of ethnicity and Christianity in the context of upland-lowland ethnic formations has become a striking feature (Connolly, 2003). Amster also analyzes the changing relation between upland and lowland social formations in his study of rising mobility and the changing cultural conceptions of spiritual potency of places among the Kelabit in Sarawak that has arisen from their adoption of Christianity. This change originates from the sense of spiritual power the Kelabit began to experience as Christians. Now that such power is no longer necessarily linked to a specific locality, it can be present anywhere. At the same time, conversion led to successful efforts to instill new spiritual meanings in the Kelabit homelands, in the form of a nearby prayer mountain and other practices that help mark and commemorate Christian practices (Amster, 2009, p. 308). This orientation, however, inhibits understanding of the mutually enforcing factors of the institutional practices of missionaries, local community church making and pre-existing social forms and structures that have shaped the creative synthesis of worldviews within each ethnic group. Following another direction, this book focuses on how religious change is also entangled in concrete social arrangements in the establishment of a Christian community (Barker, 2014; Hann, 2007; Robbins, 2014). Furthermore, this study explores the dynamics of local power structures that enable the process by which Christianity took root in the social dynamics of particular communities. It is through such an elaboration that this work diverges from existing studies where cultural conversion foregrounds the exploration of social forces and power structures. As I will explain below, this book examines how the dynamics of

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power structures, as manifested in the way actors engage with both an egalitarian vision and a hierarchical form, have significantly shaped the development of P/E Christianity among the Kenyah of central Borneo.

Hierarchy, Religious Change, and Power Structures Few scholars have examined the dynamics of socio-religious formation as a contested power structure after the introduction of P/E Christianity to the community. This is partly because studies have favored the cultural changes brought about by Christianity in the realms of values and cosmology, especially in the context of the so-called classic regions of ethnographical inquiry such as Melanesia and Amazonia. Due to the influence of the value-oriented paradigm in the subfield of the anthropology of Christianity, represented by Dumontian structuralism,4 the notion of stratified traditional social forms is usually interpreted as a manifestation of a value system that emphasizes the idea of hierarchical orders of meaning, which is key to understanding the rupture represented by conversion to the egalitarian and individualistic modes of religious experience of P/E Christianity in many parts of the world. Even though many monographs employing such a perspective also describe various social processes and regional structural dynamics that situate religious change, these aspects remain understudied in analyses of the growth and development of the P/E church itself. Several studies have addressed such concerns. For example, John Barker prioritized the institutional aspect of church making as a central theme in studying Christianity. He argued that the anthropology of Christianity should explore not only primary cross-cultural categories but also the variety of church community structures and practices that locally diverse Christians engage with in a relatively unitary Christianity (Barker, 2014, p. 173). A few scholars have explored other such issues as church schisms or gender issues in relation to the idea of the church as an institution and its institutional reformation (Barker, 2014; Eriksen, 2014; Handman, 2014; Werbner, 2011). Courtney Handman’s ethnography in Papua New Guinea analyzed church schism as a result of the diverging paths of cultural change and linguistic practices that brought about a socio-religious division of the church community among the Guhu-Samane ethnic group (Handman, 2014, p. 12). In a similar vein, though leaning toward a political-economic approach, Debra MacDougall

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proposed a materialist perspective in shedding light on religious change by analyzing the often-overlooked material basis of the process of conversion to Christianity. This includes the importance of mode of livelihood, kinship, and land ownership transformation that often influence religious conversion to Christianity (McDougall, 2009). Naomi Haynes details the different religious socialities that Pentecostal rituals produce. In contrast to the linear mode of analysis in studying conversion to Christianity, she analyzes two social forms at play among a Pentecostal community in Zambia that can be broadly characterized as hierarchical and egalitarian. Her analysis reveals that Pentecostal ritual life drew believers into democratic, open-ended, and largely egalitarian religious communities, and produced clear distinctions among individuals, resulting in newly differentiated, hierarchical structures (Haynes, 2015, p. 274). Subsequently, she expanded the notion of hierarchy and egalitarianism not as discrete and separate phenomena, but as intertwined ideologies in a multitude of social spheres. In an article co-written with Jason Hickel, she argued that people might demonstrate a strong preference for hierarchy within the family or the church but reject it in other social spaces. In short, valuing hierarchy in some scenarios does not preclude an egalitarian ethic in others (Haynes & Hickel, 2016, p. 11). In performing such analysis, Haynes and Hickel show that conversion to Christianity was not simply a linear process of change from a hierarchical society to democratic individualism. During the formative process of the Christian community, the conjuncture between hierarchical religious structure and individualism shows how it was vehemently defended and most clearly articulated (Haynes & Hickel, 2016, p. 7). However, by taking the example of the emerging hierarchical relation of pastors as “parents” in a supposedly egalitarian and individual Pentecostal church, their elaboration seems to take the return of hierarchy for granted and neglects the possibility of various actors exercising their political-religious power in the process. Furthermore, they seem less interested in the internal social contradictions and the material conditions that enable religious change to occur in the first place.5 In studies beyond anthropological debates, the political-economic context, actor interest, and as well institutional setting, be it at a local or regional scale of analysis, are considered as crucial to increasing visibilities and political importance of religious group and practices (Gill, 2001: 133). Sahoo, for example, explores the relation between the Indian government intervention against religious and ethnic minority groups and

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the antagonistic relation between Hindu nationalists and the Christian minority in Rajasthan as a basis for the politics of conversion (Sahoo, 2018). My earlier elaboration here on the significance of class antagonism in the acceptance of particular religious change reveals the link between larger socio-historical conditions such as state intervention and the evolving form of local social structures of aristocrat-commoner relations among the Kenyah during their initial acceptance of Christianity (Ardhianto, 2017). Through this perspective, we uncover an alternative analysis by studying religious change specifically to explain other significant factors enabling the P/E church to develop. This work aims to fill the gap in the value-centered/cultural approach by utilizing the socio-historical and political perspective. The former examines the culturally mediated aspiration for either hierarchy or egalitarian religious life to emerge in the different life spheres of a Christian community. The latter leans toward an analysis of how that aspiration of both social forms is grounded in the dynamics of power structures among different actors and social groups.6 By embracing both these approaches, this book highlights the importance of understanding how people navigate evolving power structures, and by doing so, it reveals the dynamics of power structures as reflected in the way the egalitarian impulse and socially hierarchical practices are mobilized in different religious institutions by various actors over time. The history of Kenyah religious conversion to Christianity is not merely a story of a total reconstitution of ontology and the production of modern personhood, as many recent anthropological studies describe. Nor did religious change emerge as a one-way process from hierarchy toward egalitarian socio-religious life. Instead, I highlight how societal actors exercise power in both pre-Christian existing institutions and the P/E church itself to obtain favorable socio-religious positions. Here, hierarchy and egalitarianism are not just separate forms of religious structure used to identify different historical stages of religious change among the converted. I posit that Christian Kenyah navigate their experience of religious life as it is situated within hierarchical structures and the egalitarian spirit, which is intimately related to the political-economic situation before and after conversion. At some points, adat and church favor the panyin, or the Kenyah underclass. On many other occasions, the aristocrats are able to maintain authority, using both institutions to navigate political and economic power amid changing regional and national political transitions.

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It is through this process that the P/E church has blossomed in central Borneo. In contrast with other studies on the P/E church that emphasize its egalitarian spirit as a factor that supports its impressive growth, I contend that its adaptive characteristics, which allow hierarchical and egalitarian power structures, have enabled the development of this specific Christian denomination as one of many religious groups able to expand rapidly and play a dominant position in contemporary social life in various parts of the world.

The Kenyah in Apokayan and Central Borneo The term “Kenyah” as an ethnic group encompasses approximately forty sub-groups of cognatic and swidden agricultural groups that have common cultural, linguistic, and historical features. Since the early twentieth century, they have constituted the majority of the population in central Borneo, a socio-geographical space consisting of the northwest border of the Indonesian province of North Kalimantan and the neighboring 4th Division of Sarawak, Malaysia. Based on oral history, which is consistently present in most of the sub-ethnic groups, the population originated from the Baram River basin in a place called Usun Apau. From there, the community dispersed to another river basin, resulting in their current distribution in Indonesia (approximately 44,000 people) and Sarawak (24,906) (Malaysian National Census, 2000). Sub-ethnic identity is related primarily to histories of migration, place of settlement, and variants of dialect. In Indonesian areas, as soon as they dispersed from the Upper Baram, the Kenyah were divided by their dispersal to the Apokayan plateau7 (Kenyah Leppo Tau, Uma Kulit, Leppo Tukung, Leppo Jalan, Kenyah Bakung, and Kenyah Badeng) and to more downriver tributaries such as Pujungan and Bahau (Uma Alim, Uma Long, Leppo Tepu, Leppo Bem). The Kenyah in the Sarawak region are divided into Upper Balui and Upper Baram. The history of dispersal has resulted in the variety of dialects that mark the sub-ethnic groups. Despite shared history and identity, the interconnection between the sub-ethnic groups of different rivers was established by alliances, usually through the marriage of people of aristocratic lineage. In the context of Apokayan, the alliance between the Uma Kulit and the Leppo Tau is an exemplary case. The research for this book was conducted mostly in Apokayan, a region at the headwaters of the Kayan River, in a borderland of Indonesian North Kalimantan and Malaysian Sarawak. The region is inhabited by

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the Kenyah from the Lepo Tau, Kenyah Badeng, Lepo Jalan, and Lepo Tukung sub-ethnic groups. The region, in its broadest sense, includes the entire area near the Kayan River and its tributaries above the great rapids known as the Brem-Brem, also called Giram Ambun. It is bordered to the north by the Iran Mountains that form the Malaysian-Indonesian border and separate the Kayan River drainage basin from that of the Baram and Rejang rivers in Malaysia. To the west and south are the Muller Mountains, which separate the Kayan River drainage basin from the great Mahakam River. In the early twentieth century, the Apokayan offered strategic superiority for the Kenyah, offensively and defensively, during the period of wars and headhunting. The region is isolated, but its strategic location provides several riverine routes to the sea and coastal economies, either to the eastern part of Bulungan or to the northern part of Sarawak (H. L. Whittier, 1973, p. 17). The central influence of Apokayan is evident in the villages in which this study was conducted: Long Nawang and Nawang Baru. In the past, they were considered cultural centers for other sub-ethnic groups that had migrated to Indonesian Borneo and Sarawak. The villages are home to the Kenyah Leppo Tau, which are among a few other sub-ethnic groups, such as the Uma Kulit, Leppo Timai, and Uma Alim, that play a central part in Kenyah politics and culture. Many local leaders from different sub-ethnic groups from Sarawak still regard Apokayan as the birthplace of a fine artistic tradition and cultural form. Its tradition, arts, and role as leader of many sub-ethnic Kenyah are still recognized as important, following its history as the leader of the group alliance. Long Nawang and Nawang Baru are predominant in the transformation of culture among the Kenyah Leppo Tau villages scattered across central Borneo. However, despite this important role, in pre-colonial and colonial era the region is relatively inaccessible to coastal political and economic powers of eastern Borneo such as the Bulungan, Sulu, Berau, and Kutai sultanates, which often interferes with the affairs of inland populations. Even now, the relative freedom of Apokayan from state intervention, the market and large-scale capitalist economic development are still seen as the primary features of this region, which influence the inhabitants’ connection to regional political-economic conditions and their interconnection with missionary activities. Nowadays, the only access to the Apokayan plateau is through a logging road from the upper Mahakam River at Long Bagun, by which it takes two days and one night to reach

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Long Nawang. A small airplane is the only convenient means of transportation from the nearest town. Despite a few local elites at the district and provincial levels having been born there or having strong kinship relations to Apokayan, infrastructural access is of low quality and in the past ten years no initiative has been made to change that situation. In the 1920s, it would take Dutch colonials traveling to the last post of Long Nawang months to get there and only in the late 1930s could it be reached by a small airplane. This region’s cultural influences and its remoteness brought the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) to choose this place as a target for proselytization from the late 1930s onward. The Kenyah in Apokayan are probably more Christian than other ethnic groups of the mid-river area of the Kayan or Mahakam. These other groups encountered Catholic missionaries who allowed a few ethnic groups such as Punan, Modang, and Kayan to practice old religious rituals (Schiller, 2009), a situation contrary to that in Apokayan, where the radical withdrawal of adat cultural artifacts was a primary feature. Interestingly, many Kenyah from Apokayan are actually the local evangelists that have traveled downriver and across many watersheds to proselytize to other ethnic groups, especially their Kayan and Punan neighbors. In terms of cultural importance, Apokayan figures prominently in Kenyah identity. Despite its isolation and declining population since the 1960s, Long Nawang remains still an important cultural center for Kenyah throughout Borneo, with the language of Leppo Tau Kenyah being used as the lingua franca among the Kenyah. Along the Baram River of Sarawak, the Leppo Tau Kenyah are widely known as the people who brought both the Bungan religion and Christianity. Leppo Tau Kenyah traders from Apokayan helped Rev. Cunningham of the Borneo Evangelical Mission to translate the New Testament in 1956 (Lumenta, 2005). Since the early twentieth century, the key events bringing together all Kenyah in central Borneo have been held in Long Nawang, including the official opening of Daerah Otonomi Baru Apokayan (the New Autonomous Region of Apokayan) and church conferences gathering all the congregations of central Borneo. Equally important, ladung bio, a new annual adat gathering of Kenyah from all over Borneo, and from the Balui River and Baram in Sarawak, was initiated by the Kenyah leader from Long Nawang, Apokayan. Since 2008, the event has provided a place for emerging adat leaders from Sarawak and Indonesian Borneo to discuss a wide range of topics such as work issues, local politics, and the

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revitalization of adat in response to the decentralization of post-Suharto Indonesia. Between 1928 and 1945, Apokayan was a source of forestry products and until now is still being acknowledge as the cultural center for the Kenyah population. In the colonial period, Long Nawang was the capital for the Kenyah groups and the Dutch colonial authority chose the region as their last military post in Borneo (Black, 1985). However, as a result of the Dutch withdrawal after the Indonesian revolution in 1945–1949, those in the Apokayan area suddenly lacked access to basic necessities such as salt and kerosene. During the consolidation of the Indonesian and Sarawak political economies, many Kenyah villagers had to migrate downriver in search of education and basic necessities, resulting in a drastic decrease in Apokayan’s population. Currently, Apokayan is inhabited by only some 9,600 people in an area of 18,849 km2 consisting of mountainous and hilly terrain and dense forest.8 This region, in contrast to other places in Borneo, has not been overrun by logging companies and plantations. As a result, the low and steady population count is not much different from what it was from the 1940s to the 1970s, after the vast migration of Kenyah to downriver Kayan and Mahakam, and to Sarawak. Migrant Indonesian ethnic groups have not settled there as they have elsewhere, especially Buginese, Malay, Banjar, and Javanese who have created social enclaves elsewhere on Indonesian Borneo. The influx of these groups has often created dramatic demographic transitions from indigenous ethnic groups of Christians to large populations of Muslims. Without such migration, most of the villages distributed in Apokayan remain predominantly Christian Kenyah, rooted in the P/E denomination of the GKII (Gereja Kemah Injil Indonesia/The Indonesian Gospel Tabernacle Church). Alongside these historical factors, Indonesian state administration has influenced political-economic life and Christian church organization among the Kenyah in Apokayan. The discourse of decentralization, or popularly known in Indonesia as regional autonomy/Otonomi Daerah, that was instituted shortly after Indonesia’s return to democracy in 1998 and 1999 prompted the Kenyah to obtain recognition as a new player in the region’s local politics. Regional autonomy, as it is known in Indonesia, sought to decentralize political-economic power from the central government to the provincial and district levels, particularly in relation to development budgets, autonomous local political elections, and rights and responsibilities in a few important areas of natural resource management.

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Its implementation was simultaneous with the rise of regional, ethnic, and religious identity sentiments that had been suppressed for the 32 years of Soeharto’s New Order regime, the longest authoritarian regime in Southeast Asia (Davidson, 2018). The Dayak in Kalimantan were one among many ethnic groups that responded to this change. After years of neglect, many ethnic groups felt marginalized. This neglect was particularly evident in natural resource management and regional politics related to massive logging by companies boosted by Jakarta oligarchs and the military elite. After 1998, these groups began to use the discourse of regional autonomy to achieve political-economic benefits (Bakker, 2009; Tanasaldy, 2012). In 2012, the district of Malinau split from its previous larger district, Bulungan, which at the time was the largest area aside from Kutai Kertanegara in what was then East Kalimantan province.9 The split changed the formation of elites, especially, in this case, the adat elite, which was resurrected by its ability to take advantage of the politicaleconomic space that opened after the division. A few of the district leaders in Malinau District are from local ethnic groups, including two dominant players from the Lundayeh and Kenyah ethnic groups, respectively. The district head (bupati) during my fieldwork came from a Christian Lundayeh ethnic group. Before him, a Kenyah from Uma Kulit held the position. The current ability of a member of a local ethnic group to hold office was unavailable under the New Order, as bupati usually came from the military and had Muslim backgrounds. The emergence of a powerful, indigenous, local elite in district-level politics shows the evolving form of a different upland-lowland relation. The upland ethnic identity is now recognized by the state, including acknowledgment of the importance of both the adat institution and the modern religious category of Christianity. A consequence of this dramatic change is the significance of powerful local elites obtaining political affinity with both church and adat institutions at various levels as their source of electoral justification and legitimation. For this reason, the incumbent district head, which came from Partai Demokrat, understood that it was important to undertake a natal keliling (Christmas tour) to various remote villages and to attend various cultural events revitalized among many ethnic groups, including the Kenyah transnational gathering ladung bio. A similar phenomenon occurs at the village level where local elites related to the church and adat

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play vital part. A few paren have been funded by their districts for pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the end of the district leader’s term in office. In the context of church organization, the district leader is vital for sponsoring events and for the operational cost of church activity. It is within this arena of achieving benefits that the issue of hierarchy emerges. I describe this issue in detail in Chapter 3 in the context of Long Nawang. Recently, the Kenyah in Apokayan have initiated a campaign to split from Malinau District, North Kalimantan Province. In June 2016, a few paren were struggling to change the Apokayan region, which comprises three Malinau sub-districts, into a district separate from Malinau. There were various reasons for district splitting, two of which they promoted publicly. First, the Kenyah in Apokayan region wished to articulate their identity and power, with an effort to realize their nostalgic memories by becoming the center of power and cultural production. Second, they were promoting the area as a kecamatan perbatasan (border sub-district) that had long been neglected by the central government in Jakarta. Another— unspoken—reason concerned the local elite’s struggle to obtain recognition as a daerah otonomi baru (new autonomous region); they were influenced by the allure of the political-economic benefit they would obtain with the status of a new district, such as infrastructure development fund and palm oil plantation investment. The potential benefits included control of the regional district budget, the right to regulate forest use, and a stronger position as political brokers in the increased investment in natural resources. It was within this new administrative and political context that both the church and adat became politically central, as the new institution and economic resources of the new district would be channeled toward the political interests of a few paren.

The Fieldwork The research for this book used the combination of multi-sited ethnography and historical anthropology for several reasons. For starters, in only a hundred years have the Kenyah migrated back and forth between the watersheds of the Indonesian and Sarawak parts of Borneo, with mobility ranging as far as the coastal side of Borneo in the northern and eastern parts of the island. Even their recent situation marks the trend of migration from downriver settlements to the Apokayan plateau. In addition, the Kenyah were involved in a network of trade expeditions in the last century that shaped the flow of ideas, people, and things in the four river

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basins of central Borneo, which includes Mahakam, Kayan, Baram, and Balui. One of these ideas was Christianity. In the historical context, the missionaries were also a mobile group, especially those of the Evangelical denomination that took an interest in central Borneo. They journeyed to areas considered unreachable, their effort to travel becoming for them a virtue in itself. Their emphasis on developing a self-planting church influenced their continual movement, in this case complementing the idea of not settling in a particular community for too long. As soon as a church was established and a local evangelist was ready to facilitate the church services, they would move on to expand the reach of their evangelical project. This orientation applied to C&MA and BEM (Borneo Evangelical Mission), both of which worked intensively in the upland area of central Borneo. In this context, it is evident that central Borneo was partly globalized in the nineteenth century, with integration related to trade and ethnic group mobility, and also the mobility of the missionaries and local evangelists. The interconnection of ideas, things, and people was inevitable. As such, multi-sited ethnography and historical anthropology are useful tools. By definition, multi-sited ethnography is developed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, and juxtapositions of locations in which the ethnographer establishes some form of literal, physical presence, with an explicit, posited logic of association or connection between sites that define the argument of the ethnography (Marcus, 1995, p. 105). In this methodological approach, the movement and mobility of the anthropologist during the research are not bounded by a specific unit of a particular site, but rather are entangled with the cultural phenomena that intrinsically connect various sites through their affinity of ideas, peoples, things, or even metaphors. Marcus uses the concept of flow to assess such affinity. The concept implies a historical context. Ideas, peoples, and things always flow during sequences of social change. While it is important to observe and connect multi-sited phenomena among the Kenyah and Christianity in central Borneo, this study also utilizes ideas from the historical turn in anthropology that considers the importance of exploring the continuity and transformation of a particular cultural or social order through elaborate historical manuscripts with ethnographically informed analysis (Sahlins, 1981, 2013). In the same vein, Bruce Keith Axel offers a framework in which an anthropologist can make use of the historian’s methods to produce what will become

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future historical documents. These documents can bring to the archive insights drawn from the anthropological experience of the field (Axel, 2002, p. 39). In following this approach, this book employs ethnohistorical narratives of various significant parts of Kenyah history, such as the end of headhunting and the open mobility era of the early twentieth century in central Borneo; and the historical archives of missionary organizations (quarterly bulletin of Pioneer of C&MA) and as well as the rich descriptions in Western missionary biographies. This strategy aims to reveal the encounter between internal dynamics of religious change among the Kenyah and external factors that structurally infuse those dynamics. If the multi-sited methodological approach places significance on expanding the spatial context of the analysis, the historical approach stretches the temporal dimension of the phenomena by tracing a longer analysis than a conventional/classic ethnography emphasizes. By using both methodological approaches, this study explores a wider spatial and deeper historical analysis to help explain the dynamics of socio-religious form among the Kenyah. The exploration of the historical roots of Christianity in three different tributaries of Kenyah settlement offered insights into the importance of local evangelists trained by C&MA in the 1930s in the Apokayan plateau and along Balui River. This influential role was possible due to the migration of several settlements from Apokayan to the Balui River in the 1940s and 1950s. The connection between the Christian organizations of Sarawak and Indonesia is also shown in the strong relation of kinship or settlement, based on the relationships of the pastors or local evangelists at the initial stages. While this book tries to elaborate on Western missionary routes and their legacy for Kenyah Christianity, I found that the place where the Kenyah autonomously established their church, which produced local evangelists, was significant. This orientation, in turn, influenced me to focus on Apokayan and Upper Balui rather than Upper Baram, as there was a stronger position for local initiatives in the spreading of Christianity in these areas and there were deeper inter-connections with the Indonesian Kenyah from the Apokayan plateau. However, despite the use of a multi-sited framework, most of the narratives this study were predominantly obtained in two Leppo Tau Kenyah villages, Long Nawang and Nawang Baru, situated in the most upriver settlement of the Kenyah in the Kayan river of Kabupaten Malinau (Malinau District) in the North Kalimantan Province in Indonesian

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Borneo. Nonetheless, I should note that with my orientation toward multi-sited inquiry and the contextualization of Christianity in Apokayan with its regional, national, and global scope, I included short visits to other villages (Belaga, Long Moh in Indonesia, and Uma Kulit Sungai Asap in Sarawak) to interview local evangelists who experienced the process of Christian proselytizing between the 1950s and 1980s. The fieldwork consisted of eleven months of continual visitation, from May 2016–March 2017, in central Borneo. Preliminary research was conducted for a month in 2013 in Belaga and the Kenyah Badeng settlement at Long Busang, in the Fourth Division of Kapit, Sarawak, adjacent to the Indonesian border. Despite being located in both the Indonesian and Malaysian parts of Borneo, distinguishing these villages as separate communities was a challenge, since most people in all of the villages are connected through peselai, a tradition among the Kenyah to arrange trade expeditions to downriver Sarawak or Eastern Kalimantan, which in the process requiring all the participant to establish a kinship network from other Kenyah villages. Once or twice a year, they hold a kebaktian keliling (traveling congregation), especially between the villages of Long Busang and Long Nawang. However, I chose Lepo Tau in Long Nawang and additional fieldwork among the Uma Kulit sub-ethnic group and Uma Kulit Sungai Asap in Sarawak to explore the ethno-historical context of church making in Borneo between the 1950s and the 2000s. These two sub-ethnic groups are the most culturally and politically dominant in central Borneo and comprise the majority of the Kenyah population. Their domination in cultural revitalization, attachment to Christian conversion history and evangelizing, and, now, their critical position in the political landscape of emerging indigenous ethnic groups in Indonesia and Sarawak are why I selected them as my research focus. Doing so also fit with my intention to explore both the historical narratives and contemporary revitalization of adat , as these villages have become central in that arena, with frequent cultural and political events held during the time of my fieldwork and several years preceding it. This study also utilizes accounts in colonial reports and missionary publications written between 1890 and the 1950s. This literature and archival material includes the C&MA bulletin, published quarterly since 1928; a rich monograph by the former missionary Rev. William Conley; a biography of Rev. Cunningham; a biography of Rev. Southwell; a residential officer report from Belaga, Kapit, 4th Division of Sarawak, accessed

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from the Sarawak Gazette; and PhD monographs by Herbert Whittier and his wife Patricia Whittier regarding the development of Christianity in the 1970s. I triangulated the insights I gained from the archives and other writings with additional literature as well as ethno-historical interviews with various actors who had experienced the initial stage of conversion. This triangulation process served to verify basic facts such as the dates of important events and the actors involved. Ethno-historical interviews were the primary way to obtain a spectrum of interpretation from different actors, such as missionaries and the Kenyah themselves. These interviews covered events from the introduction of Christianity and the end of adat , as well as the meaning of the events. Information I obtained from the interviews also informed my analysis, or the way I situated the basic facts obtained from the archives. Thus, a kind of recursive dialogue between the literature-based and archival investigation and the oral histories suffused the research from beginning to end. Put differently, the methods used in this study were an effort to achieve an ethnographically informed history and a historically informed ethnography. It contributes to previous methodological approach uses by other borneanist scholars such as Wadley (2004), Eilenberg (2011), and as well Lumenta (2017). The use of two types of archives further indicates the dialogic process of reading documents and conducting ethno-historical interviews. The first set of archives was missionary based, and the second comprised colonial and state records and state-inspired material.10 The literature published by missionaries or missionary-based organizations was primarily influenced by their evangelist orientation. For example, Conley’s dissertation, despite its vast amount of data explaining the rich process of church making, as well the existing cosmology, kinship, and rituals among the Kenyah, is pre-occupied with the theme of conversion and assures the reader that the Kenyah became Christian as a result of individual inner reflection rather than a community decision or what he called “mass conversion.” The Pioneer, a quarterly bulletin explaining the progress of missions in what was then the Dutch East Indies, was intended to reach church members in the United States and obtain donations from them. Most of the stories consisted of the number of people converted and their poignant stories of knowing Jesus. The bulletin was usually uninterested in the details of debates or everyday quarrels among the Kenyah during the conversion period or the formative years of church establishment. The material also neglected several important Kenyah

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leaders who were resistant to Christianity. Nonetheless, the bulletin is significant to this study as it helped me unravel basic facts such as dates, names, and significant events in the establishment of the church. It was also vital to treat this material as data that speaks for itself. The use of the name Dayak rather than Kenyah and Rev. Fisk’s mistaken understanding of the Kenyah indicate the publication’s conception of the Kenyah as an unreachable community. Interviewing local evangelists in both Indonesian Borneo and Sarawak filled gaps in information from the bulletin and vice versa. The information I obtained from local evangelists of the 1960s was rich in narratives but lacked precise dates and years. Their stories of bible translation and the migration of the Uma Kulit settlement to Sarawak, and of local evangelists spreading the gospel, could be verified only by documents such as Rev. Cunningham’s biography. The second type of archive that I used, in dialogue with the ethno-historical accounts I gathered, included the Sarawak Gazette. It is an essential source of historical information on Sarawak affairs, especially for the period from 1870 to 1941, and was published by the Sarawak government during the Brooke and British colonial periods. It contains source material on economic history; coastal trade returns; commodity prices; agricultural, mineral, and oil production; anthropology; and archaeology. The residence officer’s monthly report was revealing. It was written in a narrative and detailed style. I used this publication mostly to explain the relation of the upland-lowland economy and Kenyah mobility to Sarawak.

Outline of the Chapters The following chapter investigates the pre-conditions and the enabling factors that influenced the spread of evangelical Christianity among the Kenyah in central Borneo. It describes three inter-related historical contexts related to the early historical conditions that affected the arrival of Christianity in Central Borneo; first, the historical background of upland-lowland social and state formations in the early twentieth century that shows an intense mobility of ethnic groups from central Borneo to the coastal regions; second, the relation of inter-ethnic peacemaking in connection to the end of headhunting and its role in dismantling the symbolically powerful trophy of the ruling elite; and third, the massive expansion of globalizing evangelical Christian missions with their

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orientation toward the moral geography of “frontiers.” This chapter illustrates the critical significance of transnational connections of political and economic dynamics that were important in elaborating religious change. In Southeast Asia, the entanglement of these factors has influenced, directly or indirectly, the socio-religious forms of religious authority among the Kenyah since the introduction of Christianity. The third chapter primarily explores the dynamics of social hierarchy exercised by the local elite in the process of egalitarian church making. It examines church making and its relation to adat withdrawal in the period between the 1930s and 1960s. The chapter underscores the tension between hierarchical adat and the egalitarian dimension of Christianity by describing the introduction of the globalized structure of religious authority, represented by the “self-planting church” as the main feature of the P/E church and the response of the local elite to the changing socioreligious life among the Kenyah. This new structure created the possibility of autonomy for individuals and lower-class groups, but it also paved the way for the existing powerful local elite to achieve religious authority. The case of how the Borneo Evangelical Mission (BEM) and the GKII established, maintained, inter-connected, and expanded in the upper Balui and Apokayan regions is used to describe this process. This part also discusses the gendered activity transformation that was opened by the arrival of the church and its relation to adat. By focusing on the dynamics of its church making over time, this section suggests that the installment of a globalized religion can reveal the rise and decline of both hierarchical structural forces and egalitarian religious autonomy in a stratified society. The fourth chapter highlights contemporary issues concerning hierarchy that have been introduced by the return of adat in the context of disenchantment propagated by the church institutions. This adat, in contrast to the pre-Christian one, is not a total institution covering a wide range of social, economic, political, and religious dimensions. It is related more to local political identity articulation and tourism, and it serves as a symbolic vehicle for the promotion of the regional autonomy of Apokayan. After forty years of adat not being a central discourse, it has returned and has opened a social sphere in which the aristocratic class can accumulate and perform its cultural power. The church, in opening a place of contestation between hierarchical and egalitarian ideologies, paved the way for the return of the aristocratic class that, interestingly, came from Evangelical Church followers, a denomination that in most previous studies has been considered to have made a radical break and

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distanced itself from so-called “tradition.” Three cases are illustrated in this chapter: the deployment of adat in the annual gatherings of various Kenyah sub-ethnic groups who migrated from Apokayan and settled downriver, ladung bio; the initiative to hold an annual harvest season ritual, uman jenai; and the elaboration of adat as ordinary ethics in relation to gender norm and ideology transformation in social-religious life. The fifth chapter analyzes denominational schism among Christian Kenyah, with accounts of how the P/E denomination and the Calvinist Kenyah community were established in central Borneo and the contemporary situation. In contrast to the previous chapter, this chapter elaborates on inter-denominational relations since the introduction of Christianity as a socio-religious form of intergroup hierarchical relations. It emphasizes how differences and antagonism between the GPIB, a Calvinist and younger denomination in Apokayan, and the GKII, a P/E denomination, resemble the hierarchical dynamics of both paren vs. panyin and adat vs. Christianity at the initial stage of conversion. Two cases are described: the first concerns liturgy and its implications for inter-denominational contrasts in socio-religious form; the second illustrates the polemics of church construction and the debates in the two denominations over ways of navigating the benefits of regional autonomy for church development. The concluding chapter connects the socio-historical transformation of the Kenyah ethnic group in paving the way for the changing religious landscape of central Borneo. Moreover, this discussion illuminates the changing structure of religious authority in their experience of making a local indigenous church, the recent trend of adat revitalization, and denominational schism and tension. By doing so, it aims to explain the persistence of hierarchical politico-religious structures as well as resistance against them in a different context of changing local and regional political structures. It analyzes the inter-penetrating process of the religious sphere with specific characteristics of local political structures and state formation that have shaped cultural dynamics in central Borneo. Furthermore, this chapter locates this book’s argument within the comparative project of studying the interrelation between the P/E Church and local tradition to broader regional contexts and beyond.

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Notes 1. Social Deprivation and Disorganization theory is an approach that analyses the significant role of both objective and subjective political economic crises as main factors influencing individuals or groups to become closely involved in particular social movements or religious experiences that could fulfill their needs and function to satisfy psycho-emotional needs. (I haven’t combed through these finely—please do so; also, why are the footnotes enumerated consecutively? Isn’t normal practice to start from 1 with each new chapter?). 2. Adat is a widely used term in the Indonesian archipelago that refers to custom or tradition, traditional law, traditional religion, or all three. In this book, the term is used in different senses in relation to different periods of history. In the pre-Christian era, the term refers to a totalizing system that includes the belief system and taboo law represented in hierarchical local institutions, while in the recent era the term, reinterpreted by the church and situated by the indigenous movement as well as local tourism, related to the artifacts or cultural traditions and non-state regulation of natural resource management and also to a way to solve land and social conflicts before a community brings them to law enforcement. 3. The subfield has received attention as a result of the significant growth of the Christian population, mostly Pentecostal and Evangelist, in regions that have significantly contributed to recent debates in anthropology such as Amazonia, Central Asia, and Melanesia (C. M. Hann, 2006; Vilaça, 2016a, 2016b). Globally, the P/E population is now estimated to consist of 500 million people, with an estimated 700 percent increase in the number of Pentecostal believers over the last thirty years. This total population represents about a quarter of the world’s Christian population and two-thirds of all Protestants (Anderson et al., 2010, p. 2). 4. In brief, what Dumont presents about hierarchy was defined as a model of values and social forms explicating the logic of encompassment of the contrary. With the first term, he intended to analyze hierarchy as the relationship between the whole and the parts of a ranked system. The paramount value, which is unique in each society, is the main basis for how people are ranked, included, and excluded in a particular place within their social structure. His

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monograph explains these analytical concepts with the illustration of Brahman priests as a social category that could encompass the slave class of Shudra in the Indian caste system under the value of “purity.” Rather than seeing the hierarchy as related to asymmetric power relations, he was more interested in how certain social relations occur under certain paramount values. In his study on Indian society, rather than individualism as a social form of freedom and liberty, he found that hierarchy and individualism were in contrast, with hierarchy as a social form reflecting the value of purity. His analysis of Indian society shows a stark contrast with the modern European ideology that values liberty and equality, which became the basis of the construction of subjectivity and individuals. It is this comparison that sparked debates in anthropology. 5. Anthropologists who focus on the role of power structures in cultural change tend to make arguments very much in the functionalist tradition (Robbins & Wardlow, 2016; Sahlins, 1996, 2008). They do so by explaining any given cultural phenomenon as existing/persisting because of the way it stabilizes the power structure of the society in which it appears (Robbins, 2005: 8). In many of Sahlins’ works, this perspective is deemed ethnocentric as it represents the bourgeois-Western conception of human nature that defines social action only as rationally calculated behavior to obtain power. While I agree that we need to be self-aware of the ethnocentric bias in power-oriented analysis, I contend that, in many cases, this way of thinking is a basic foundation for interpretation and action among our interlocutors in the field. This orientation, which is introduced by Christianity, colonialism, and the expansion of capitalism and commercialized political-economic relations, cannot be neglected as it reveals many narratives that illustrate clearly how the aristocratic elite in many stratified ethnic groups of Borneo mobilize their social influence through the Church and adat 6. The inclination to explore the importance of power structures and how they are articulated is not new in the Southeast Asian context. Despite not specifically studying religion per se, many previous studies on Southeast Asia have problematized the tendency to explain the hierarchical and individual-egalitarian dichotomy as an essentialized form of cultural values and social relations. This perspective can be traced to Edmund Leach’s elaboration on the

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oscillating structural relations between the Gumlao democraticegalitarian system and the lowland Gumsa hierarchical social system among Kachin hill ethnic groups (Leach, 2004). Even in Borneo cases, egalitarian and hierarchical socio-religious structures can similarly be understood as not wholly dichotomous entities (Alexander, 1992; King, 1985; Rousseau, 1990; Sather, 1996). For example, Sather’s account of the dynamics of Iban social life reveals the possibility of the coexistence of an egalitarian social condition and a hierarchical ideology. In a more specific case, Kenyah Badeng structures of hierarchy and equality both exist in Badeng society, although they do not always sit together easily and the clash of ideologies can cause unusual, even paradoxical, social formations (Armstrong, 1992). 7. In the previous era, Apokayan plateau were once the dwelling place of Kayan and Penan. In the early of nineteenth century two ethnic groups were migrated to the head river of Kapuas in West Kalimantan and as well to upriver Baram in Sarawak. 8. Kecamatan Malinau Dalam Angka, BPS, 2018. 9. The split of Malinau District into a new regency is part of the larger process of the proliferation of East Kalimantan into two province, North Kalimantan and East Kalimantan in 25 October 2012 (Nasution, A. (2017). The government decentralization program in Indonesia. In Central and local government relations in Asia. Edward Elgar Publishing). 10. In this study, I use the self-published book of an Uma Kulit leader (Joni Alan) that explains the Indonesian and Malaysian confrontation period that was contemporaneous with the expansion of Christianity in Upper Balui Sarawak. The book includes several stories explaining the context of Christianity during the conflict.

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CHAPTER 2

The End of Headhunting and the Globalizing Mission of Evangelical Christianity in Borneo

The structural form and cultural content of a society emerge not as self-determining socio-cultural monads but as a consequence of societal interdependence and cultural contact (Sahlins & Graeber, 2017, p. 350). This kind of inter-societal relation and regional political dynamics is sources of cultural production and likewise of its transformation. Such is the case for the structural transformation of the church institution among the Kenyah and its mutual relation to the transformation of the traditional political system of adat . This chapter intends to describe this context and analyze the dynamics of socio-religious form in the initial stage of the introduction of Christianity, as situated within the historical process of inter-societal relations in east Borneo at the end of the pre-colonial period and the beginning of colonial intervention. In so doing, this chapter examines the historical pre-conditions and the enabling political and economic factors that influenced the spread of evangelical Christianity by the Christian and Missionary Alliance and their legacies for the political dynamics of the Church and adat among the Kenyah in central Borneo. It describes three inter-related historical contexts that paved the way for the dynamics of adat and Church in the earlier period and provides us with the historical context to understand the micro-politics of religious authority as will be described in more detail in the next chapter. The first context reveals the transformation of upland-lowland social and state formations in the early twentieth century with the arrival of Dutch © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 I. Ardhianto, Hierarchies of Power, Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3_2

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colonials in inland east Borneo, which paved the way for ethnic groups’ increasingly intense mobility from central Borneo to the coastal region and vice versa, hence enabling and facilitating the arrival and accommodation of Christian missions. It explains the context of the relation among the Dutch colonials, Malay Muslim polities, and the upland people through the lens of cultural-political analysis before and during the early arrival of C&MA in Tarakan and Tanjung Selor, East Borneo, in 1929. It foregrounds the changing form of antagonism, yet mutually dependent relations, between upland and lowland polities that appeared in select parts of Borneo, specifically the relation between the Bulungan sultanates and the Upper Kayan inter-ethnic alliance. The second context, which arose in parallel with the former context, is the connection between inter-ethnic peacemaking with the end of headhunting and its role in the dismantlement of a symbolically powerful ruling elite, local structures of rituals and cultural authority. This chapter elaborates the end of headhunting as a crucial turning point that situates the increasing mobility of people and ideas from the modern coastal cities of Borneo to central Borneo and vice versa, in which it shaped the socio-cultural foundation of rituals and internal class transformation among the Kenyah in Apokayan. The last context is the expansion of globalizing evangelical Christian missions with their orientation toward the moral geography of “frontiers” and the establishment of the C&MA mission in Tarakan and Tanjung Selor, east Borneo. This chapter presents the global development of the Christian missionary evangelist program of C&MA and its basic doctrines in grounding the establishment of C&MA in northern Borneo and C&MA’s adaptation to east Borneo’s political and cultural situations. This part provides a socio-cultural analysis of missionary personnel actions and a reflection on religious proselytizing and encountering social and political dynamics in Borneo, as well as stories from local evangelists who experienced the period of the early introduction of Christianity. By analyzing this context, this chapter provides a socio-historical background to the dynamics of church making, the fall of adat , and the issues of hierarchy and autonomy of religious power and authority, which are addressed in the following chapters.

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Upland-Lowland Social Formation in Precolonial and Colonial Borneo The changing regional political and economic dynamics in east Borneo between 1850 and 1929 were the background for cultural and political antagonisms between the upland communities and the Muslim Malay polity of the Bulungan Sultanate in the coastal part of the island.1 Since the emergence of petty kingdoms in east Borneo, the coastal peoples, even until today, have looked stereotypically at their counterparts from the upland as backward and primitive. The arrival of colonialism was pivotal to the introduction of Christianity in the early twentieth century as it provided upland communities with alternative political-economic players in the coastal region in relation to their trade in forest jungle products as well as an alternative cultural hegemonic force to Malay-Muslim culture. It was within this cultural and political transformation that the initial arrival, rejection, and accommodation of Christianity played a part in formation dynamics. It should be noted that this changing religious affiliation among the upland groups as a response to the cultural and political antagonism of upland-lowland relations in the Kayan tributaries occurred elsewhere on Borneo too. In the northern part of the island, Peter Metcalf studied the Berawan in Tinjar River and saw the connection between the coastal Malays of the Brunei sultanate and the Orang Ulu of the indigenous upland in central Borneo as being similar to the Southeast Asian mainland upland-lowland relation, marked by the antagonistic relation between egalitarian and autonomous societies and hierarchical coastal polities (Metcalf, 2010, p. 16). The arrival of Catholic missions and the Borneo Evangelical Mission in Baram River, Sarawak, in 1928 provided upland groups an alternative cultural denominator other than being Muslim Malays. The relation between the two societies likewise appears elsewhere in Borneo. In a downriver region of Mahakam, Kutai sultanates also tried to exercise power over the upland people of Mahakam, including the Tunjung, Benuaq, Bahau, Kayan, and Penihing/Aoheng ethnic groups. The same process could be observed in other major river areas, such as the Barito, with the Banjar sultanate exercising political hegemony over the Ngaju and Ot-Danum ethnic groups in the hinterland. Similar phenomena arose elsewhere, such as at the Mentaya and Pawan rivers in southwest Borneo. Moreover, this kind of inter-societal order was even present in a vast number of polities of the Kapuas’ petty sultanates that

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stretched into most of upper inland Kapuas in West Kalimantan Province, with its inland ethnic groups such as the Kayan, Maloh, Iban, Kantu, and other small ethnic groups (Healey, 1985; Magenda, 2010; Rousseau, 1989). In the pre-colonial and pre-Christian expansion, this antagonistic feature marked the structural relation between lowland power and upland cultures. Despite the antagonism, the relations between the political groups were mostly arranged by their mutual relation through longdistance trade networks of forest jungle commodities. From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, most coastal powers depended on upland people to provide commodities from the forest for trade. Those on the coast produced and maintained their political-economic power as estuary middlemen with firearms, able to extract benefits by pooling jungle forest products such as eaglewood, gutta-percha (a latex similar to rubber but with higher resin content), birds’ nests, and beeswax collected by the upland peoples. By doing so, they became a commercial center for selling to the south China market through Bugis and Sulu traders. In return, they gained control of commodities from elsewhere in the world, such as gongs, beads, and swords, which were sold to the upland ethnic groups as such commodities are highly socially valuable in the lives of upland peoples as political symbols and in rituals. The coastal groups also played a central part in monopolizing the salt trade. The Kutai along the Mahakam River and the Berau, Bulungan, Tidung, and Brunei in the northern part of Borneo were the kingdoms that arose from the benefits of the jungle produce trade and the tax they collected from the upland people when they went downriver to sell forest products (Rousseau, 1989). While the relations were sometimes mutual, the introduction of Islam by traders to the lowland kingdoms such as Bulungan in the eighteenth century heightened the difference between coastal and interior ethnic groups, translating it into an ethnic and religious idiom, and solidifying the cultural and religious boundaries between the two groups2 (Connolly, 2003, p. 45). Hence, the relationship became politically and economically unequal as the Malay sultanates were increasingly powerful as a result of trade growth during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in east Borneo. The arrival of the Dutch colonials in the early twentieth century in east Borneo dramatically changed the relation among political groups. As soon as the Dutch succeeded in gaining ground in both southern and western Borneo in the early nineteenth century, the expansion of colonial power through political-economic intervention in inter-coastal

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trade in east Borneo paved the way toward the new structure of uplandlowland relations. Many local polities in the coastal areas that depended on the Bugis and Sulu kingdoms were slowly weakened as both political powers had already been much diminished by the Dutch and other European campaigns during the nineteenth century against indigenous trading systems including piracy and the slave trade (Black, 1985, p. 281). In the same historical period, the Kutai Sultanates of the Mahakam River invited the Dutch in 1863 to formally agree a treaty in which, in exchange for declaring the Kutai Sultanate part of the Netherlands East Indies, the Sultan was allowed to keep his title, collect taxes, and receive an ample salary (Connolly, 2003, p. 48; Magenda, 1991). This political-economic shift served to reorganize relations between upland and lowland political groups, as well as influence the Bulungan sultanates in the Kayan tributary to follow the Kutai and start to become the colonial representatives of the Dutch colonial sovereign power from the 1880s. During the early colonial period, the Dutch granted the sultan of Bulungan monopolies of the trade in salt and opium (1881) and he later received royalties from the exploitation of petroleum and coal in the region (Sellato, 2001, p. 18). This political shift was remarkably influential on upland-lowland relations, especially in the sense of decreasing the political and cultural power of lowland sultanates over the inland ethnic groups. Other factors seemed to influence the antagonistic and loose connection between upland people in Apokayan and the Bulungan sultanates besides colonial intervention. From the stories I collected from the older generation of the Kenyah in Sarawak and Indonesia, as well as from the archive, three factors are crucial. The first is related to the natural barriers that constrained trade expeditions to Tanjung Selor. In the arduous journey to Tanjung Selor, the Kenyah from Apokayan had to overcome 30 km of rapids and gorges. Anticipating the problem of transportation, they took another route via the Pujungan River. However, they encountered another obstacle on this route—the hostility of other Kenyah groups along the Pujungan River, Uma Alim groups, who had a long history of conflict with the Kenyah Leppo Tau of Apokayan. This complicated political-economic relations in the trade with Tanjung Selor. The other constraint was related to the levy, tax, and tribute the Kenyah had to pay to the Bulungan sultanate if they integrated with the downriver Tanjung Selor market. An equally crucial barrier was the Apokayan peoples’ hesitation about a close relationship with downriver Kayan. Their reluctance was also subsequently influenced by the comparative advantage of an

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accessible route for trade expeditions and the sale of their labor to the Balui River tributary in Sarawak, specifically to the Belaga and Kapit. This led to the upland Apokayan Kenyah choosing another route of mobility rather than to downriver Tanjung Selor. However, starting in the early twentieth century, the relation between the Kenyah of Apokayan and the downriver Kayan of Tanjung Selor shifted. The dramatic change brought by the establishment of the Dutch colonial military post in Apokayan was crucial to the relationship between the upland ethnic groups of Apokayan and those of the lowlands of East Borneo. In early 1906, the Dutch forced the sultan to sign a strict “short declaration” (korte verklaring ) that refrained him from interference in Apokayan, Pujungan, and Leppo’ Maut (upper Bahau). As the colonial military secured control of the east coast of Borneo from 1850, the monopoly on power and trade held by the sultanate of Bulungan fell apart. The Dutch dominated the trade network and suppressed slavery, which was crucial for the Bulungan as they were the providers for the Sulu Sultanate trade network and for piracy (Warren, 2007) . This change limited the Malay Muslim sultanate’s power over the inland groups politically and economically. Hence, the mobility and political autonomy of the Kenyah and other ethnic groups in trade on the coast improved. Black’s elaboration of social changes that occurred in the region, especially in the port cities of Dutch East Borneo, indicates that the social change was far more the result of what he called an informal economic revolution. In particular, he noted the importance of the introduction of wage labor in the ports and along the rivers, and the introduction by European and other trading companies of systematic, in the sense of reliable, credit networks throughout the interior to expedite the flow of jungle produce. These developments significantly transformed prior patterns of patronage and social control among both the coastal Muslim peoples and lower rivers and the interior non-Muslims (Black, 1985, p. 284). The Kenyah and Kayan increasingly turned to Europeans and Chinese merchants in order to obtain trade goods, especially salt, which were provided by the Dutch colonial establishment to the village of Long Nawang in Apokayan. The Dutch favoring of upland Apokayan was also influenced by Anton Nieuwenhuis, an explorer, doctor, and head of the expedition, who recommended the expansion of Dutch political power over Rajah James Brooke of Sarawak, who had aimed to pacify the upland ethnic groups through their integration into his market economy in 1901 (Lumenta, 2017). The inter-ethnic group hostilities between ethnic

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groups also enabled this mobility as Pingan Surang, then leader of the Apokayan Kenyah, asked for help against the expansion of the Balleh River Iban, who were already extracting jungle forest products from the Iwan River of Apokayan.3 The dramatic change described above was the precondition for the establishment of a military post at Long Nawang, Apokayan in 1911 (Black, 1985). The key decision by the Dutch was their policy that the interior of east Borneo should not subsequently be influenced by Muslims, which in this case represented the Bulungan sultanantes and Malay traders who traveled inland to trade and proselytize. Black’s historical study revealed that anti-Muslim sentiment was explicit among most of the officers assigned to these areas, who adopted a paternalist attitude toward the Dayaks and encouraged Christian missions to work among them. This also further erodedtraditional trading patterns and forced Dayaks to turn to European and Chinese trading concerns for the items they required—particularly salt—in return for collected jungle produce. However, despite this religiously antagonistic motivation, the sultanates and coastal elites appear to have felt reasonably satisfied with the status, pensions, and royalties the Dutch arranged for them (Black, 1985, p. 285). Subsequently, with this initiative and their routine of monthly travel to supply salt and logistics for the military post and the Kenyah in Long Nawang, the Dutch opened routes to the uplands for the C&MA and also the increasing mobility of many aristocratic leaders of inland groups to Tanjung Selor. Equally important, as soon as river transportation to downriver Kayan was possible without incurring hostility toward people from Apokayan, many Kenyah traveled to the coast in Tanjung Selor, or even farther to Tarakan. The colonial government, through its dismantling of the Bulungan sultanate’s power over upland people and its decision to support the Apokayan who were facing both the expanding Iban of Sarawak and Brooke’s market expansion, built the infrastructural basis of mobility. With this easier access, the Kenyah encountered these early missionaries directly in their villages or took the new ideas from their downriver Kayan homes with them after peselai (Whittier, 1973). These dynamics of the state formation set the stage for the gradual introduction of Christianity to central Borneo. The journey of Rev. George Fisk, the first missionary to land a plane in the Apokayan, along with his local evangelical colleagues, was possible and welcome, as the people on the Apokayan plateau were, interested in modern education

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and ideas of religious identity besides Islam, which was mostly followed by Malay people in the coastal cities. The dramatic transformation following the retreat of the Bulungan kingdom, the opening of colonial military post, and, in the final stage, the consolidation of the Indonesian state, were central social and political contexts for the conversion of many Apokayan inhabitants to Christianity. Beginning in the 1930s, the P/E church, in turn, paved the way for the production and circulation of a modern institution, education, and religious practices for both the Kenyah and the global missionaries. The other important factor was the colonial presence that influenced the Kenyah to choose a powerful foreign cultural identity as an alternative to Malay Islam. Christianity arrived immediately after the Dutch introduced a new cultural universe that the Kenyah incorporated. This process shows what we can perceive as the dynamics of lowland-upland relations after the Dutch arrived in East Borneo. The way the Kenyah absorbed Christianity was also situated in the context of a cultural mimetic process in perceiving modern colonial culture. Another crucial factor was shifting patterns of state formation from sultanate to Dutch colony and the expansion of Brooke’s power to upland central Borneo. This led the Brooke government and the Kenyah paramount leaders of Apokayan to bring an end to headhunting, a practice that had caused grave ethnic hostility and had influenced the mobility of people from and to the upland. We turn to these developments below.

The End of Headhunting A recent study of the end of headhunting in central Borneo illustrates the significance of Kapit peacemaking in increasing upland people’s mobility, migration, and trade liberalization regarding commodities from the upland Apokayan plateau to the coastal cities of Sarawak (Lumenta, 2017, p. 2). In another aspect, headhunting’s cessation marked an emotional and cultural crisis influenced by the end of the role of the rituals that followed headhunting. In his monograph, William Conley explains as follows: It is not too much to posit the cessation of Kenyah headhunting as a major cause of how the loss of a cultural institution like headhunting resulted in adverse physical and emotional health in the society is [sic] found in Rivers’ account of the depopulation of Melanesia. In the same way with the headhunting institution of Kenyah, its abrupt cessation would produce serious

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social and emotional disequilibrium (what Rivers calls “the psychological factor”), and in turn must have had an important bearing of [sic] the receptivity of the people to Christianity – if for no other reason than that the loss of such a powerful institution must have left a great void in their lives. (Conley, 1975, p. 348)

My elaboration in this section, however, differs in intention from these two explanations. My aim here is to reveal two effects of the end of headhunting and the introduction of peacemaking. The first was an indirect effect of changes in ritual and the decrease in influence of older adat notions of spiritual power among aristocrats. The second effect was the role that the ending of headhunting played in the mobility of ideas and people that paved the way for the introduction of Christianity and market integration. In this part, I expand and reframe Conley’s elaboration, which also considers the cessation of headhunting to have been important for the cultural change among the Kenyah that brought them to accept Christianity. While I agree that headhunting’s end caused a crucial rupture that induced a socio-psychological crisis, it is also important to see this ending as a prerequisite of the change in mobility practices and the upland-lowland relations that required the Kenyah to transform their orientation toward the older social system of adat, which privileged the experience of headhunting and its head trophies. I also further examine Lumenta’s exploration of the relation between the end of the headhunting period and Brooke’s trade liberalization, noting the cause and effect in this change at the religious level. I will explore this argument in more detail later, but first a historical description of the context of headhunting in central Borneo and an examination of the narratives about its end are necessary. The headhunting that escalated in central Borneo in the early twentieth century mostly concerned political-economic conflicts, such as struggles over forest resources, community, and longhouse spiritual restoration, and increasing the spiritual quality of a particular person. Inter-sub-ethnic hostility, at least in central Borneo, was centuries old and was a function of socio-cultural system reproduction. However, the practice’s escalation in the early twentieth century following the demographic expansion of the Iban from the Balleh River of Sarawak to the Upper Rejang basin and upland Apokayan in order to obtain gutta-percha, in addition to the rising market demand for that commodity (Healey, 1985, p. 25). The conflict

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and hostilities between the Iban of the Balleh River and the Apokayan Kenyah began in 1886 and reached a peak by 1921 (G.T.M.M, 1924). In 1922, the Kapit resident of Sarawak visited Long Nawang to arrange a truce and mediate between the groups, though disagreements doomed his efforts. A second party, including Brooke officials, such as Donald A. Owen, undertook another journey to Long Nawang with the paramount leader of the Iban from Balleh Sarawak for a meeting that also involved the Dutch administrator of Apokayan, Captain Molenaar. The result was a decision to arrange a peacemaking event in Long Nawang. Even before this initiative, the Dutch had been concerned about increasing hostilities and had sentenced several aristocrats of the Kenyah Uma Kulit and Leppo Tau of Long Nawang to prison because of their headhunting in Tanjung Selor and Banjarmasin (Conley, 1975; Merang & Kila, 2012, p. 59). However, the arrival of Brooke officials marked the first inter-colonial intervention. The first peacemaking ceremony was conducted in Long Nawang in May 1924, and both Kenyah and Iban from the Balleh River of Sarawak agreed to a date for another peacemaking ceremony that would follow Iban customs at Kapit Sarawak (Lumenta, 2017, p. 18). The Kapit peacemaking ceremony on November 16, 1924 was attended by Rajah Charles Vyner Brooke (who had succeeded his uncle James Brooke the White Rajah), Brooke and Dutch officials, and approximately 4,200 natives, including the Apokayan Kenyah delegation, which consisted of 960 men arriving in 97 canoes from across the border (G.T.M.M, 1924). During the same period, a peace agreement was reached between the Kenyah Apokayan and the Kenyah Uma Alim from the Pujungan tributary, who were long-time rivals of the Kenyah Leppo Tau of Apokayan. The peacemaking with the Uma Alim sub-ethnic group presumably opened routes for the Kenyah in Apokayan to travel to the downriver Tarakan oil city in the Dutch East Indies. Previously, as with the Iban, Kenyah from Apokayan had had several conflicts and hostilities with the Uma Alim. Some oral histories of migration reveal that the Uma Alim were involved in an internal dispute with the Leppo Tau during their stay at the headwaters of the Iwan River, and this made relations quite problematic; the Uma Alim went to a different tributary after the migration from the Iwan River (Gorlinski, 1995, p. 51). The longstanding narratives of the pre-Christian period among the Kenyah are mostly related to the stories of the many hostilities they experienced in the period described above. They primarily consist of, first,

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their engagement with the spirit world and, second, condemnation of their past. Their explanation of headhunting probably later took on an aspect of vivid description. From the narrative that I encountered among Kenyah elders at Apokayan, the story of how they converted to Christianity was usually marked by the withdrawal of the ritual of Mamat.4 The ritual was usually held during the harvest season and had various components, including rites for initiation and for restoring and cleaning the spiritual quality of the village. Central to the ritual were skulls obtained through headhunting and narratives about people involved in hostilities with enemies from other ethnic groups or other Kenyah sub-ethnics. The dramatic political-economic shift and the arrival of the sovereign power of colonials with firearms imposing a peacemaking ritual altered the shape of headhunting violence in the uplands. The decision to pursue peacemaking significantly changed the foundation of the social and cultural system of the Kenyah in Apokayan. Mobility both to Sarawak and downriver to Tanjung Selor enabled them to sell forest products and their labor in the coastal cities of Sibu Sarawak and Tarakan in the Dutch colonial area. This evolving structure of economic activity from the end of headhunting, from selling forest commodities to selling themselves in the form of wage labor in coastal regions, likely made many Kenyah going on peselai feel obliged to incorporate a colonial modern identity, hence changing the way aristocratic systems regulated resources and manpower. In the meantime, alongside the thorough market integration of upland Kayan with coastal East Borneo, Rev. Fisk, a C&MA missionary, encountered the Kenyah Lepo Jalan a few times in the 1930s during their peselai (Fisk, 1939). The trade expedition route that in pre-peacemaking times had been in hostile territory (Upper Rejang, Balui, and Pujungan) was afterward liberated and, considering the former risk of hostility with other ethnic groups, easy to navigate socially. In this context, the change toward different political-economic activities that also influenced the values of manhood at the time slowly reduced the experiences of inter-tribal or inter-clan warfare as a social measure of people considered aristocrats and leaders. This inter-tribal peacemaking was enabled by the establishment in 1915 of the Dutch colonial post that became a new institution in the regulation of social conflicts and economic disputes. The significant changes initiated by the Dutch included enforcement of the prohibition of headhunting through jail sentences, hard labor, and exile. These

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punishments were administered to the paren lepo of Uma Kulit Nahakeramo, and to Lencau Ingan, the paren bio of Apokayan, who was jailed in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan (Merang & Kila, 2012). The gradual disappearance of the practice of headhunting in central Borneo as a result of the 1924 Kapit Agreement initiated by Brooke and by Dutch officials was crucial as a precondition paving the way for C&MA to take its routes to Apokayan and Upper Balui. It is not by coincidence that C&MA’s first arrival in Borneo happened about a decade subsequent to the end of headhunting. The same applies to the Kenyah in Apokayan, whose travel by that time was no longer restricted to Sarawak, but who rather had an alternative route to the area downriver of Kayan despite the geographical obstacle of rapids and a longer journey. The shifting political-economy of inter-ethnic relations was later mutually constitutive of the development of early colonial establishment, the liberalization of Kenyah mobility to supply labor and forest products to the downriver area of Sarawak, and, consequently, Kenyah socio-cultural change represented by the gradual vanishing of the Mamat ritual.This became a precondition for the reception of Christian missionaries as the new source of symbolic power to be incorporated within the existing structure of Kenyah communities. The younger generation was quick to respond to the changes in the symbolic order through engagement with Christianity, which came to Apokayan along with modern education and cultural practices that were seen as new sources of power by the many actors in Apokayan representing the old order of the traditional cultural system. In many cases, such as among the Uma Kulit and also among the Leppo Tau, younger generation of aristocrats, and few commoners, who were interested in the religion. It was through the initiative of the former that a new structure was introduced into the symbolic order and local political-economic structures, an institution that opened different political-religious forms through its new rituals, religious authority, and its strong orientation of expansion: Christianity.

Moral Frontiers and P/E Christian Ideology Aside from regional dynamics and the internal socio-cultural change that influenced early acceptance of Christianity, the substantial and increasing religious change among the Kenyah in central Borneo to Christianity

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was also influenced by the compatibility of Christian evangelical theological doctrines with the local context of class structure dynamics and cultural crisis in the period. Three doctrines provided ideological vehicles for many actors in navigating the changing structures of the economic and political systems when adat rituals were gradually transformed after the end of headhunting in the early period of Christianity. The first was the idea introduced by Rev. Fisk of the Second Coming of Jesus and the urgent need to reach out to unbelievers all around the world. The second doctrine was an orientation to establish local institutions and an impulse toward an egalitarian and spontaneous character of religiosity. The third was a cultural ideology that introduced a radical break from the pre-existing culture/tradition, which was considered pagan/heathen, while at the same time preserving former beliefs and spiritual practices under a new category and ontological categorization, often labeled satanic forces or diabolical spirits (Robbins, 2004). These three aspects of Christianity seemed to be the most vital ideas in the initial period of Kenyah acceptance of Christianity as a moral compass during the socially turbulent period of the Indonesian revolution and the political crisis of communist purge during Soeharto coup d’etat 1965. It is through these orientations that the Kenyah were able to expand Christian life and distance themselves from the former religious system of adat. The Urgency of Proselytizing and Evangelical Christian Moral Geography The Kenyah of Leppo Tau and Uma Kulit in central Borneo were wellknown for their evangelical zeal; they prostelyzed among many other groups, especially the nomadic Punan and many Kenyah from various subethnic groups. Many villages in Upper Balui and Baram Sarawak became Christian as a result of Kenyah bible teachers’ intervention. Even when this study was conducted in 2016, the regency coordinator at Apokayan was still expecting to proselytize to a few communities in the upper Mahakam River area of east Borneo as they were some of the many indigenous upland groups still practicing indigenous rituals. The desire to proselytize is mainly institutionalized by a long historical tradition of evangelical movement, which characterized the first doctrine mentioned above. It can be traced in the early period of acceptance of Christianity among the Kenyah themselves when many American missionaries established missions among the Kenyah in the 1930s by spreading the idea of

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being baptized as soon as possible and by delegating bible teaching to the locals. This first doctrine, influenced by the Great Awakening Movement of eighteenth-century American Protestantism, emphasized the urgency of proselytizing to the “unreachable” all over the world to enable the Second Coming of Jesus. The founder of C&MA, A. B. Simpson, sought to avoid competition with other Protestant churches. Therefore, he decided that Alliance missionaries should direct their attention only to those unevangelized areas of the world where no other Protestant missions had yet begun to work (Connolly, 2003, p. 76). Simpson, raised as a Presbyterian, was himself exemplary regarding most of the criteria of evangelical Christianity. He was oriented toward the worldly scope of evangelism because of a dream within which all people, from different races, ethnicities, and nations, were standing in front of him waiting for the gospel. As to where missionaries should be sent, the mission constitution stated that the target areas would be the “regions beyond,” “the unoccupied portions of the heathen world” (Niklaus et al., 1984, p. 84 in Connolly, 2003). Simpson’s influence and religious vision were translated into practice by the C&MA in the context of the east Borneo evangelization project. It was within the globalizing orientation that C&MA was established in Borneo in 1933.5 The initiative was started by the work of its famous missionary, R. A. Jaffray, who stayed in Makassar from 1928 onwards. The project reflected the impact of Christian revivalism and the Great Awakening Movement in America. We can see this vision in C&MA’s concept and method, as well as in the role of the church cluster it founded—gathered under the so-called Alliance or Gospel Tabernacle cluster (rumpun Kemah Injil )—in Indonesia. As noted earlier, the teaching of C&MA can be summarized in four principles, usually called the “four-fold gospel”: Christ saves, sanctifies, heals, and will return as the Lord. The hope and conviction of the second coming of Jesus and the Millennium Kingdom motivated its missionaries to proclaim the gospel to people who had never before heard or received it. This evangelistic effort was conceived of as hastening the return of Jesus (Aritonang & Steenbrink, 2008, p. 872). Aside from the emphasis on speaking in tongues and holy spirit mediation, this doctrine of a four-fold gospel was the primary idea that held together the various church missions and denominations around the world that were perceived as P/E (Robbins, 2004). It was

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within this religious orientation that P/E had a cultural drive to establish a moral geography of the frontiers, where people needed to hear the gospels. The practice of moral geography was the crucial element that enabled and religiously justified their global mobility. Based on its orientation of moral geography, in the Dutch East Indies, the organization’s priority was remote areas not yet proselytized by other denominations such as the upper Kayan of East Borneo. Jaffray himself chose East Borneo in late 1928. On this decision, he consulted the missionary consul in Batavia: I had the privilege of interviewing leaders of the Dutch Mission, and particularly Dr. Sotemaker de Bruine, the missionary consul. The latter was very courteous and helpful and heartily approved of our opening work among the Chinese and also to occupy some of the unoccupied areas of the Dutch East Indies. He recommended the following fields, where no work is being done: The entire east and west coast of Borneo. The object would be to reach “the wild man of Borneo,” the Dyacks of the interior. (Jaffray, The Call of the Dyacks: The Wild Man of Borneo. Pioneer Bulletin, June 1928)

Soon after the decision and approval from colonial authorities, he established a central office in Makassar on the island then known as Celebes, a central hub of Indonesian outer islands at the time. In the following year, Jaffray sent for five missionaries. Arriving first in Surabaya, Java, they continued to their stations in Lombok and Borneo. Along with this, several missionaries including Rev. and Mrs. George E. Fisk were sent to Tarakan, a small island on the eastern coast of Kalimantan, approximately 450 km north of Balikpapan. Tarakan, a Dutch oil enclave, occupied a strategic position as a point of entry to northern Kalimantan and the Apokayan region (Connolly, 2003, p. 89). In the local context, the urge to proselytize in many parts of the interior Kayan tributaries was reflected by Rev. Fisk’s initiative to establish a bible school in Long Bia. While Rev. Fisk himself could be seen as an example of the ideal of reaching the unreachable, he himself also had his grand strategy wherein bible teaching to the Kenyah should also be practiced by those Kenyah who had already been converted.

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Self-Planting Church and Egalitarian Vision of a Church Network Along with the idea of the second coming and its implication for proselytizing nonbelievers, the orientation toward a locally rooted religious institution was equally important. This doctrine gave the movement a socio-religious form that facilitated its expansion: an egalitarian form of religious life. From the perspective of the evangelical movement, P/E egalitarianism made the field of potential converts genuinely universal and served as an important basis for appealing to the unconverted. Hence, the organization of global P/E can be described as decentralized, segmentary, and reticulate. When people refer to the Pentecostal Church, they are also making a point about a type of church governance that tended from the start to be in local hands, created by an evangelist with local roots. This orientation toward localizing the church and an inexpensive bureaucratic religious structure was culturally driven by the perception that believers do not need special education to preach or to run a church; spiritual inspiration alone is required. Furthermore, the orientation fits into modern popular culture and local forms of musical performance, as P/E services emphasize hymns and liturgy that appear spontaneous, experiential, and exuberant, often erasing old boundaries between worship and leisure (Robbins, 2004, pp. 125–130). C&MA’s achievement in gaining converts in the East Borneo context of Upper Kayan is well-known. The exemplary nature of this mission is represented by the achievement of Rev. Fisk and his wife; he became well-known for his accomplishment of spreading the gospel in the Kayan tributary in Borneo. He is also considered by church historians in Indonesia as an example of a good and creative missionary who respected local traditions and customs as a way for mission work to be integrated into the community. An example of this method of spreading Christianity is his translation of the bible into the Kenyah language in Pujungan in 1933 with the help of Menadonese pastors. He believed it was essential to present the gospel in the local language. Around the 1930s, he completed a translation of the gospel of Mark, although it was later lost (Cunningham, 2002, p. 38). His methods resulted in the dominant ethnic groups in East Kalimantan, the Kenyah and Kayan, converting to Christianity by the time of Indonesian independence. In 1940, the mission counted some 5000 baptized individuals in East Kalimantan. This impressive achievement has been analyzed by church historians as partly the

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result of C&MA’s strategy to baptize people shortly after a positive reaction toward the proclamation of Christianity, sometimes after only a few days. For Rev. Fisk, a statement accepting Jesus as a redeemer could be enough, whereas the Catholic mission required two years of study in a catechism class (Aritonang & Steenbrink, 2008, p. 519). Fisk’s popularity with the Kenyah was also the result of his orientation toward training local evangelism, which he approached through education in Tanjung Selor. Several of the most prominent evangelists in Apokayan had first been in contact with Rev. Fisk. Rev. Fisk’s efforts to reach all of the Kenyah villages on the Kayan tributary were grounded in the ideas of P/E doctrine, as was C&MA’s role in forming the gospel schools for local evangelists in Long Bia. C&MA provided scholarships for a few Uma Kulit and Leppo Tau paren to study in Makassar with Rev. Jaffray. The orientation toward a locally rooted institution was behind the decision to involve most of the younger generation of the Kenyah. The ideological aspect was also influential to those Kenyah becoming local evangelists, such as the ideas of the Second Coming, second conversion, bible reading, and spontaneity and improvisation in the liturgy. It is with these characteristics that Rev. Fisk introduced a novel institution and the idea of a self-planting church to the Kenyah. This consideration, which was taken as a central idea, came from bible verse: Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. (Isaiah 54:2,3)

Through this approach, the C&MA in Borneo established and expanded its mission. For evangelical Christians, the verse reveals the urgency of prophesizing the coming of Christ and the bringing of the gospel to all parts of the world. In relation to Rev. Fisk’s undertaking during the 1930s, the verse’s instruction to “lengthen thy cords,” would indicate the need to extend the mission field as far as possible, while “strengthen thy stakes” would refer to the need to make certain that conversions are authentic (Connolly, 2003, p. 114).

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Rev. Fisk was first stationed at Tarakan and then at Tanjung Selor, a coastal city in downriver Kayan, in East Borneo. However, dominant Malay and Buginese Muslim communities opposed the missionary’s attempts to spread Christianity among them. Although still stationed in Tanjung Selor, most of the mission took place upriver. Rev. Fisk went as far as the Pujungan tributary where he influenced several aristocratic Kenyah in Pujungan and along Bahau River. In 1931, Jalong Ipoi, an Uma Alim paren bio or paramount chief from Bahau river, converted to Christianity after a prelude of introduction and persuasion in Tanjung Selor (Fisk, 1931). The support of the Dutch government was crucial to Rev. Fisk’s travel, as he often went along a colonial tax-collecting route. In 1933, he reached the settlement of Uma Kulit at Nahakeramo in Apokayan. A few years later, after buying a hydroplane that enabled him to travel more easily between Tanjung Selor and the Apokayan Plateau, he made a second trip there. During his initial establishment, Rev. Fisk knew that to develop contact with upland ethnic groups he had to establish an upriver settlement and educate new gospel teachers among the Kenyah themselves. This decision required relocating from the coast to the interior in order to integrate into the day-to-day life of the ethnic groups in the upland. With this objective, on July 11, 1929, Rev. Fisk and his wife relocated 20 miles up the Kayan River from Tanjung Selor. This move from the center of the Bulungan sultanate turned out to be provident. In 1937, he established a bible school in Long Bia, an Uma Kulit and Uma Alim Kenyah settlement, a four- to five-hour journey from Tanjung Selor, and invited a number of youthful Kenyah and Kayan who were already going back and forth to the downriver area for peselai and work. This provided an open space within the religious authority for the Kenyah, including those of non-aristocratic background, to become gospel teachers. With limited logistical support and funding, the local C&MA also promoted to the Kenyah the significance of educating local evangelists from among the converted. At the time, this approach was not approved by the organization’s board in New York (Connolly, 2003, p. 119). However, Rev. Jaffray had already established a bible school at C&MA’s headquarters in Makassar, where a few of the first young converted Kenyah were educated in the 1930s. Rev. Fisk followed by establishing a bible school in Long Bia. In 1937, the school had 32 persons enrolled from villages all over Upper Kayan and in 1938 twenty of his students

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are working in Bulungan (Jaffray, 1938). It was his hope that the interaction afforded by the school in Long Bia would increase the missionaries’ opportunities to learn Dayak languages and dialects, and the Dayak would themselves become bible teachers, further reducing cultural and language barriers to conversion (Conley, 1975). The Radical Break with Tradition The last doctrine that enabled the globalizing effect of P/E was its distinctive feature of teaching to feel and understand the world according to a temporal and spatial break with the world and tradition outside Christian life. In the case of the Kenyah, the headhunting and the pre-Christian periods during which people still maintained the taboo system in every aspect of daily life are exemplary. People who converted and engaged with a congregation were made to categorize the past and present as two phases of life in moral opposition. This aspect brought a world-breaking religious framework as P/E’s ideological foundation and constructed a dualism, the distinctive quality of which was its ability to preserve people’s beliefs concerning the reality and power of the spiritual worlds with which they had broken. A process of demonization of older spirits— making indigenous spirits the representatives of the devil—accomplished this dualism (Robbins, 2004, p. 129). It is through this approach that the evangelist movement expanded and the already declining ritual and local cultural systems became increasingly irrelevant. Several reports on the C&MA Pioneer Bulletin archives show how the preachers and also C&MA Missionaries often mentioned the narratives of the battle between God and the devil in the early introduction to Christianity. These narratives were highlighted in relation to recovery from sickness and removal of the old cultural artifacts related to headhunting, notably skulls. Even today, sermons in the church and also during dialogues in many already Christianized adat events often mention this battle. This persistence of how the missionary, local church, and many Kenyah Christians perceive the pre-Christian world represents this doctrine’s strength in understanding the past. Hence, this doctrine answers the question of the cultural categorical compatibility of Christianity for the Kenyah and how effectively this new idea was used by both young aristocrats and commoners in taking roles within the local political sphere during a period of dramatic political-economic changes in the region.

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Conclusion This chapter aimed to provide a historical description of upland-lowland relations in east Borneo and the ideological bases and practices of C&MA that explain the context of the development of evangelical Christianity and its relation to adat transformation in central Borneo. It described two converging phenomena: the regional political and economic transformation of central Borneo and the development of the globalizing evangelist movement in the world as represented in Borneo by the arrival of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1933 in Apokayan. The changing power of coastal sultanates, the end of headhunting due to the Kapit peacemaking effort of 1924, and the arrival of Dutch colonialism in Apokayan were larger regional structural changes that partly influenced the crumbling of the pre-Christian social and cultural foundations, and that paved the way toward the early religious transformation from adat. One significant factor was the changing socio-economic structure in which Kenyah mobility was made safer in the aftermath of the Kapit Peacemaking meeting held by the Rajah of Sarawak. This was not just the end of headhunting and inter-tribal hostilities, but it further influenced the very basic practice of many important rituals and cultural justification by aristocrats. On the one hand, Dutch ambition to check Sarawak hegemony in the Apokayan through the establishment of the last colonial post in Borneo was influential as well as the ending of hostilities with the mid-river ethnic groups of upper Kayan. The latter was important in the increased mobility of people, ideas, and commodities to and from coastal Borneo, including the evangelical movement. This process happened at exactly the moment when one of many influential evangelical movements from the United States, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, was gradually moving toward upper Kayan in central Borneo. The Christian mission’s primary ideology drove missionaries to find the “unreachable” as a moral frontier that should be “tamed” and therefore considered central Borneo as an appropriate place for a mission. The ideology of reaching the most remote and—in their view—more “pagan” communities was influential in encouraging C&MA to spread Christian ideas in the Apokayan. It was their notion of the “wild men of Dayak” that drove them upriver, fascinated by what they called pristine and yet pagan-like men who needed to be saved by Christianity. This idea of moral frontier and also political-economic conditions such as the Dutch

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colonial salt supply routes paved the way for Christianity’s introduction to the Kenyah in the early 1930s. The mix of these inter-related factors enabled a new and modified mode of religious authority among the Kenyah both in the transformation of adat in the 1940s–1960s and in the incorporation of the church as the primary institution among them. The result of this internal, regional, and global movement and transformation of ideas, practices, and power relations, including several features of religious society, are explored in the next chapter. It also details how the crucial period of the twentieth century in central Borneo affected the dynamics of adat and Church in many aspects.

Notes 1. In the pre-colonial period, the Kenyah of central Borneo was mostly swidden agriculturalists, animist, and, despite their inclination toward aristocratic society, in favor of political autonomy and a loose structure of social alliances. In the region, despite the hegemony of the Leppo Tau, other sub-ethnic groups such as the Badeng, Bakung, and Uma Kulit had, to some extent, the autonomous power to withdraw or move to another river tributary if they were dissatisfied with the basis of their cohabitation with the alliance-leading group. Meanwhile, the coastal sultanates, influenced by the Hindu, Islamic, and Hadramic diasporas, were often hierarchical, based on commercial aristocracy, and in need of expansion, political hegemony, and tax-trade control over their inland neighbors (Somers Heidhues, 1998; Magenda, 2010; Van Klinken, 2006). 2. Interestingly, despite the antagonistic relations between the Bulungan sultanate of coastal East Borneo and the ethnic group in the hinterland, the history of the Bulungan sultanate is actually rooted in upland Apokayan. The genesis of this sultanate can be traced to the migration of Kayan who lived on the Apokayan plateau in the sixteenth century. Bernard Sellato’s study of the history of this sultanate reveals that this kingdom originated from the Dayak Kayan of Uma Apan groups who became a polity by controlling the watershed of the Kayan and becoming a commercial aristocracy. In the sixteenth century, they further established themselves by converting to Islam (Sellato, 2001, p. 17). The change to Islam

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and the transformation of its political-economic structure turned this coastal sultanate into a cultural opposition to upland peoples. This process resembles a pattern that appears elsewhere in Borneo, such as in the southeast, where the coastal polities are in many cases believed to have been founded by local animist ethnic groups (usually referred to as Dayaks) or, more typically, Dayaks confederated with migrants to the island (Javanese, Sumatran, Malay, Indian, etc.) (Sillander, 2006, p. 37). However, their transformation into a sultanate did not mean that they controlled the territory of the nearby interior people who lived within their own social organization in rejection of lowland hegemony. The aristocratic commercial states controlled only the market and contact with the outside world. Furthermore, in the pre-colonial period, the mode of governing and exercising power was supported politically by indirect rule. This characteristic was perhaps influenced by the Bulungan sultanate’s position as a vassal for the Kutai and Berau with whom at the time they had a loose political contract (Magenda, 2010). The Bulungan sultanate itself imitated this mode of governance in its relations with the upland people in the Kayan tributary. Relations between the Kutai and the Bulungan sultanate and how the latter established its mode of governance was one aspect, among others, that influenced the establishment of antagonistic and loose relations with the upland people in Apokayan (sloppy). 3. See Charles Hose report in Sarawak Gazzette, January 1899. 4. Mamat is a ritual related to a spiritual quality for both individual men and the community in a village. The purposes of the ritual are to cleanse and strengthen the personal spirit (bali utung ) of each man participating in the ceremony, to cleanse the good spirits of the village from the contamination of sins (li’eng ) of community inhabitants, to cleanse the people from the defilement from their li’eng, to give the villagers resistance to disease during the year, and, at the end, to complete the incorporation of babies into the village community. The last purpose is related to a child naming (ngalang anak) ritual that was also central among the Kenyah. 5. Founded in 1881 as the Gospel Tabernacle by a Canadian, Albert Benjamin Simpson, C&MA is regarded as one of the religious movements of that time that were gripped by episodic evangelical revivals aimed at religious renewal. One of the most influential of these attempts at religious renewal was the “holiness” movement

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(Connolly, 2003, p. 69). It developed at the same time as the rise of the Pentecostal movement rooted in Azura Street of Los Angeles that swept America with its holy spirits orientation and spontaneous religious experience. The three doctrines that characterized the globalizing effect of evangelism began with the Gospel Tabernacle’s first installment of a station outside America. The Tabernacle continued its emphasis on overseas evangelization driven by Simpson’s conviction that Christ’s Second Coming would occur immediately after all the earth’s inhabitants had professed belief in Jesus. By 1893, the organization had 180 missionaries working in 40 stations in Zaire, Sudan, China, Japan, Bulgaria, Palestine, Alaska, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. By 1895, the number of missionaries had grown to 300 (Connolly, 2003, p. 73).

References Aritonang, J. S., & Steenbrink, K. A. (2008). A history of Christianity in Indonesia (Vol. 35). Brill. Black, I. (1985). The “Lastposten”: Eastern Kalimantan and the Dutch in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 16(2), 281–291. Conley, W. W. (1975). The Kalimantan Kenyah: A study of tribal conversion in terms of dynamic cultural themes. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. Connolly, J. (2003). Becoming Christian and Dayak: A study of Christian conversion among Dayaks in East Kalimantan, Indonesia (Doctoral Dissertation). New School University. Cunningham, R. (2002). Longhouses open doors: God’s glory in Borneo. Hudson Press. Fisk, G. E. (1931). Wild Men of Borneo coming to Christ. Pioneer, II (7–8), 24. Fisk, G. E. (1939). Drunk with the Joy of the Lord. Pioneer, X , 12–13. G.T.M.M. (1924). Peace-making at Kapit. Sarawak Gazette, p. 484. Gorlinski, V. K. (1995). Songs of honor, words of respect: Social contours of Kenyah Lepo’Tau versification, Sarawak, Malaysia (Vol. 2). University of Wisconsin– Madison. Healey, C. J. (1985). Tribes and states in “pre-colonial” Borneo: Structural contradictions and the generation of piracy. Social Analysis: the International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 18, 3–39.

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Jaffray, R. (1938). In the regions beyond you: Being the report to N.E.I mission of the C. and M.Alliance for the year 1938 (Vol 10). The Pioneer. Lumenta, D. (2017, July). The political economy of ending inter-colonial and Kenyah perspectives, 4, 1070–1098. Magenda, B. (1991). East Kalimantan: The decline of a commercial aristocracy. Cornell Modern Indonesia Project. Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Magenda, B. D. (2010). East Kalimantan: The decline of a commercial aristocracy. Equinox Publishing. Merang, H., & Kila, G. (2012). Selayang Pandang Tentang Long Nawang Sebagai Pusat Pemerintahan Wilayah Apau Kayan Kabupaten Malinau. KaryaMedia. Metcalf, P. (2010). The life of the longhouse: An archaeology of ethnicity. Cambridge University Press. Robbins, J. (2004). The globalization of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33(1), 117–143. https://doi.org/10.1146/ annurev.anthro.32.061002.093421 Rousseau, J. (1989). Central Borneo and its relations with coastal Malay sultanates. In P. Skalnik (Ed.), Outwitting the state (Vol. 7, p. 41). Transaction Publisher. Sahlins, M., & Graeber, D. (2017). On kings. Hau Books. Sellato, B. (2001). Forest, resources, and people in Bulungan: Elements for a history of settlement, trade, and social dynamics in Borneo, 1880–2000. CIFOR. Sillander, K. (2006). Local integration and coastal connections in interior Kalimantan: The case of the nalin taun ritual among the bentian. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 37 (2), 315–334. Somers Heidhues, M. (1998). The first two sultans of Pontianak. Archipel, 56(1), 273–294. Van Klinken, G. (2006). Colonizing Borneo: State-building and ethnicity in Central Kalimantan. Indonesia, (81), 23–49. Warren, J. F. (2007). The Sulu Zone, 1768–1898: The dynamics of external trade, slavery, and ethnicity in the transformation of a Southeast Asian maritime state. NUS Press. Whittier, H. L. (1973). Social organization and symbols of social differentiation: An ethnographic study of Kenyah Dayak of East Kalimantan (Borneo). Michigan State University.

CHAPTER 3

The Fall of Adat Pu’un and the Politics of Church Making

Since its first contact with the Kenyah in the 1930s, the Christian and Missionary Alliance has claimed to prioritize the education of local evangelists, with the aim of creating a self-planting church.1 However, from the outset, this doctrine was not reflected by institutional practices such as the allocation of funding and the sending of ready-made evangelists from the coastal regions to preach in dozens of villages of Upper Kayan in the long term. The arrival of Rev. Fisk in the plateau only resulted in short stays and intermittent visitation of several villages. The mission was also interrupted by the period of Indonesian revolution in the 1940s. In that period, local evangelists continued the mission project, most of whom were trained by Rev. Fisk himself in a bible school in the downriver village of Long Bia near Tanjung Selor. Foreign missionaries came once the revolution concluded. However, in 1956, the last foreign missionary, Rev. Raymond Rudes, departed from Apokayan, giving the locals a more formal delegation of responsibility and the autonomy to maintain their own church services. In this situation, the self-planting church and its dependence on the local congregation was preferable option for the mission. During these crucial years, there were many challenges faced by the new evangelists among the Kenyah working in remote areas. One was a dilemma in coping to economic hardship during proselytization. Yusuf

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 I. Ardhianto, Hierarchies of Power, Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3_3

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Anyek, Rev. Fisk protege, spoke of the hardship he and his peers experienced after their bible education, when they started out as preachers all over the Apokayan Plateau. Preachers educated from downriver, established without subsidy from the government or mission post, and faced a dilemma. The central mission office instructed them to ask their newly established congregations to pay for a church and the preacher’s basic salary. However, the erratic weather in that period resulted in failed harvests and the preachers knew that the church’s followers lacked such means. Asking parishioners for payment on behalf of the church was also akin to the heavy tax the Dutch levied on them. Consequently, in the following planting season the newly trained preachers tended to rice fields for their own subsistence. The situation was in stark contrast to the days of adat , when aristocrats (paren) received gifts and labor from the people. When Christianity was initially introduced to the Kenyah, the community perceived that this religion could provide them with a new logic of sociality that freed them from taboo systems and from the mediation of old aristocrats in rituals important to their agricultural cycle. In short, at that moment Christianity introduced relatively new forms of religious practice that promoted egalitarianism and autonomy, while the old adat maintained hierarchy and transcendental intermediaries such as shamans (dayong ). Given this contradiction and burden, why and how did the younger generation of Kenyah at that time decide to take these new demanding positions? The brief narrative above illustrates the main ideas of this chapter, which argues that a socio-religious change often involves people interpreting and acting in different ways within different kinds of religious authority and social form in their religious life. In this study, the way people engage with the structural form of a hierarchical mode of religious life and a more autonomous, egalitarian, or individual form is taken as an example. The Kenyah called their conversion to Christianity a transition: from a life constrained by a complex, hierarchical, taboo-based system, toward freedom and modern-egalitarian ways of living. Notwithstanding that this explanation signifies a post-conversion understanding of that very process, this study found that the Kenyah’s interpretation of their collective history revolves around a narrative of an anxious process of obtaining and/or losing religious autonomy. The stories I heard about pre-Christian adat exemplify the relation of the Kenyah to spirits and bird omens, manifested through the capacity of certain people—such as aristocrats and shamans—to become spirit-mediators during critical social

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and reproduction rituals, such as birth, child naming (ngalang anak), the agricultural cycle, curing, rites of initiation (mamat ), and death. As soon as missionaries from C&MA arrived and local evangelism was established, novel cultural ideas and practices radically reconstituted the structure of religious authority and roles in the villages. Commoners were able to disengage from hierarchical traditional religious rituals and practice novel ways of organizing their socio-religious life; likewise, they could withdraw from aristocratic ritual-related cultural artifacts, either by following Christianity or by getting involved in the new adat revitalization movement, Bungan.2 However, as I explore below, individuals and lower-class social groups such as panyin were not entirely free of the influence of certain aristocrats that had to some degree maintained hierarchical social structures in the establishment of the church. During the initial process of church making, the logic of hierarchy returned under the incorporation of the church by aristocrats (Whittier, 1974). How could sudden and massive changes in the Kenyah Christian community solve the problems of religious individualism, lower-class group religious autonomy, and hierarchical society? How was the church, as the new institution after the fall of adat, created and maintained amidst the tension among these factors? Literature on the issue of Christianity, hierarchical authority, and sociality has emphasized the tension and problematic experience among many Christian communities in perceiving and living as Christian individuals based on an individualistic ideology in contrast to their pre-existing religious ideas or current social challenges that emphasize collective roles and the responsibility to relate to spiritual or transcendental entities (Meyer, 1999; Robbins, 2004). As discussed in Chapter 1, this approach has been interested in values-based analysis, introduced by Louis Dumont, in elaborating the way people conceive new religious ideas of egalitarian, individualistic, and autonomous practices while their impulse to maintain the hierarchical relations that existed before conversion or as a result of recent social contexts situates their experiences as Christians (Haynes, 2015; Werbner, 2011). On the other hand, several influential publications on the anthropology of P/E Christianity have addressed similar issues related to the transformation of sociality and of P/E as a religion that emphasizes the role of conversion in the construction of subjectivity and individualism (Bialecki & Daswani, 2015; Brison, 2017; Robbins, 2015). This study follows a different direction. Rather than taking the ingrained Dumontian way of explaining the competitive relation between hierarchy and individuality as values, it takes both values as ideological

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vehicles operationalized and articulated by different actors to navigate changing internal and regional socio-political dynamics. In the process, the ideas of both hierarchy and egalitarianism, and structural changes mutually mold each other as they are used by actors within their specific socio-historical situations. In so doing, by diverging from other studies that emphasize the construction of subjectivity, an affective aspect, and a values-oriented approach, this chapter explores two processes: The process of new church making as political-religious contestation, particularly as it relates to the dynamics of individual and lower-class autonomy within the context of the social hierarchy exercised by the local elite; and the fall of adat among the Kenyah in central Borneo in the 1960s and 1970s. It describes the tension between two conflicting aspects of the development of the new church: The autonomy that Christianity offered in terms of relations with spirits and the globalized structure of religious authority. These changes were the main socio-religious features of the P/E Church, and they opened opportunities for religious and spiritual autonomy for individuals and lower-class groups. However, they also paved the way for the existing powerful local elites to achieve and wield religious authority. This chapter frames the process by exploring three parallel processes of how the church as an ecclesiastical form was established in Apokayan in various situations and how its arrival was related to the radical transformation and the withdrawal of adat institutions. The first explanation elaborates further the early conversion and the narratives of the arrival of Christianity as mentioned above as a novel form of power and religious institution, its role in the internal transformation of the adat religious system, and its competition with adat rituals and institutions. In the second section, it further examines the Church institution in the making during the period of political-economic turbulence of the 1950s and 1960s. It elaborates on the consequences of church making in opening new religious space wherein two ideological visions of religious and cultural authority provided opportunities to both the commoners and aristocrats. It then also explores the gendered form of these dynamics and sees the possibility for gender norm change in religious institutions. The last section addresses the consequences of the fall of adat in the changing notion of masculinity and its structural implications for gender relations.

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The Fall of Old Adat, Bungan Malan, and Christianity as a Novel Form of Power The fall of adat in Apokayan was a gradual process, and the cause of its withdrawal, apart from the end of headhunting, began with the decision of many paren to adopt Christianity as an alternative form of power structure through which to confront both the new social situation and the transformation within adat itself due to the arrival of the Bungan Malan movement. In particular, Christianity was used to answer the pressing needs of trade mobility of the 1940s through to the 1960s and was in some cases related to the declining efficacy of dayong shaman and paren in facing drought, failed crops and also sickness. These contexts resulted in the transformation and new dynamics of religious authority among the Kenyah that show Christianity’s position in providing new kinds of egalitarian rituals and religious life for individuals and the underclass (panyin). At the same time, it accommodated an older form of hierarchical religious authority represented by aristocratic actions to incorporate the church into the village. One of many stories this study gathered is that of the ability to travel as related to the withdrawal of the taboo of old adat by Christian aristocrats among the Kenyah. A story told about the period concerns the power of Christian paren to go on peselai, a trade and labor expedition to the nearest town/bazaar. The departure of the Dutch in 1942 and harsh requisitioning by the Japanese military during World War II left Apokayan with an uncertain salt supply. During the 1940s, it was apparent that difficulty obtaining salt and other essential commodities such as kerosene, iron, and beads was a central concern in Kenyah daily life. The period was remembered by the living survivors as a period of “susah garam” (salt crisis). As a result, the significance of peselai grew in importance. It was exclusively Christian paren who could go back and forth to Belaga Bazaar in Sarawak quickly and easily, since they did not have to observe amen, or bird/animal omens, during their travels as others in Apokayan who still believed in adat did.3 Many inhabitants from Long Nawang and other villages would wait for the Christian paren uma to travel, and then accompany them in order to avoid the burden of taboo that would otherwise lead to lengthy or postponed travel and trade expeditions. Promises of autonomy over burdensome spirits-related taboo became an appealing characteristic of Christianity in the period.

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The narratives on the declining power of adat in solving practical needs among the Kenyah related not just to the system of taboo, but also to the low social cost posed to commoners by the new religion. For commoners, the appealing factors of Christianity included its egalitarian, effective, and efficient rituals, in contrast to the expensive and aristocrat-centered rituals of the former religion Adat Pu’un. In many cases, this transformation started with competition between shamans and many converted Kenyah, along with the missionaries, over how to face daily misfortunes and burdens. The installment of the church in central Borneo would have been impossible without the period of conversion and the spiritual battle that occurred between the missionaries’ new gospel teachers, who were Kenyah themselves, and the guardians of the old traditional rituals and shamanistic practices. Spirits, named Bali in local term, were a significant agency in the daily lives of the Kenyah in the pre-conversion period, and through this agency the positions of aristocrats and shamans were maintained and justified, especially in regard to important features such as the agricultural cycle. The introduction of Christianity, as a result of increasing contact with the coastal areas in the 1930s (see Chapter 2), influenced several actors to promote a new kind of religious authority that could provide mediation for different spiritual beings, from numerous cosmological beings to a single metaphysical one, Tuhan Yesus. During the introduction of Christianity, most rituals were representations of aristocratic society. The rituals of the agricultural cycle are a good example, from the selection of rice fields (Ngamen Ba’i) to the harvesting season. Paren uma played a dominant role in the rituals, which included such activities as deciding where and when the planting season should start. In the former practices of old adat , the class system was represented in the ordering of planting days. The first three days were allocated to the kelunan ketau or paren (people of the right, or aristocratic class). On the second day, other paren, usually paren uma and their relatives, could plant, supported by the members of their longhouse. The last day was for panyin (Whittier, 1974: 92). Paren also had the privilege of reaping the benefits of the free labor of the panyin. Christianity introduced autonomy for each household to start the planting season individually or collectively without the approval of chief of adat. In other situations, they could also withdraw from all the taboos that had previously burdened them. The commoners were thus introduced to this new idea of autonomy of religious authority

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by shifting their orientation regarding ritual times, people involved in the rituals, and the spaces where rituals were conducted. Also indicative of the changing form of religious authority were the medicine and health services that the missionaries brought to the Kenyah as new ways of healing sickness). These healing practices gave the Kenyah new ways to improve their well-being, in contrast to the former shamanistic practice that involved expensive and intricate mediation with spirits to heal sickness. I interviewed the son of a shaman, Pe Impung Usat, in the village of Nawang Baru. His story is similar to those in most of central Borneo, including what I heard in Long Moh Sungai Baram and in stories from Long Jawe in Upper Balui, Sarawak. These narratives usually explain the battle between the spirits of Adat Pu’un and the power of the Christian gods when they compete to show which metaphysical being is most powerful in curing those who are sick. Narratives of how Rev. Potu could cure sickness were famous in Long Nawang, and Rev. Potu himself acknowledged that a lot of conversions had occurred because of the ability of guru injil to help people in curing sickness (Conley, 1973: 306). However, despite many narratives revealing the power of religious practices introduced by Christianity, other factors were equally influential in the gradual decline of adat and the massive conversion to Christianity. This is related to the transformation of adat belief and ritual institutions themselves from Adat Pu’un into Adat Bungan Malan. In the early 1950s, the rise of Adat Bungan illustrated the counter-response from the commoners to the changing religious scene in Apokayan. The religious reform of the old beliefs (Adat Pu’un) into Adat Bungan was partly a response to the hierarchical features of old adat, but it was also a response to Christianity in Long Nawang. The change illustrated how commoners coped during bad harvest seasons and how their teachings created tensions with the aristocratic class. The Bungan Malan movement started in 1942 when Djuk Apuy, a panyin in Uma Jalan, Long Ampung, a Kenyah village, had a dream that changed his life and led to religious change that opened space for each commoner to perform new roles as ritual specialists regarding their own misfortune, such as sickness and failed crops. This change opposed the previous structure of the relationship between paren and panyin that was marked by the commoners being disallowed to conduct their own rituals. Djuk Apuy had his dream at a time when he was experiencing a series of misfortunes during the harvest season of 1948. His child had died, he

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himself felt unwell, and his crops had failed. In his dream, he met Bungan Malan who instructed him to reform Kayan-Kenyah religious beliefs and practices by leaving the complex system of taboos and rituals and allowing everyone to perform their own rituals individually. Subsequently, the spirits told him to cope with the situation by exclusively worshiping Bungan Malan through rituals that would not depend on paren and by rejecting all other traditional gods and spirits.4 He carried out the instruction and surprisingly made his fortune in the following years with abundant harvests. His neighbors followed him, and his religious practices spread to other Kayan-Kenyah in other river systems in Sarawak. It became a religious affiliation that identified neither as Christian nor as the old Adat. The change to Bungan provided a new space for commoners to practice rituals in an egalitarian way in almost all aspects of everyday life. At the outset, anyone could be a prayer leader (guru Bungan). In contrast with that of the priest of Adat Pu’un, the role of guru Bungan did not require supernatural calling (Rousseau, 1998). Another aspect that signified the equality that Bungan reform delivered was the abolishment of religious features that had helped to emphasize the position of the ruling class, such as head trophies and charms.5 The simplicity and frugality of the new Bungan rituals also made panyin very interested in this religious reform. Anyone who required Bungan intervention simply held up an egg in their right hand and addressed prayers to Bungan Malan anywhere and at any time. Bungan reform brought changes to the social structure of the villages that led to people despising the old observance of onerous taboos, particularly regarding the curing ritual, a profound moment for religious intervention in addition to the harvest and the opening of rice fields. However, the religious revitalization of Bungan did not persist for long. A convergence between the General Soeharto coup action on communist purge of 1965 and zealous military officials in Apokayan at the time resulted in diminishing influence for both old adat and Bungan.6 In this period, the Indonesian military greatly encouraged the conversion of non-Christians to Christianity and worked to abolish what they called “non-religion.” The larger context of these events was the anticommunist policy that identified everyone not recognized as a follower of a state-recognized religion as a communist, which included local traditional animistic believers among the Kenyah. During this proselytizing

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mission, Lieutenant Herman Musakabe, then commander of the military post at Apokayan, challenged all the shamans and priests of adat, contesting their spiritual power. Many local shamans and old believers of adat confessed that at the time, most of the influential spirits were afraid of Lieutenant Herman’s prowess and said his agenda was backed by other spirits. The lieutenant cut all the religious poles (belawing ) and burned skulls obtained for the annual rituals of Mamat. Thus, a convergence of external actors’ powers locally to abolish old adat with the communist purges nationally led to the disappearance of both the old system of religious hierarchy presented by Adat Pu’un and egalitarian Bungan practices. The political-religious position of aristocrats who still followed old adat was dismantled, creating an opening for people to have autonomous relations with spirits and rituals that had previously privileged local aristocrats as intermediaries. Adat as a total system of religious belief for daily life, the longhouse social political institution, and taboo rules had been disappearing since 1966. As a substitute, Christianity had gradually taken a central part in Kenyah social life. As we can see above, the local dynamics of class antagonism, military intervention on conversion, and the pressing need for more practical religious practices and cosmology brought many Kenyah to abandon adat and accept the novel form of power that detached them from spirits and changed the previously central roles of shamans. This process also escalated during those years as the mission’s aims and evangelical ideology encouraged many converted people to build churches and to proselytize in central Borneo. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the doctrine of spontaneous and egalitarian self-planting churches and the urge to evangelize are the primary characteristics of this denomination and the main factors that make the P/E church a globalizing religion while still encouraging local autonomous decisions. The next section explores this aspect further and reveals how, after the decline of adat, church making became another religious sphere besides adat in which egalitarian and hierarchical notions of religious authority were exercised by multiple actors.

The Emergence of the Indigenous Church and Local Evangelists One significant social feature of P/E Christianity that opened up egalitarian socio-religious forms among the Kenyah was the space for commoners (panyin) to be involved in church committees. This

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development is reflected in the older generation’s narratives regarding how they first learned about church committee membership. During the first church meeting in Nahakeramo Apokayan in the 1930s, a few commoners were able to become leaders of committees despite their social backgrounds. While at first this change was experienced by the Kenyah as something rather outlandish, the fact that Kenyah gospel teachers and penatua gereja (church deacons) came from all social class backgrounds attracted many commoners to accept Christianity as their new religious institution. The idea that people were equal before the spiritual being (God) was something of a novelty for the Kenyah, and with this idea of autonomy came the possibility of engaging in novel forms of religious authority. From the time that C&MA established its post, it strived to prioritize the education of local evangelists, with the aim of creating an autonomous, self-planting church. In 1946, this doctrine influenced C&MA to sponsor the formal constitution of an indigenous church, Kemah Injil Gereja Masehi Indonesia (KINGMI) in East Kalimantan. The pattern of C&MA’s work in Indonesia followed Rev. Jaffray’s7 threefold priority of (a) promoting literature, colportage, and publication; (b) stressing bible school education for indigenous Christians8 ; and (c) planting churches (Tan, 2012: 48). In the 1940s and 1950s, however, this doctrine was not reflected by any institutional preparation, such as the readiness of locals to fund church activities or the availability of ordained pastors from the region to preach in dozens of villages in Upper Kayan. Consequently, during the Japanese World War II occupation (1942–1945), Rev. Potu—a bible teacher from North Sulawesi Province who at the time had not yet completed his studies at the C&MA school of theology in Makassar—stayed in Apokayan and coordinated with half a dozen first-generation bible teachers of Kenyah background to expand the Christian Church there. Most of these bible teachers, who included Pe Baya Jalong, Asang, Yahya Njuk, Ajan Surang, Imang Jau, and Kajang La’eng, comprised the younger generation of local Kenyah elites who had been sent to Tanjung Selor for modern education by the Dutch in the 1930s and had returned to Apokayan to establish elementary schools. They also brought back the influence of Christian missionaries from Tanjung Selor. Among the most prominent was Pebaya Jalong,9 a young paren 10 from Nahakeramo who was the chief of the Kenyah Uma Kulit settlement at the headwater of the Kayan River. At the time, the settlement, along with Long Nawang, had strong political and cultural

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influence on Apokayan, which affected the political significance of the expansion of Christianity in Apokayan during the 1930s and 1940s. His role, and that of other local evangelists, was central in the expansion of Christianity during the period of declining colonial power, Indonesia revolution, and early Indonesia state formation from the late 1930s until the 1940s in Apokayan. During this period, C&MA and the Borneo Evangelical Mission—both of whom aimed to expand Christianity—began to withdraw from Apokayan and the Sarawak part of central Borneo as a result of World War II. Most of the missionaries either returned to the United States, such as Rev. Fisk, or were interned in camps in Makassar and Kuching, Sarawak. The missionaries who stayed were later executed in Apokayan by the Japanese. Despite the lack of experienced foreign missionaries during this time, the number of people who converted to Christianity was impressive. The church went from having 1000 members before the war to having 6000 immediately thereafter, out of a population of approximately 15,000 (Brill, 1948: 8; Conley & Wallace, 1975: 306). The role of Rev. Potu and other gospel teachers was crucial for these conversions of Kenyah. This early period of church making was such a significant phase in the installment of Christianity in Apokayan, despite the missionaries having made only a few visits to Apokayan. From interviews and literature, I found that both local and larger-scale political dimensions of conversion influenced Apokayan’s receptivity to Christianity in the absence of foreign missionaries. During Christianity’s introduction in the 1930s and 1940s, the institution developed by the American mission usually only took the form of an assembly for prayer. In Conley’s analysis, this approach was a strength of Rev. Fisk’s policy, as he organized churches as soon as possible simply through musical practices. This appealing factor drew the interest of many Kenyah at the time. In following this method, he saw the importance of young believers assembling together on a regular basis (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 331). This initial institution was loosely organized and, with neither ordained local pastors nor local evangelists, it was, to some extent, egalitarian, in the sense that it allowed everybody to be involved regardless of social background. However, after the departure of Rev. Rudes and most of the missionaries in upper Kayan, social hierarchy grew in significance during the formative years of church institutional development. The appointment of a pastor, regional superintendent, and church council were accomplished through decision-making similar to that for the appointment of adat leaders.

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The change that Christianity rendered among the Kenyah, however, is still noteworthy in terms of the transformation of socio-religious forms. After the introduction of Christianity and the establishment of the evangelist mission among the locals themselves, there was space for commoners to be appointed as church leaders. This opportunity arose as soon as there was a separation between the tasks of village leader and church leader, which was practically impossible during the adat period (although if the leader of the village were unable to read Indonesian, a commoner who could do so would take on the role). During the pre-Christian era, the adat rituals and institution were often controlled by the village chief, who usually had the responsibility of officiating at rituals. This practice was under the control of experienced elders, the more prestigious of whom had the title chief of Adat, which can best be translated functionally as “priest.” Therefore, in the pre-Christian period, the Kenyah were accustomed to a dual role on the part of leaders—both political control and religious leadership.11 However, when a new church congregation was organized, the village chief did not necessarily assume leadership. If he were illiterate, he would feel inadequate because of the importance attached to the reading of the bible. Yet, despite the hesitation of a few village chiefs, generally they held positions on the church board. This committee was modeled after the village council of elders in the early years of church growth. Men were selected by the tacit agreement of the majority of the male community. The same standards of the traditional mechanism during the adat era prevailed. The criteria for selection to the church board included being a man of mature years, noted for wisdom and good judgment, and usually of aristocratic status. Interestingly, in the developing institutional context from the 1930s to the 1950s, most of the students in Long Bia were trained by both missionaries and nationals who had been influenced by Westerners to use democratic methods to elect church officials (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 332). Yet, despite this local orientation, the missionaries were aware of the principal aspect of opening an egalitarian channel and preventing the aristocratic class from excluding commoners as church leaders or board members. As Conley explains: “It is my judgment that by and large the churches today recognize qualities of faith, temperance, dedication to the work of God, zeal for the church, and the like, and select their lay church board members with an eye to such traits. This has, of course, opened new channels to acquired status for men of commoner rank” (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 332).

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In terms of church institutional models, the social difference that developed as a result of the emergence of the pastor’s role in the villages likewise illustrates the dynamics of religious formation. As mentioned above, in 1956 the mission began to promote a program of self-support. Under this approach, the local Kenyah churches were encouraged to have full-time pastors. Since all Kenyah customarily grow rice, some problems and misunderstandings developed when the mission suggested that pastors should dedicate themselves to spiritual ministry full time. At first, this idea was interpreted to mean that the clergy should not do any manual work such as farming. In that case, the church leaders would be similar to former adat leaders in their pre-Christian belief, but without political positions and responsibilities. People in Long Nawang and Nawang Baru were anxious about this, as the existence of such a role would make it difficult for the community to achieve a good harvest. In response, the churches eventually worked out an arrangement: Income for pastors would come from tithes, making it relatively easy for a Kenyah pastor to live at the same economic level as his people (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 333). Another local appropriation in terms of institutional development was the arrangement of Sunday church services. Ever since KINGMI originated from C&MA, an American-rooted evangelist church, it has been, for the most part, a non-liturgical body in the sense of there being no strict orders or rules about liturgy during services. In this church, the emphasis of the service is the sermon. Prayer resembles the American pattern in both form and content, as does the custom of calling on a layman to lead public prayer, confession, and the experience of divinity. But the Kenyah method of selecting the people for these roles is different. A characteristic of the Kenyah church service, without parallel in the missionaries’ background, is the exhortation that often follows the pastor’s sermon. A qualified man goes to the front of the church and addresses the congregation. His qualifications consist, generally, of being a member of the church board, an able speaker, and, most importantly, a man acceptable to the people for this role (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 335). He may give an explanation and interpretation of the sermon and reinforce the points made by the pastor. This addition was influenced by the strong dialogic relation between adat and the church. Despite the logic of self-support and the central role of collectivity, the GKII/KINGMI Church illustrates the typical characteristic of the congregational mode of ecclesiastical institutions. In terms of inter-church

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relations in the context of Borneo, the structure of GKII/KINGMI is similar, to some extent, to the Presbyterian synodal organization. Above the village church organizational level, there is a district superintendent, elected at an annual district meeting. Besides clergy delegates to this annual conference, each congregation may send one or more lay delegates, depending on its size. The conference also elects a district executive committee. The function and authority of these district offices are very similar to those in C&MA districts in North America. At the initial stages of this institutional development, Conley, who was a C&MA pastor, criticized his colleagues regarding the introduction of a foundational ecclesiastical structure. He noted that, to some extent, American missionaries—perhaps he was addressing Revs. Fisk, Rudes, or Deibler—were culturally conditioned to downgrade or belittle the Kenyah institution of social class. In his recommendation, written in his dissertation, he underscored the tendency among missionaries to disparage the status of the aristocratic or chiefly class. To many Americans pastors from C&MA, accustomed to placing great value on democratic ideals, the very idea of people being born into a class or caste may appear repugnant. In his notes, Conley describes his impressions, obtained from his close relationship with missionaries over years of research. He explains that some missionaries, on general principle, would prefer to see congregations under the leadership of panyin. The natural tendency for the Kenyah, on the contrary, is to prefer that church leadership be in the hands of a paren man. After the departure of C&MA, his recommendation, of course, lost force. However, as soon as he finished his study in 1972, several churches in Apokayan actually did select panyin men for leadership roles because of the recognized importance of spiritual qualities (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 385). The distinctive status afforded to paren people in contemporary Kenyah life was still apparent, but the church provided a new measure for the status of people of lower birth. Until recently, this pattern of deciding the church leader, the responsibility of the church council, and the structure of Sunday church for the most part persisted among the Kenyah. During my observation and in a few interviews with church leaders, it was common to see pastors who descended from aristocratic backgrounds, but there were also a few members of church councils and a few church deacons from panyin backgrounds. During Sunday services, laypeople continued to present confession, testimony, or to explain the presence and immediate experiences of spiritual connection to God. A case of a Kenyah pastor who came

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from a panyin background in a Kenyah settlement located near Tanjung Selor who accumulated his wealth through his role as head of the local religious congregation is mentioned in Eghenter’s study of social transformation after migration in 1970s. The local congregation leader has the benefit of having traveled through different villages, which helps him to survey the area of migration and as a consequence he has the privilege of political-economic power. His initiative was considered a direct challenge to an aristocratic elder in the community. He was accused of trying to organize and lead a migration without having the legitimate and traditional authority to do so. In the end, this pastor was forced to resign his post and leave the village (Eghenter, 1995: 54). Over the course of 40 years (1950–1990s), this matter of traditional hierarchical versus democratic egalitarian customs regarding church leadership has been represented in the dynamics of the socio-religious form of church making. This socio-religious formation gradually transformed as soon as adat returned. In this case, the church and local political elites offer a re-interpretation, giving adat a different meaning from the pre-Christian period. I explore this subject matter further in the next chapter.

Becoming Missionaries: Transnational Church Development in the Midst of Indonesia’s Revolution As adat gradually began to be contested by the new, young, local evangelists among the Kenyah in the early 1950s, the establishment of P/E began in Apokayan. Despite some contact from the 1930s onward, the political and religious authority of local evangelists and the establishment of churches in each village in Apokayan commenced only after Rev. Raymond Rudes, the last C&MA reverend, left in 1956. When I interviewed Rev. Rum Ngau, grandson of the first local aristocrat to have converted to Christianity, Pe Bit Ncuk, he was just finishing his historical inquiry to trace the regional coordinators of KINGMI/GKII in Apokayan since local evangelists had taken a central position in the church. According to his story, the withdrawal of old adat rituals by a few aristocrats and commoners and the process of church making paved the way for an alternative socio-religious arrangement among the Kenyah. In contrast with the pre-Christian period, with its expressly hierarchical religious authority represented by aristocrats’ strong roles in numerous

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activities, Christianity provided space for alternative rituals that loosened some of the strictness concerning the activities and taboos of daily life. However, as mentioned above, the new socio-religious space was challenged by actors that used the new religious affiliation as an opportunity to continue the dominant position of aristocrats. This dynamic was clearly evident during the formative years of local regional church making that were influenced by the C&MA. After adat, church making was central for the Kenyah as a process in which egalitarian and hierarchical socio-religious forms were contested and maintained. Two aspects of this process may be elaborated here. The first is how the issue of hierarchical and egalitarian socio-religious forms can be situated within the emergence of GKII as a local national church influenced by local regional political dynamics. The second concerns the institutional form of the church and the modes of ritual that were influential in propelling change, and giving the Kenyah a cultural model for egalitarian ritual and institutional forms, despite the strong role of local aristocrats. After the Indonesian revolution, conversion swept rapidly through the Apokayan plateau. The church became the new dominant institution for the Kenyah, leaving Adat Pu’un, with its declining cosmological and political power, a mere concept. This change happened within the context of the development of the socio-political situation in central Borneo in the late 1940s, early 1950s and the subsequent turmoil in the 1960s. The local church became influential institution, marked by the increasing number of converts and pastors in villages in Apokayan despite the withdrawal of personnel support from C&MA. Emerging local initiatives and preferences were situated in a number of contexts. First, partly influenced by anti-Western sentiments. The first president of newly born republic, Soekarno, preferred a national church. Second, C&MA had a goal of building a self-planting church. Third, the economic crisis in upland Apokayan led gospel teachers educated by C&MA to find work in Sarawak. Fourth, the period of the communist purge in 1965–1966 led most followers of adat in Borneo to choose the state-recognized world religion. Church making, the declining role of adat, and religious authority are explained in this chapter primarily in the context of these four factors. Soekarno’s political project of anti-colonial rhetoric and policy between 1950 and 1963 was not in favor of Western influence in Indonesia (Lev, 2009), let alone an American based Christian mission such as C&MA.

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This sentiment was influential in the decision to choose government officials for East Kalimantan, Governor who excluded Western missionary projects in that province. After World War II, missionaries from C&MA had returned to Indonesia, but the national government did not like Americans mission to proselytize in the upland. A result of the new political orientation was the development of a national church organization that favored local pastors and evangelists in the missionary project and church services, which here included Kenyah gospel teachers and three ordained Kenyah pastors. This local church development was in fact in line with the goals of C&MA, which prioritized the self-planting church. The decision was based on C&MA scriptural considerations; II Corinthians (Chapters 8 and 9) was interpreted to mean that it was crucial to build a self-planting church to fulfill the principles of church growth. With this development, the church was now locally affiliated and took the name Gereja Kemah Injil Indonesia/Indonesian Church of Gospel Tabernacle (KINGMI). C&MA believed that the church itself ought to take care of its pastors’ needs. Starting in 1955, all subsidies from C&MA for pastors were reduced by half, and at the end of that year C&MA informed the national church that the subsidies had been terminated (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 381). In 1956, the last American missionary, Rev. Rudes, gave the locals the responsibility of maintaining their church services without any financial support. Under this pressure, the self-planting church and its dependence on its local congregation was inevitable. The questions then became: Who are the local evangelists and pastors? Under what conditions would local members of a church be able to obtain the role of local evangelist or even pastor? What challenges would they encounter from the introduction of this new situation? What efforts should be made in establishing the church in regard to religious autonomy? As noted above, the locals experienced a dilemma when, as part of their initiative to start churches, they unsuccessfully tried to establish financial support by requestingthe congregation to pay for the church and preacher. Church making was hampered by another difficulty— period of economic crisis after Indonesian independence, resulting in a radical change that transformed the KINGMI Church in Apokayan in 1957. Previously, C&MA had given KINGMI two years to become self-supporting—to be able to pay the salaries of their pastors without foreign subsidy. The economic crisis hindered the Kenyah in Apokayan from doing so, with the result that only about half of the 26 pastors

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remained in Apokayan. Following a peselai, some went to Sarawak seeking employment, including three who turned up on the Belaga airport project (Cunningham, 2002: 85). This geographic expansion was influential on the expansion of evangelist Christianity to other areas of the tributaries of Upper Balui, Sarawak, where people were not yet Christian. It also showed the autonomy of local evangelists in spreading Christianity without the support and guidance of foreign missionaries. The result of the pastors’ mobility to Sarawak and the migration of the Uma Kulit population from Apokayan to Upper Balui in 1954 paved the way for the introduction there of Christianity and its logic of the selfplanting church. Even though this principle was still in its experimental phase in Apokayan, during my interview with Ajan Sigau, head of the Borneo Evangelical Mission Schools in Belaga, Sarawak, he mentioned that the self-planting church was established in Upper Balui because of the prior inability of foreign missionaries to reach the isolated Kenyah settlement there. The need to hold church services also allowed locals to build a church for holding sermons and prayer. Famously isolated by geographical constraints, including the treacherous rapids of Bakun, Upper Balui had not been visited by missionaries until the 1960s, in contrast with the Apokayan region that had been visited since the 1930s. The pastors who went to Upper Balui came from Apokayan and were either members of a peselai (such as Pastor Ungau) or of two groups migrating to Upper Balui (Kenyah Uma Kulit of Long Jelarai and Kenyah Badeng from Long Betaoh), like Ajan Sigau and Taman Usung, who established a church without the support of C&MA. They had with them only their memory of Sunday church songs and the gospel from their experience in Apokayan. However, they knew that they had to establish a church and form a church committee in the new location, and they also knew that a gospel teacher was still important despite the lack of support from the coastal church offices. As there was no obligation for church committee members to have an aristocratic background, the church was established autonomously and could be experimental in nature. This decision was influenced partly by the lack of an ordained pastor in the villages of Upper Balui. The first missionary from the Borneo Evangelical Mission to go to Upper Balui, Rev. Ray Cunningham, famously called Tuan Tageng by the Kenyah, was surprised on his initial arrival at Long Geng of Upper Balui. He never expected that after hundreds of miles of mountainous travel and the difficult rapids of the Baram basin he would encounter

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an already established Christian village, with a church committee able to read the bible. This discovery became his reason for staying at Long Jawe, Upper Balui, in the Uma Kulit villages. In the years that followed, he maintained contact with C&MA, and he experienced common issues related to establishing a self-planting indigenous church. As he noted in his semi-autobiographical book: We were also favored by happy relations with other missions working in Borneo. The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) working on the eastern side of the island co-operated in many ways because we were both working with the same Dayak people: Murut, Kayan, Kenyah and Penan. When the proposed church structure for the evangelical church (Sidang Injil Borneo or SIB) was being developed in Lawas in 1958, the pattern of the C&MA church was a guideline. The C&MA also gave advice and [sic] warning about foreign sponsorships and subsidies, having themselves had to make drastic and painful changes to their policy only the year before. (Cunningham, 2002: 12–13)

Besides this local initiative, the Apokayan-Upper Balui connection was crucial in the establishment of Christianity in central Borneo in the context of bible translation, which enabled local evangelists to have a significant role as church leaders and deacons. Translation of the bible was conducted as a collaboration between Rev. Cunningham, who was then the missionary for Sarawak from the Borneo Evangelical Mission, and a few Kenyah Lepo Tau who had traveled to Sarawak to seek employment. Rev. Cunningham had had a problem finding local Sarawakian Kenyah who were willing to do the translation, but he found willing Indonesian Kenyah workers who had come from Apokayan at a timber camp near Miri. Together, they translated the New Testament, or Tukat Mading, the Kenyah term, in approximately 1956. Pastor Balan Engan of Sidang Injil Borneo described this situation as follows: “The Church council members in Sarawak objected, saying that it (the New Testament) should have been translated by morally qualified church members instead of filthy booze-drinking logging workers!” (Lumenta, 2005: 12). Apart from the consideration that the Kenyah Lepo Tau from Indonesia were preferable because they could read and write, this process of translation revealed the autonomy of non-priests and an already-educated pastor in the process of opening gospel and bible accessibility to the Kenyah in Sarawak. For Ajan Sigau, who is now the head of

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the theology school of Sidang Injil Borneo in Belaga Sarawak, this translation was also important in the foundation of church making, allowing everyone who was literate the ability to read the bible and preach through it. While the mobility of Kenyah from Apokayan to Sarawak, either for peselai or village migration, helped introduce and support the establishment of an egalitarian and autonomous religious authority, interestingly, the situation in Apokayan at the time revealed the reconstitution of hierarchical socio-religious life in both church institution dynamics and adat . In Apokayan villages, the hierarchy also continued in the aristocrats’ incorporation of the church institution and, later, the rise of Adat Bungan, which promoted the autonomous rituals of old adat. In Long Nawang in Apokayan, KINGMI was in many ways associated with political power. The first local leader to become Christian, Pe Bit Ncuk, became paren bio in 1970, affecting his decision to engage with KINGMI in order to achieve legitimate authority among the Kenyah. Another paren, Petau Kule, generously offered to sponsor people who wanted to build a church and, interestingly, at the same time built his new apartment as part of the new church building (Whittier, 1974).

The Fall of Old Adat, Church, and Gendered Social Change The story of church making and the withdrawal of adat is not only a narrative about a transformation centered around paren and panyin relations. It also transformed the gendered form of adat and enabled social possibilities for gender relation transformation. Women, in this case, despite their lack of voice in the oral histories and monographs on the Kenyah, were also involved, implicated, and took part in this critical period of religious change. The dynamics of religious authority were closely related to the changing idea of masculinity and gender relations as the male-centered social structure collapsed following the fall of adat. It is necessary to understand the internal transformation of the domination of males in different periods of Kenyah religious experience and its implication for female roles and gender norms. As explored in Chapter 2, many adat rituals are practices gendered around male activities. The ritual of Mamat, a primary rituals in the preChristian period, is an annual ritual for the initiation of young males. Bravery and warriorlike cultural values predominate the event. Little

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involvement of women could be found in expeditions or inter-tribal hostilities. This is not to imply that women were weak in Kenyah social life of the period, but sources and local oral histories, which in this case I took from one of the elder women, revealed that peselai and prowess in inter-tribal warfare was a gendered activity reserved for men. However, as noted above, the regional social and cultural transformation since the early 1900s has altered the centrality of these rituals. Since 1928, headhunting had stopped and the violence that usually figured prominently in the initiation of young males disappeared as the colonial state and the Republic of Indonesia established their domineering power. We should also consider the population decline as a result of outward migration among communities from Apokayan that weakened the adat institution as well as its rituals, as many paren observed that there were opportunities to travel to coastal areas without fear of aristocrat influence. Following the gradual decline of male-centered rituals in Apokayan, Christianity as an ideological power offered new practices and a different notion of local leaders. As a consequence, imposing new structural conditions influenced the ideas of masculinity and led to a different way of perceiving women’s roles. Modern ideas of how to become new elites were adopted in a piecemeal fashion as Christianity, the end of headhunting, as well as the newly born state administration of the Republic of Indonesia introduced a novel way to become an aristocrat. In this changing world, male bravery and warriorlike qualities lost significance as they began to perceive the ability to think rationally, good education and also the knowledge required to become a civil servant or a wage laborer in a logging camp both in Sarawak Malaysia and Indonesia as more important. The aforementioned story of the conversion of Pebaya Jalong explains this situation in detail, especially with regard to the massive efforts of many of the younger generation of paren to learn the bible in Long Bia and even travel to the port city of Makassar. The presence of women, especially the wives of missionaries, as represented by key C&MA missionaries in the early period of conversion to Christianity is crucial to the notion of women’s involvement in religious practices. While Rev. Fisk was alone when he first arrived in Apokayan by hydroplane, on subsequent occasions C&MA missionaries brought their wives, including Rev. Rudes’ and Rev. Dixon’s wives in the formative period of religious change. Many Kenyah at that time were being introduced to the traveling and wandering of women and journeys of evangelization as family work. In 1956, the bible school of Long Bia was

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producing women from two Kenyah ethnic groups (Conley, 1973: 309). This move by the C&MA at the time was quite revolutionary considering the previous status of women in the religious institution among the Kenyah. In the following years, there were a number of women graduates from the bible school at Long Bia and, interestingly, they were supported financially by the government as was them who taught religion in public elementary schools. This benefit made them financially independent and able to serve in the Kenyah church without becoming a financial burden to the congregation. It was in this period that women in Kenyah society for the first time organized themselves and produced an institution that specifically accommodates women in public activity. The women’s organization, called Kaum Ibu and Kaum Wanita (Mothers’ Fellowship and Ladies’ Fellowship), shows considerable ability in administration and public speaking (Conley, 1973: 338). Another revealing case that illustrates the position of female pastors relates to the church schism of the GKII/KINGMI P/E church. In 1959, Elisa Mou,12 who was previously an ordained C&MA minister, abandoned her affiliation with the mission and created a new church—Gereja Pemancar Injil Indonesia— which promoted a more progressive social agenda that the mission, an agenda that was considered taboo for evangelical churches elsewhere in the period. This could be seen as one among many other factors that explains the different relations of women’s and men’s religious authority. Another gender norm transformation aside from the new role of women is the transformation of family structure. Following outward migration and population decline, the demographic structure changed swiftly, accompanied by the changing religion. These two phenomena are related and influenced the gender norm that was introduced alongside Christianity. It was the introduction of Christianity that first taught the Kenyah to transform their conception of a nuclear family. The changing form of settlement from the longhouse as a unit of religion, economy, and kinship also changed, gradually resulting in nuclear family houses in the villages becoming the norm. This also resulted in different notions of women’s autonomy and involvement in moral practices, which included decisions about polygamy, consumption of alcohol and adultery. In the period 1965–1968, the split in the village, as explained briefly above, in some way also related to the fact that people could not divorce their wife/husband if they became a member of the KINGMI church. Anyone who chose not to follow this obligation was ousted from membership of the church. The same phenomena appear in other studies on the Kenyah.

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Urano’s study of adat among the Kenyah Bakung showed that the village elders had created community regulations that prohibited morally problematic conduct from the perspective of Christianity, such as alcohol consumption and adultery. Before they converted to Christianity, such conduct was not penalized in society (Urano, 2002: 199). By illustrating the case of evolving notions of masculinity, the weakening of adat and shifting family structures from longhouse based institution into nuclear family—as well as the implication of this for changing gender roles and women’s participation—we can see that women were partly involved in the shifting form of religious authority outside Adat. In this gendered religious change, women in different class and political position obtaining autonomy in the socio-religious sphere. However, it should be noted that they still constrained by the mission, as Elisa Mou case, and as well gender ideology of Adat in articulating their novel position. The arrival of Christianity opened opportunities for individualistic and egalitarian forms of socio-religious space, yet it is a multitude of power as represented in this change which limiting and shaping their novel form of authority.

Conclusion This chapter argued that religious transformationormation, as illustrated in the Kenyah history of adat and Christianity, is not merely a culturally linear transformation of belief and practice but also interacts with the existing socio-economic structure and historical conditions which resulted in an ambivalent situation. It also examined how people involved in those changes maintain, withdraw from, recall, or modify their cultural religious values. Hence, the alteration that Christianity brought to the Kenyah by the fall of Adat Pu’un and the development of Bungan in the 1950s and 1960s, and adat’s recent revival with new meaning and practices, do not represent a linear process from a hierarchical logic of sociality to an individualistic form of religious authority, or vice versa. Rather than seeing the hierarchical and individual logics of religious authority and sociality as separate and discontinuous, this chapter showed that each is used as an ideological vehicle for different actors in different social spheres and within specific events. A multitude of historical specificities influenced how religious institutions materialize through various modes of institutional formation.

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The rise of KINGMI and the gradual fall of Adat Pu’un and Bungan during the 1950s to the late 1960s are still discussed by the Christian community of the Kenyah in central Borneo. The above description showed how the flexible typology of religious sociality was reflected in both the hierarchical characteristics and individual autonomy of religious authority in the initial phase of church making. While we can see this as the result of the establishment of KINGMI as a self-planting church in central Borneo, which included Apokayan and Upper Balui, we cannot separate from this the role of the decline of Adat Pu’un and Adat Bungan. These spiritual forms were losing their social efficacy and power as the religious legitimation of Kenyah political structures in daily life and in practicalities such as the peselai, which had been extremely important during economic crises. The hierarchy and autonomy that Christianity brought to different actors established a foundation for Christianity in central Borneo. The endorsement of missionaries and several actors involved in the early stages of church making in Borneo, through the gospel teaching of the self-planting church, also made apparent the autonomous characteristic of church making. However, with this autonomy, the position of the former cultural elite also transformed within this new institution. Based on the socio-political process of church making and Kenyah mass conversion to Christianity in central Borneo, it is clear that hierarchical and individual-egalitarian authority over religious rituals are on a continuum, the dynamics of which are decided by the actors situated within the change of social formation. Without neglecting the importance of the Christian values of individualism and salvation as an analytical entry point, this chapter was more interested in the dynamics of social formation and its relationship to the larger socio-political context. The hierarchical mode of religious life and its materialization, and the potentiality of individuality and autonomy are, to borrow Marshall Sahlin’s famous term, externally infused and locally orchestrated. Furthermore, it is well-illustrated that a dialectic appears in the dynamics of hierarchy and autonomy in religious change, and this dialectic is religiously imbued and socially composed, and results in what I call the social articulation and practices that bring values and aspiration into being in the first place.

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Notes 1. The self-planting church is the goal of missions, to establish indigenous churches of “three selves,” namely self-propagating, selfgoverning, and self-supporting. This goal was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century by Protestant missionary societies which, however, were not successful in Asia and Africa (Tan, 2012). In Borneo, the self-planting church doctrine was characteristic of both C&MA of Indonesia and the Borneo Evangelical Mission in Sarawak. 2. Bungan Malan is one of the three most powerful spirits in Kenyah Cosmology. Interestingly, it is not associated with any concrete manifestation such as thunder, rivers, mountains, or powerful animals. Its similarity to monotheistic worship makes this belief quite compatible with Christianity in Apokayan. 3. An interview with Pe Gun Dian (Long Nawang Apokayan), November 2016, as one of the last of the generation that experienced the transition of peselai from Adat Pu’un to Christianity. 4. In the former adat , the cosmology consisted of spirits that manifested in animals, trees, and even river rocks. In the context of rice agriculture, Adat Pu’un depended on omens from birds (bali pelaki), tarsier (dok talun), the civet cat (bunin), and a certain black and white snake with a red head and tail (ncong ulai usang ) (Conley & Wallace, 1975: 248). Meanwhile, for Bungan Malan, despite still considering spirits important, the pre-Bungan period did not include a dominant spirit that was engaged within ritual and omens. 5. In the period of headhunting, it was paren who usually obtained enemies’ heads and kept them as trophies in the longhouses. They believed that through their headhunting expeditions and keeping the heads, the power of spirits and deities could support the mystical power of the longhouse. 6. Sukarno issued a Presidential Decree in 1965 restricting state recognition of religions to only six: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. After the military coup in the same year followed by the communist purge, Suharto considered religion a deterrent against the return of communism and required all citizens to select their faith from one of the state recognized religions. The Ministry of Religious Affairs confirms a

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guarantee of freedom to practice a religion but rejects the freedom to be animistic or non-religious, let alone anti-religious. Religious identity became a life and death issue for Indonesians during the purge and persons lacking affiliation with a religion tended to be classed as communist suspects. In the years following the purge, Indonesia observed a marked increase in conversion to staterecognized religions. For more details on the relation between the communist massacre and its connection with Indonesia’s policy on regulating religion, see Seo, M. (2013). State management of religion in Indonesia (Vol. 1). Routledge. 7. Robert Jaffray was the first and most important missionary in developing C&MA in Indonesia and was the founder of this missionary institution. In June 1932, he established a theological school in Makassar, Sulawesi, that became the training place for local evangelists all over Indonesia. 8. Rev. Fisk’s first goal in East Kalimantan was to establish a bible school, and he was able to do so by creating it in Long Bia, upriver of Tanjung Selor, in 1938. 9. He became the chief of the village when he was only twenty years old because of the absence of leadership in Nahakeramo after his father was imprisoned in Tanjung Selor for murdering an infant in his own village. In this period, it was this guru injil who built the foundation of church making in Borneo with his political-cultural influence in Apokayan. 10. Paren belonged to certain families, the origin of their status indeterminable, who initiated political and religious leadership among the village communities. One family of each ethnic division had hereditary rights to the position of paramount chief over the whole group. Meanwhile, most people were commoners and this class was also further divided. Panyin nyipe are people of families that have a good reputation for helping the longhouse leader. Panyin are all the other commoners who are not expected to show the admirable qualities of character that aristocratic people should exhibit, such as religious knowledge and bravery in migration and trade expeditions (Conley & Wallace, 1975). 11. Interview with Pe Kuweng, January 2017. 12. In 1948, in the absence of foreign missionaries, Elisa Mou established a mass organization called Angkatan Muda Tanah Tidung (Youth Army of Tanah Tidung) with the aim to fundraising and helping poor people to get an education. Little is recorded of her

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activity, but assuming that this organization was established in the period of Indonesia revolution, there is a significant chance that her activity was influenced by Soekarnoist ideas of socialist leaning ideology, an ideology that was not in favor of foreign pastors at the time.

References Bialecki, J., & Daswani, G. (2015). Introduction: What is an individual? The view from Christianity. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(1), 271. Brill, J. W. (1948). Field report for the year 1948. The Pioneer, 50. Brison, K. J. (2017). The power of submission: Self and community in Fijian Pentecostal discourse. American Ethnologist, 44(4), 657–669. https://doi. org/10.1111/amet.12564 Conley, W. W. (1973). The Kalimantan Kenyah: A study of tribal conversion in terms of dynamic cultural themes. Fuller Theological Seminary, School of Psychology. Conley, W. W., & Wallace, W. (1975). The Kalimantan Kenyah: A study of tribal conversion in terms of dynamic cultural themes. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. Cunningham, R. (2002). Longhouses open doors: God’s glory in Borneo. Hudson Press. Eghenter, C. (1995). Knowledge, action, and planning: A study of long-distance migrations among the Kayan and Kenyah of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. PhD diss, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick. Haynes, N. (2015). Egalitarianism and hierarchy in Copperbelt religious practice: On the social work of Pentecostal ritual. Religion, 45(2), 273–292. Lev, D. S. (2009). The transition to guided democracy: Indonesian politics, 1957– 1959. Equinox Publishing. Lumenta, D. (2005). Christ crossing border: Labour migration trajectories and the making of transnational Christian locale in Borneo. In SEASREP’s 10th Anniversary Conference. Chiang Mai. Meyer, B. (1999). Translating the devil. Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburg University Press. Robbins, J. (2004). Becoming sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. University of California Press. Robbins, J. (2015). Dumont’s hierarchical dynamism. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(1), 173–195. Rousseau, J. (1998). Kayan religion: Ritual life and religious reform in Central Borneo (Vol. 180). Brill Academic Pub.

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Tan, J. H. (2012). Planting an indigenous church: The case of the Borneo evangelical mission. Wipf and Stock Publishers. Urano, M. (2002). Appropriation of cultural symbols and peasant resistance: A case study from east Kalimantan, Indonesia (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses). Georgetown University, Ann Arbor. Werbner, R. (2011). Holy hustlers, schism, and prophecy: Apostolic reformation in Botswana (Vol. 11). University of California Press. Whittier, H. L. (1974). Social organization and symbols of social differentiation: An ethnographic study of the Kenyah Dayak of East Kalimantan (Borneo). Michigan State University.

CHAPTER 4

The Spirit Went Upriver: Disenchanted Adat and the Politics of “Culture”

This chapter’s argument arose from my reflection on elaborating the gap between my expectation of encountering traditional religious systems in the field and the reality of religious life among the Kenyah, which is predominantly Christian. Unlike their neighboring Sarawak Kenyah who do not have separate adat houses1 but who continue to preserve their longhouses and some of whom still engage in pre-Christian adat beliefs and practices, since the 1970s the Indonesian Kenyah have built adat houses (balai adat ) only for collective gathering, and by that time, most had already begun to abandon spirits-related traditions. The houses are built with wood and are detached from their dwellings and the church, a spatial arrangement that can be seen as a modern phenomenon as it came about after most of the Kenyah had already converted to Christianity and after it was imposed by the Indonesian government. When I met a former village leader of Nawang Baru who I came across by chance on his way to the balai adat , he said that the building did not match the way his grandfathers understood “Lamin Adat.” “This is a house of adat after all the Kenyah became Christian.” The specific place or house that represents the conflation of religion, politics, and economy no longer exists. This indicates the period of the separation of adat and religion. The construction of the first balai adat marked the point at which adat as a totalizing institution strongly related to spirits in the preChristian era ceased to exist. Since the 1970s, as mentioned in Chapter 3, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 I. Ardhianto, Hierarchies of Power, Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3_4

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the church has become more influential and central to the socio-religious life of the Kenyah. In recent times, among many indigenous ethnic groups in Borneo, adat has not been an all-encompassing institution relevant to all fields such as the economy, religion, and socio-politics. Hence, it is also not a socio-religious institution as it was in the pre-Christian era. Contemporary adat among the Kenyah is a disenchanted one, separated from other aspects of life as a sphere of “tradition.” The practices of Adat Bungan are now found only in Upper Baram where nine old Lepo Tau Kenyah remain in the Long Moh villages of Sarawak, Marudi division. In the Indonesian part of central Borneo, only older people who experienced the mass conversion of the 1960s know the story of spirit-related adat practices. Almost fifty years after becoming Christian, the Indonesian Kenyah, especially the younger generation, have never had a close connection to adat as a system of taboo regulating relations to spirits in important social reproduction rituals. When I asked members of the younger generation about old adat, they only laughed and said it was just something their grandfathers practiced before becoming Christian. In terms of the recent reconceptualization and revitalization of adat , the church seems to have taken a dominant role, particularly in detaching adat’s meanings and practices from non-Christian spirits-related practices. An interesting interpretation came from one elder, Pe Gun Dian. Although he is now a GPIB Calvinist Church member and one of very few Kenyah who has completed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem funded by a Malinau District leader, he apparently believes that the spirits that formerly had strong influence in Kenyah social lives are still alive but only appear upriver. When I asked about the role of these spirits in the emerging adat revitalization, he laughed and said that adat is not agama (religion) but budaya (culture).2 This separation was no doubt influenced by church interpretation, discourses of regional autonomy, and the nationwide trend of cultural tourism. This trend is not unique to the Kenyah. In his fascinating book on Bidayuh experiences of becoming Christian, Chua even mentions how the term “budaya” or culture emerged as a post-conversion phenomenon (Chua, 2012). It is crucial to observe these changes as they represent detachment from the spirits that in the pre-Christian period were often the source of political-religious power among aristocrats. However, while the church has taken a central role in the Christian reinterpretation of adat , detaching its meaning from the pre-Christian

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conception, the term adat is still deployed by local political elites and ordinary people when they talk about rituals and everyday ethics. In terms of local political elites, who often have aristocratic backgrounds, adat is considered a cultural-symbolic vehicle in the period of regional autonomy and the increasing popularity of Kalimantan for cultural tourism, which has opened spaces for the articulation of marginalized ethnic identities. As revealed in Chapter 3, the fall of adat and the development of the church community in Apokayan caused a dramatic transformation among the Kenyah in the 1960s and 1970s. The establishment of the church from the 1980s to the early 2000s marks its dominance as an important basis for social institutions among the Kenyah. Nevertheless, following the strong influence of the local autonomy discourse that arose after the fall of Soeharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998, the term adat returned as a kind of popular cultural denominator for the Kenyah, and afterward, it became a basic term to contextualize all the materials necessary for the change described above, as well as a cultural justification for the Kenyah to implement regional autonomy authorities in their own districts. The return of adat as a discourse and an institution does not mean that it is understood in the same way it was during the pre-Christian era. Adat is now defined vaguely among the Kenyah, referring merely to traditions and customs related to spirits, disenchanted ethics for regulating livelihoods and everyday life, and, in some cases, ideas of land tenure. It is the village council, with its formal administration, that regulates social conflict and contemporary socio-economic problems, as well as artistic production and performance. The Kenyah today see almost nothing religious in the deployment of adat in contemporary uses. Given the shift in the meaning of adat and its practices, how might the term be useful for understanding issues of social hierarchy, religious change, and its contribution to P/E Christianity and religious life in general? While adat is no longer related to the pre-Christian cosmology and system of taboo, as the concept has been revitalized, reconceptualized, and popularized in a disenchanted way by the church, it may still offer aristocrats the opportunity to strengthen their political-religious positions in important events among the Kenyah, and this re-alignment may happen, surprisingly, through the support of the church. However, the finding also reveals how this recent trend of adat and decades of Church influence have opened space for other developments such as women participating and playing a significant part. Such a situation is contrary to other cases reported by several scholars in the anthropology

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of Christianity, which presents radical breaks and ruptures between traditional and modern Christian life as a common feature of communities influenced by the P/E denomination (Meyer, 1999; Robbins, 2004). In the past 15 years, the Kenyah in several villages of Apokayan and Sarawak have felt the need to bring back the term adat, reconceptualizing it under a Christian and modern understanding of the separation between culture and religion. The church has influenced the use of the term in its disenchanted form and, at the same time, has afforded descendants of paren in Apokayan political justification to publicly gain authority without involvement in the church institution. In Indonesian studies, as I described in Chapter 1, elaborations of adat and its relation to the transformation of the political and cultural spheres often emphasize the issue of the emerging social movement by means of discourses of tradition and customary rights over natural resources in the context of democratic Indonesia (Davidson & Henley, 2007). Three aspects characterize adat. The first is adat as particular time-honored practices and institutions, inherited by communities rather than imposed by the state, which are seen as having continuing relevance to current political concerns. The second aspect is adat as rights and obligations that connect together three things: history, land, and law. The last one is a powerful set of ideas or assumptions regarding what an ideal society should be like (Davidson & Henley, 2007, pp. 2–3). Erb’s study (2007) analyzes the three inter-related types of adat revivalism as represented by adat as a showcasing of material culture (museumization of tradition), ritual revitalization, and adat as an institution regarding land disputes. Promoting a different approach, several studies explore the use of the term in the context of cultural commodification and tourism (Allerton, 2003; Cole, 2014). They suggest that adat is now performed as a revitalized and re-invented tradition. Other studies elaborate on adat as a dialogic consequence of locals’ beliefs regarding modern religion and the state, and in some situations may even be considered equal to religion (Atkinson, 1983; Picard, 2000, 2017). Taking these ideas together, the current form of adat is often considered merely the effect of external factors, closely related to issues on land and law, and it is defined by its functional characteristics within the larger structure of social change such as state intervention. While these arguments hold true in many cases, in this chapter I present an alternative analysis that views adat as the result of an internal struggle over hierarchical authority with its own specific historicity related to the transformation from religious notions of

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adat, not related specifically to land, to recent presentations of adat as an ideological vehicle related to the political-economic situation. In the Apokayan, there are no land conflicts or issues resulting from the capitalist expansion that changed the landscape and the agrarian context. In term demographic structure, dominant migrant ethnic groups such as Banjar, Javanese, or Madurese only took really small percentage of population. Geographically isolated, the nearest logging company to the Apokayan is in mid-river Sungai Boh adjacent to the Melak sub-district, hundreds of kilometers away from Apokayan and separated by rugged terrain and inaccessible roads. Historically, the Dutch did not have any agenda to exploit resources in this area as it was considered only a last outpost to prevent the White Rajah of Brooke from expanding his polity to the Dutch side of Borneo. As a consequence, there is no strong historical relation between adat and land. This chapter will explore and explain the particular form of adat revivalism with the church’s role and its implications for the hierarchy and the way aristocrats navigated their positions during the transformation of adat. Taking different historical trajectories to the previous studies above, this chapter, rather than taking adat as land-related rights and institutions originating from the dream of an ideal society, loosely defines adat as a socio-discursive sphere that opens internal contradictions, historical continuity, and discontinuity of their own tradition and past experience (Arenz et al., 2017). To explain this, I explore three cases that illustrate the return of hierarchical adat. The first is the transnational Kenyah gathering of ladung bio. The second is the performance of uman jenai, a tradition that, after conversion, replaced the grand ritual of Mamat as a public event celebrating the harvest season. The last is discussion of adat as I perceived it in this particular aspect, which I refer to as adat as an everyday life ethic. In this last section, I present women’s point of view of how adat handles the fear of the moral hazards of alcohol use and foreigners as is illustrated by routine meetings at balai adat that signify the importance of women’s spaces in adat and their place beyond ritual descriptions of adat.

The Return of Adat, Ladung Bio, and Politics of Pemekaran From the 1980s to the 1990s, the church was a dominant institution among the Kenyah as an organization that regulated daily life. For

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example, one narrative explains that during 1983–1987, a period of population decline as a result of mass migration from numerous settlements to lower Kayan, Mahakam, and Upper Balui, Sarawak, the church became an institution where people could talk about whether or not they would go on peselai and work in Sarawak.3 After the dramatic change following the mass conversion led by Lieutenant Herman Musakabe, a military officer, the term adat was still used, but only as a formality, from the 1970s to the 1990s. However, since the early 2000s, adat has returned as a new institution supported by the church and has been widely deployed as a discourse and institution, starting with the ladung bio event. Ladung bio can be translated literally as a large-scale public meeting. The Kenyah still debate among themselves about when the tradition began. Some elders believe that it started with the making of an intersub-ethnic alliance in Apokayan between the Uma Tukung, Uma Jalan, Leppo Tau, and Kenyah Badeng in the early twentieth century. At the end of the nineteenth century, the decision about who was most eligible to be paren bio, or the paramount leader, of the Kenyah in Apokayan marked, for some people, the first occasion of ladung bio; interpretations may be framed by historical expectations and the recent interests of the cultural elite. One thing is sure: The deployment of this term in relation to a large-scale event started when the idea of regional autonomy became increasingly popular and alluring to locals who wanted to recall and articulate their history and tradition. As the event in 2012 was a gathering for all of the Kenyah who had left Apokayan, it was called Ladung Bio Leppo Apokayan. Several factors made the event possible and led to it being attended by so many people from Sarawak and Indonesian Kalimantan. One was the opening of routes and easier access to the logging road that could connect most of the Kenyah settlements. Before 2008, six regions (Upper Mahakam, Belayan, Upper Balui Sarawak, Upper Baram Sarawak, and downriver Kayan) where Kenyah had settled were not connected with road infrastructure. The only access to these places was by a mountainous route and through treacherous rapids, like the passage during the peselai era, or by expensive and lengthy travel to the downriver area and then an airplane. Once the logging roads were constructed, connecting various parts of the region—for example, logging roads to Upper Balui; the road to Long Bagun of Upper Mahakam built by P.T. Sumalindo—contact and the tradition of ngabang (visiting kin) were re-established. Kenyah elders who had been separated since the migration of the 1940s–1950s

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could meet again. The availability of accessible roads also allowed for the revival of once strong kin affinity as well as historical political-economic alliances. Many people in longhouses that before the 1960s were located in Apokayan before moving to upper Mahakam, downriver Kayan, and Sarawak were now interested in large gatherings, and various such events emerged among different sub-ethnic communities. Another enabling factor for Ladung Bio Leppo Apokayan is also related to the political elites’ interest in recalling the central cultural and political roles of Apokayan, despite those elites having spent most of their lives in the district capital in coastal cities such as Tarakan, Tanjung Selor, and Malinau. This interest converges to a degree with ideas that have emerged from the national level of policy to develop wilayah perbatasan, a borderland region that President Jokowi has prioritized in terms of developing infrastructure. Knowing that the policy will privilege the infrastructural development of the Apokayan region and will provide material benefits, some elites feel that it is vital to provide historical and cultural discourse as justification for national government attention to the region. The rise of adat and the ladung bio cannot be separated from this context. The term adat had its first far-reaching deployment at ladung bio, through a massive gathering of all Kenyah Lepo Tau across Borneo, including Kenyah from Sarawak. During this event, the entire historical spectrum of adat was recalled and discussed. The event brought together Kenyah from the lower Kayan River in Bulungan, Mahakam at Mahakam Hulu, and Sarawak. Njock Lenjau, a prominent Kenyah leader from Baram, Sarawak, recognized this event as a moment when all the Kenyah gathered and remembered their great cultural tradition and vast influence in central Borneo. During my interview with him, Lenjau mentioned the re-enaction of traditional dance (Kanjet dance), language, and other things related to what the Kenyah perceive as adat. The reconnection of various sub-ethnic Kenyah groups and the longhouses that had been separated exactly at the time that Christianity was being established in central Borneo brought the term adat to the center of discussion and sharing among villages. This meeting established a goal to reconstruct the unity of the Kenyah population that had been separated by the partition of the region into the nation states of Indonesia and Malaysia. While at first the goal had been simply to gather all of the Apokayan Kenyah in one event, political effects were inescapable. Some adat elites also considered ladung bio to be significant event as it provides their cultural and historical justification for regional autonomy

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and the right to be separate from the administrative regency power held by other ethnic groups.4 However, despite these externally facing motives, the return of adat also represents the rise of a group of paren who are able to maintain their economic wealth and to benefit politically by becoming middlemen for non-timber forest products (eaglewood or gaharu) and road contractors. Since the 1980s, a small number of the descendants of important paren of the pre-Christian era have been involved in organizing the teams of eaglewood collectors. Their strong ties have influenced their accumulation of economic wealth and also their social network in Tanjung Selor, the nearest city. It is with this connection that they were able to become central actor in the illegal smuggling of timber to be sold in the Malaysian part of Borneo. They also took this opportunity to accumulate power by establishing an infrastructure development contracting company that became the only company willing and able to undertake state development projects. Thus, the return of the term adat as well as mobilization to establish a network within the regional political system prepared the ground for local autonomy and the arrival of natural resource investment.

Christian Aristocrat: Pastor Raising a Belawing Njock Lenjau and Pe Gun Imang from the Uma Kulit of Sungai Asap remember the ladung bio in Apokayan as a moment of fulfillment regarding their longing for the traditions and festivities of their childhood. The significance of the encounter with the past was related mostly to a feeling that tradition is still attached to the Kenyah community. The stories they told led to discussions about tradition. One significant aspect of the phenomenon of ladung bio concerns how people decide what kind of tradition should be revitalized. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, if the evangelist Christian community is famously known as one that often re-enacts its withdrawal from tradition, which they usually consider the heathen and pagan past, by what criteria of selection and by what authority do people decide that a tradition is legitimate? The church, in this context, has been a dominant institution as a moral compass in this cultural revitalization. During my interview with Pastor Musa Ageng, the North Kalimantan regional coordinator of the GKII Church in Tanjung Selor, he mentioned the uneasy yet inevitable initiative to revitalize tradition. He noted that in a few places, such as in the upper Belayan among the Kenyah Uma Bakung settlement, problems arose during the traditional feast, to which the old bali (spirits) and a few

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people possessed by them were invited. The story went public and some pastors are now rather hesitant to include this kind of tradition, while some other traditions related to chanting and animal sacrifice have been omitted from various events. Long Nawang GKII pastor Rum Ngau also emphasized that the church is quite central in the process of adat revitalization. It decides what kind of tradition is allowed in Christian life. Adat leaders and the church committee involved in ladung bio are well aware that it is likely that spirits-related events would be held if certain traditions related to spirits were maintained. In response to that concern, they take the approach of revitalizing tradition only in its artistic form.5 This can be seen in the performance of a formulaic rhyme called lemalo and the recreation of dance (kantjet ajai) that only followed the movements and musical instruments. The adat institution that was formally institutionalized as part of the regional autonomy era from the early 2000s on works hand in hand with the church to decide what traditions are eligible in various communal events. One of the most interesting cases related to the traditions re-enacted during ladung bio is the construction of belawing . As I mentioned in Chapter 3, the most widely remembered event among the Kenyah in Apokayan when they talked about their Christian life was the mass conversion of 1965–1967 led by Lieutenant Herman Musakabe, famously called Letnan Belawing together with Pastor Lampung (an Kenyah Uma Jalan pastor). During that time, all the belawing, which mark the establishment of adat beliefs and practices, were destroyed and burned. The recent construction of belawing shows how the Kenyah in Long Nawang have decided to reconceptualize and reinterpret this practice in different way. A few modifications and reconceptualizations are apparent in the revitalization of this tradition. The first is related to the detachment of old spirits by chanting during the erection of the pole. While during the preChristian era, each of the villages had their specific spirits that helped them in erecting the pole, in recent ladung bio preparations Jesus was the name increasingly used in people’s chants. In Long Nawang, the process was started by Pastor Rum Ngau with a prayer. The location of the belawing was also different to the pre-Christian Era. While then the location was usually somewhere uphill and separate from the settlement, surrounded by specific stones that were considered sacred, in ladung bio preparation and also on a few previous occasions, it was located in the balai adat (adat house) (Fig. 4.1).

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Fig. 4.1 Belawing construction in Long Nawang before ladung bio (Source Sindhunata, 2018)

However, despite this significant reinterpretation and modification, a few elements that resemble the pre-Christian method of constructing the belawing persist. Similarity in recent practices can be found in the privilege and the ability of paren to erect this pole. Initially, before ladung bio, only aristocrats from Lepo Tau were able to initiate the construction of belawing in front of head of district offices during Dayak festivals. Pe Lutang, an influential adat figure, helped the committee to build the belawing. Only through Pe Lutang’s intervention and chanting could the pole stand still. This shows that despite the church’s permission to build the pole, the role of paren, with their correct genealogical heritage and specialized knowledge, is still crucial and, in fact, enabled the revitalization of the tradition.

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Uman Jenai as Disenchanted Rituals Besides the institutionalization of adat as a political-economic vehicle and a few such traditions as dance and the re-enactment of constructing material manifestations of adat, another aspect related to adat—the uman jenai festival—has also started to take an influential part in the effort to make adat more visible. However, this event has more to do with rituals and a reconceptualization of the performative aspect of traditional and Christian values inserted by pastors than with political gain. In the preChristian period, the ritual was related to headhunting and warfare. Over the past twenty years, the ritual has been revitalized with a new interpretation influenced by the P/E Church. In the former understanding, uman jenai consisted of rituals to remember the fellowship of a few Kenyah sub-ethnic groups in Apokayan who attacked the Kenyah Uma Bakung, but this conception changed due to the arrival of Christianity. In the preChristian era, the uman jenai may have been part of the ritual Mamat.6 Pe-Impung Usat, an elder, told me that jenai (roasted glutinous rice with bamboo) and other foods were prepared as sacrificial materials for the spirits and ancestors only after the Mamat rituals. Under the church’s influence, uman jenai became a ritual of sharing one’s harvest, such as offering jenai to relatives and neighbors. This event is celebrated in a balai (adat house) built in the late 1990s, replacing the verandas of influential aristocrat’s longhouses. This tradition was confirmed by Pe Gun Dian, a respected elder, who at the time of my study was the advisor of the Kepala Adat Besar of Apokayan, Ibau Ala. When I asked about uman jenai, he explained with some hesitation. Contrary to what the pastor had presented in his sermon, he said that uman jenai historically was a festivity held by Lepo Tau Kenyah and those in alliance with them (Lepo Tukung and Lepo Jalan) before the ngayau (headhunting) of Kenyah Bakung at Long Metun. Uman jenai in the pre-Christian period occurred at the same time as the Mamat grand rituals that highlighted the role of headhunting materials, notably skulls (Fig. 4.2). The new uman jenai festival is not entirely detached from the church in its main events. In my observation, the role of pastors, both Evangelist and Calvinist, was still crucial. As soon as uman jenai was opened by the village leader, the pastor, rather than the appointed ketua adat of the village, commenced the event with a sermon and prayer. The pastors, deacons, and church council occupied the front seats, along with

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Fig. 4.2 Pastor opening the annual ritual of uman jenai, 2016

the village elders and paren bio, or paramount chief, of adat Kenyah. A sermon and prayer usually precede lemalo, an oral tradition that narratively explains today’s situation and historical events, and provides advice for the villagers following recent local social problems. In this event, the hierarchical feature of the socio-religious form of both the church and adat appeared obvious, considering that most of the activities involved people of paren background despite the festivity being collectively experienced by all the villagers. The ritual itself often starts in the morning with the assembly of groups divided by rukun tetangga or RT7 (formerly divided by longhouses). Nowadays, a master of the ceremony usually explains the stages of the event, which consist mostly of pastors praying, with a focus on the value of giving and the expectation of God’s grace. Two pastors from different denominations (GKII and GPIB) give an opening speech. Afterward, a dance is performed, followed by a leleng performed by everybody; this activity establishes the hierarchical re-enactment of paren. The paren and the families of adat leaders, connected by a chain, are situated in the front of the line of people. Thus, despite the pastors’ responsibility in the

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opening remarks, and the collective dance, the hierarchy re-appears with a manifestation of the aristocratic rules of position and place. The rituals on the first day end with families exchanging jenai. After the dance and the lemalo, jenai is collected in the balai adat and distributed to every village household. The next day, at the closing ceremony, frequently there is kathuk, a kind of spontaneous theatrical and comedic performance. Afterward, an adat meeting is held to discuss everyday affairs related to the ethics of living together. The discussion ranges from the arrangement of marriages to agreements on the price of gasoline, debates about homosexuality, and the boat transportation fee. Interestingly, this is new form of adat that, in part, also replaces the church as the only authoritative institution in the regulation of ordinary ethics. Here, too, we see the notion of hierarchical adat return, but with an egalitarian impulse as well, since everyone is allowed to be involved in the meeting and is able to speak up, despite the fact that the adat elite take control and their comments are considered the weightiest. The return of adat and the indirect involvement of the church in its revitalization in the contemporary context show the return of aristocratic authority, even though it is never publicly acknowledged. The events and festivals that have emerged as a result of adat revitalization to some extent indicate a hierarchical socio-religious form, considering the position of the descendants of aristocrats and of the church pastors who often come from aristocratic backgrounds. Although, as I mentioned before, some adat leaders do not consider adat a religion, the church does have some dominating intervention at important events. Yet, it is interesting to see the implication of the emerging ordinary ethics as one of the important features of contemporary adat in relation to the positionalities of women in adat. The next section will explore in detail these aspects of adat.

Beyond the Ritual, Gendered Adat, and Ethics of Everyday Life The history of adat transformation and its recent revitalization among the Kenyah not only reveals the persistence of hierarchical relations between aristocrats and commoners. In many cases, it also overlaps with the relation between social categories relevant in many social and political spheres. An often-overlooked social category is the dynamics of gender and relations within its transformation, specifically on the silencing

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and emergence of women in narratives about church and adat religious activity across historical periods. In the disenchantment of adat, beside the local elite’s incorporation of the very institution through the church, since the 1970s women have also found new social space in both institutions. In two studies on gender in Southeast Asia, often influenced by an interpretive and cultural approach, women are depicted as complementary to rather than contrasting with men and even take central cultural position as central subjects in rituals (Atkinson & Errington, 1990; Ong, 1989). In using this analysis, many anthropologists have focused on different cultural conceptions among societies in Southeast Asia in comparison with Western constructions of gender difference. In contrast to Western conceptualizations of gender, Southeast Asia displays symmetrical/complementary relations between men and women. This perspective was later scrutinized, as several studies revealed the cultural transformation of this cosmology and conceptualization. This is a result of the changing larger political-economic structure in which women’s place in society was increasingly marginalized as capitalism and colonialism set foot in Southeast Asia (Ong, 1989; Ong & Peletz, 2019). In contrast to the process above, this study reveals another trajectory in which the changing larger political structure and the introduction of Christianity may also influence the changing political autonomy of women in the everyday lives of the Kenyah in central Borneo. In oral histories and in monographs about the Kenyah published in the 1960s–1970s, the depiction of women is often muted when people explain critical religious occasions, especially in connection with adat . In both types of sources, ritual and storytelling in a society such as the Kenyah took men as predominant central protagonists. This is what Graeber called heroic politics, narratives that constitute the basic social and political categorization that explains the dominance of men in dramatic events such as origin stories or the myths of their basic livelihoods (Graeber, 2007, p. 127). These narratives are often told on important occasions by men themselves, especially during rituals, and, moreover, are written about in many publications by male researchers. In many ways, discussions of adat often came from this perspective, as adat often relates to stories, rituals, and events that require special occasions every year and are mostly gendered with masculinized narratives of doing peselai (see Chapter 2). One study reveals the significance of “prestige structure” that values male activities such as shamanism, legal

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authority, and community leadership, which derive from having special access to distant political realms (Atkinson, 1990). In the case of the Kenyah, this access to distant political realms includes men’s experiences of travel, trade, and, as mentioned in Chapter 2, raiding and headhunting. While in many cases women have been also involved in recent peselai activities, traditionally peselai concerns travel by young males, marked as their initiation as mature persons able to think rationally, be brave, and to learn negotiation skills. Considering the situation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when there was much tribal hostility but also the penetration of market demand for labor and forest products, this peselai tradition was central for the Kenyah at that time. It is within this context that previous monographs described many rituals considered important among the Kenyah as male-oriented activities. However, the depiction of adat and men’s domination in ritual and historical narratives is one-sided. During peselai expedition, women have been central to maintaining almost everything in the villages while a large number of men, often aristocrats but also commoners, go on travel downriver, which can take months or even years. It is they who tend the crops and regulate daily life since the only men left in the villages are the elderly or small children. As described above, the pre-Christian adat as told in oral histories and in the literature reveals how men were dominant in rituals and adat. However, the arrival of the church and missionaries in the 1950s, the Bungan religious movement, and also state intervention to impose conversion disrupted the established social and cultural institution of adat. Although male figures still have dominating position in these changes, women seemed to gain new socio-religious opportunities. From few elder’s oral narratives, the example of missionaries, who always were accompanied by their wives, Mrs. Fisk and Mrs. Dixon, and the their role as religious figure during the liturgy and the day-to-day mission work, influenced many women to realize their place in religious authority. During my visits, the role of women was obvious as many religious denominations allowed women take center stage in uman jenai rituals as well as on many occasions such as the opening of a new church in 2016 (Fig. 4.3). One event represents the important place for woman in the religious and adat sphere. If we take adat as more than just a ritual, it can be seen as an ethic and a morality emerging through everyday life. Examining this aspect of adat reveals that women also take a central part in it and are often either subject to it or play a significant part in maintaining

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Fig. 4.3 A notes given to We Bangen at an adat meeting in 2016

and promoting it. During my visits to Long Nawang, my interlocutor at the time gave me a piece of paper that had been distributed to all the women in the village at the balai adat. The note had been written anonymously, but it was clear who was intended to read it. The note asked the holder not to provide alcoholic drinks or let children get drunk so that their family honor could be preserved. The note sent to her was a kind of ethics peer assessment concerning each of the women in the villages. We Bangen, a recipient of the note, was one of the mothers whose house was often used by border military officers as a place to hang out while they were obtaining basic supplies in Long Nawang. Rumor had it that We Bangen allowed foreigners to drink alcohol at the back of her house. At the time, she was furious about the accusation delivered as a note and distributed by an anonymous sender. Interestingly, it was not just her that received a note but all women attending the meeting. Many ethical issues were discussed at the meeting without mentioning

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any names, meaning that by the end of meeting each member had heard the issues that concerned them. In comparison with the many rituals or public events when symbolically dense cultural materials and complex structures of political relations are articulated by men, this aspect of adat is equally crucial, especially in the internal dynamics of religious authority. In this case, it was women who took the place of subjects either of these ordinary ethics or of those who exercised the role. This kind of meeting on the position of women is central to the contemporary everyday life of the Kenyah, and it is closely associated with the transformation of the internal social structure of the Kenyah after conversion in which the family is the social backbone of religious life as represented in the evangelical ideas introduced by missions. In contrast to adat as represented in the rituals of uman jenai or ladung bio, which often grew from the tradition wherein longhouses, villages, or inter-village confederations were the social units responsible in the event, the family is considered as important in the discussion of adat as everyday ethics. This expression of adat as everyday ethical tension is strongly related to Christian morals as taught by the mission and local evangelists since the 1960s. In Urano’s study among the Kenyah Bakung in other Kenyah settlements in East Kalimantan, she found that it is the official ideology of the village that state, church, and adat are mutually supportive of each other. Her finding provided important notes that explained that adat organizations actually help to promote Christian morals among the population. The villagers say that modern adat law is no longer based on traditional animist beliefs. Instead, it is used to achieve the objectives of Christianity (Urano, 2002, p. 199). Thus, following the mutual relation of church, states, and adat as found in the dynamics of ethics and their implications for women, we can also see how gendered forms of religious practice are illustrated in women activities and their responsibility as moral guardians of familial life, unlike in pre-Christian life.

Conclusion The three subsections of this chapter showed the intricate relation between adat and Christianity. The cases revealed how the hierarchical legacy of old adat has returned in the recent cultural revitalization that was strongly facilitated and allowed by the church and situated in the larger political context of regional autonomy. In this context, although

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the churches at Long Nawang and Nawang Baru paved the way for the construction of egalitarian religious institutions such as the church council, they have also enabled the rise of a new institution that has rendered the elite able to exert power in the decentralization period of post-Soeharto Indonesia. Various events that re-enact tradition and produce materials enable paren to benefit from the socio-political dimension of power accumulation in the form of authority to decide about and organize various traditional activities. The church takes an indirect role in the return of adat, now disenchanted, as it allows various traditions to be revitalized. This role of the church may be influenced by the fact that various adat leaders or figures became church leaders at a time when adat had been undermined, during the first stages of establishing church communities among the Kenyah. The return of various traditions also influenced the rise of the adat institution and performative rituals that are no longer related to preChristian cosmology and practices. I argued that the hierarchical structure exercised by the contemporary cultural elite among the Kenyah is the main reason for the rise of an adat that is disenchanted but, surprisingly, is supported by the church, an institution that in the initial phase of Christianity itself was positioned in opposition to adat. The transition in the social formation of a powerful elite and its justification is crucial. Adat was formerly recognized as the justification of paren’s social and political-economic power, with legitimacy based partly on their role as the intermediaries for spirits, genealogical justification, and a vast political and economic network downriver. The post-Christian disenchanted world has also resulted in several economic elites articulating part of the past related to adat for their own interest, although contact with spirits is no longer the basis of this. The new elites are usually middlemen for forest resource commodities and people whose strong ties to a politicaleconomic networks and kinship with the nearest coastal cities, such as Tanjung Selor and Malinau, help them gain political power and benefits. The return of adat is tied to the rise of the new political sphere, in which what they call budaya comes with its own institutions. However, despite this paren incorporation of various socio-religious forms and their seemingly calculated political-economic interest in adat revitalization, the findings also revealed how the gender norm in religious activity has changed as a result of the changing notion of adat as well as the role of Christianity in transforming adat as an ordinary ethic, in which women experience new social and religious spheres, allowing them to be more involved than in the pre-Christian period.

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Notes 1. The Kenyah who live in Sarawak still maintain the longhouse as their architectural identity. The persistence of the building is partly influenced by the legacy of the Brooke government that influenced the recent cultural policy that recognized and appreciated the cultural autonomy and identity of upland ethnic groups. In contrast, in the Indonesian part of Borneo, the New Order regime has forced ethnic groups to live in single unit families and has even demanded that they migrate downriver and change their mode of settlement. 2. To explore more on the discussion about agama and budaya in a broad comparative elaboration in Indonesia, see (Picard, 2000, 2017; Picard & Madinier, 2011). 3. Interview with Pe Impung Usat, November 2016. 4. Nowadays, Apokayan plateau is part of the Malinau District. The position of district officer has been held for the last ten years by a political figure from a Lundayeh ethnic group. 5. Pastor Rum Ngau (Sindhunata personal communication, June 2018). 6. There is no mention of uman jenai in the detailed monograph of Conley and Whittier in the 1970s. Assuming that the ritual was held in harvest season, we can conclude that uman jenai is either part of Mamat or the transformation of Mamat by the church. 7. RT or Rukun Tetangga was a political administration that was introduced in Indonesia by Japanese colonists during the World War. It is usually the smallest administrative organization of political control.

References Allerton, C. (2003). Authentic housing, authentic culture? Transforming a village into a’tourist site’in Manggarai, Eastern Indonesia. Indonesia and the Malay World, 31(89), 119–128. Arenz, C., Haug, M., Seitz, S., & Venz, O. (2017). Continuity under change in Dayak societies. Springer Fachmedian Wiesbaden. Atkinson, J. M. (1983). Religions in dialogue: The construction of an Indonesian minority religion. American Ethnologist, 10(4), 684–696. Atkinson, J. M. (1990). How gender makes a difference in Wana society. In J. M. Atkinson & S. Errington (Eds.), Power and difference: Gender in island Southeast Asia. Stanford University Press.

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Atkinson, J. M., & Errington, S. (1990). Power and difference: Gender in island Southeast Asia. Stanford University Press. Chua, L. (2012). The Christianity of culture: Conversion, ethnic citizenship, and the matter of religion in Malaysian Borneo. Palgrave Macmillan. Cole, S. (2014). Tradition and tourism: Dilemmas in sustainable tourism development: A case study from the Ngada Region of Flores, Indonesia. Antropologi Indonesia. Davidson, A., & Henley, D. (2007). The revival of tradition in Indonesian politics. London: Routledge. Erb, M. (2007). Adat revivalism in western Flores. The revival of tradition in Indonesian politics: The deployment of Adat from colonialism to indigenism, 5, 247. Graeber, D. (2007). Lost people: Magic and the legacy of slavery in Madagascar. Indiana University Press. Meyer, B. (1999). Translating the devil: Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburg press. Ong, A. (1989). Center, periphery, and hierarchy: Gender in Southeast Asia. In S. Morgen (Ed.), Gender and anthropology: Critical reviews for research and teaching (pp. 294–303). American Anthropological Association. Ong, A., & Peletz, M. G. (2019). Bewitching women, pious men: Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia. University of California Press. Picard, M. (2000). Agama, Adat, Budaya: The dialogic construction of Kebalian. Dialog: Jurnal Internasional Kajian Budaya, 1(1), 85–124. Picard, M. (2017). The appropriation of religion in Southeast Asia and beyond. Palgrave Macmillan Springer. Picard, M., & Madinier, R. (2011). The politics of religion in Indonesia. Syncretism, orthodoxy, and religious. Routledge. Robbins, J. (2004). Becoming sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. Ethnographic studies in subjectivity 4. University of California Press. Urano, M. (2002). Appropriation of cultural symbols and peasant resistance: A case study from east Kalimantan. Georgetown University.

CHAPTER 5

Inter-Denominational Relations, Hierarchy, and Schism

As mentioned in earlier chapters, the history of religious change among the Kenyah not only includes tension between an egalitarian impulse and a hierarchical way of maintaining religious authority within one denomination or its relation to the separate adat institution. It is also closely related to division of the community based on inter-denominational church rivalry. During my initial fieldwork, I did not have any intuition that this topic would become significant case in my work. However, as I learned about the establishment of the two denominations in the 1960s and 1970s, their competition in recent times to obtain government funding for their churches, and their antagonistic way of differentiating from each other in liturgy and religious teaching, I became intrigued. Following the narratives of their experience in becoming Christian and also observing religious life in Apokayan, I determined that the hierarchical and egalitarian aspects of religious life for the Christian Kenyah are not just phenomena related to an intra-community aspect of religious authority. Rather, they go further to the religious drive to portray their socio-religious practices as correct, in contrast to those of other religious communities. Hierarchy in this context may appear in how members of particular groups rank or perceive themselves as more Christian than those in other groups. This tension between hierarchy and egalitarianism occurs, as the previous chapter revealed, not only in the specific historical process of a particular church denomination, such as © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 I. Ardhianto, Hierarchies of Power, Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3_5

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GKII/KINGMI. To broaden the analysis across the social life of the Kenyah, the tension also exists in the context of inter-denominational relations, beyond inter-individual relations, in the various social spheres of inter-group relations. This chapter analyzes denominational relation dynamics among the Christian Kenyah between GKII, a P/E denomination, and GPIB,1 a Calvinist denomination, both established in central Borneo. In contrast to previous chapters, which focused more on contestation between adat and church making, this chapter elaborates on inter-denominational relations since the introduction of Christianity as a socio-religious ordering of inter-group hierarchical relations. Specifically, it emphasizes how the mechanisms of difference and antagonism between GKII and GPIB, a newer church denomination in Apokayan, resemble the hierarchical dynamics of paren versus panyin and adat versus Christianity at the initial stage of conversion. Arising from competing traditions of Christianity, GKII and GPIB represent a contrast in liturgical practice, church institutional form, and the identity that they bring with their socio-political backgrounds. GKII, which emerged from American evangelist organizations such as C&MA, promotes spontaneity and an improvised liturgy, is less hierarchical, and for the Kenyah represents the first Christian denomination in Apokayan, giving them a modern identity in contrast to that of the coastal Muslim Malays. Rooted in the Dutch colonial-sponsored church of Calvinism and historically connected with alok 2 churches, GPIB has a more solemn and standard liturgical order during Sunday prayer. It has some characteristics of a hierarchical institution, as part of the Presbyterian synodic mode of organization, and at the time of conversion, it included less prohibition against the practice of older traditions than GKII did. At another level, the relations between the church denominations also indicate asymmetrical political power, as GPIB Church members often feel rather inferior and as if an underclass in Apokayan, despite a few former aristocrats who preferred adat in the 1960s having chosen this denomination when the state required people in Apokayan to choose a world religion (see Chapter 3). With the rise of numerous Pentecostal and Evangelical denominations in Christianity since the beginning of the twentieth century, institutional aspects and denominational schisms are important topics that have yet to become a focus in the anthropological study of Christianity (Barker, 2014; Robbins, 2014). In the context of Indonesia, the narrative I encountered in various places about the establishment of churches was

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mostly about rivalry over claims to territory, righteousness, and competition to attract people to become members of a particular congregation. However, apart from the capacious scope of Steenbrink and Aritonang’s book on Christianity in Indonesia (2008), publications about denominational schism and church competition are rare in the study of Christianity in Indonesia. The anthropological works of, for example, Webb Keane (2007) in Sumba, Rita Kipp (1995) among the Karo, Jane Atkinson (1983) in the Wana community, and Loraine Aragon (2000) among the Tobaku identify neither the post-conversion aspect of Christianity nor churches’ inter-relation as central to their analyses, as these scholars were more interested in narratives of cultural change and conversion. Two factors perhaps influence this underappreciation of denominational schism and rivalry. The first is anthropologists’ inclination to emphasize cultural change and contrast an existing denomination with the former system of belief, which is perceived as non-Western and pure of modern cultural forces. The second is the sensitivity of exploring this issue in the field. Indicatively, people in my fieldwork shied from discussing their denominational sentiment and sense of difference, especially where there had been historical conflict, such as in the case of the Kenyah during the 1960s, let alone with a Muslim anthropologist like myself. Still, it is unfortunate that denominational dynamics after the conversion to Christianity in Indonesia remain understudied, although numerous works from other regions such as Melanesia and Africa might serve as comparative cases in social science in general. In the discipline of sociology, addressing denominational schism has a long history, beginning with the detailed and influential analytical methods of Max Weber in analyzing Protestant ethics and their sociological basis (Weber, 2000). His explanation of the nineteenth-century Protestantism as he illustrates in the doctrine and practices of Pietism, Quakerism, Calvinism, and Lutheranism includes a remarkable elaboration of socio-religious change and its relation to religious meaning, spiritual meditation, and theodicy during the early development of capitalist society. H. Richard Niebuhr’s elaboration of the social source of denominationalism in America is also exemplary (Niebuhr, 1929). Rather than focusing on theological difference as an analytical entry point, he follows Weber’s legacy to observe and present the diverse sects and denominations as a result partly of national psychological demands, cultural heritage, and economic interests. This approach to analysis is vital as a starting point for the analysis of religious change and schism.

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Nonetheless, recent anthropological discussions (Barker, 2014; Handman, 2014a, 2014b; McDougall, 2009; Werbner, 2011) have criticized Weber’s and Niebuhr’s orientations and modes of analysis as neglecting the mutually constitutive process of interaction between socialpolitical and religious sources of schism. Following this concern, contemporary developments in the anthropology of Christianity analyze church denominational schism not merely as a projection of societal change and a cultural marker propelling a change in religious division. Instead, studies suggest a religious reason behind the establishment of an institution that could influence societal change and schism (Handman, 2014b; Marshall, 2014; Robbins, 2014; Werbner, 2011). Where the religious factors end and the social aspects start in this recent approach is problematic and, in fact, they seem to overlap. Handman’s elaboration on denominational schism among the Guhu-Samane in Papua New Guinea argues that understanding Christianity is both a socially and a religiously driven reality. Her analysis sheds light on how a church community is the result of a social articulation that is based on its interpretation of the body of Christ, as each denomination critically constructs its belief. For Handman, church making is a critical practice centered on remaking social and not just individual selves, and she specifically emphasizes getting the relationship between church and society right (Handman, 2014b, p. 17). The crucial point, which applies to the case of the Kenyah, is to understand that denominational schism, as a critique of particular Christian social groups, is not merely a secular pursuit but also inherently involves religious practices. Just as Handman found among the Guhu-Samane in Papua New Guinea, the schismatic experience in most of the villages in Apokayan relates to the diverging path of the early conversion process that is religious in nature yet entangled with socio-economic aspects. However, unlike Handman’s socio-linguistic and semiotics approach, I focus on the inter-denominational social form that resulted from the denominational schism. Although the Kenyah’s early conversion to Christianity shows similarities with accounts of Guhu-Samane schism, the Kenyah experience related to denominational schism included debate and polemics about which denomination is more practical in daily life. Other points of contention concerned which denomination enables a more egalitarian mode of ritual, which is more indigenous, and which is more righteous. The dynamics of inter-denominational relations between a P/E Church such as GKII and a Calvinist one like GPIB have a strong nuance of

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critique grounded in religious consideration and further elaborated in hierarchical inter-group social forms. Another significant link connecting church and adat in the issue of denominational schism is that many cultural practices and rituals have become central in differentiating between different periods of history. The oral narratives on the early process of becoming Christian took denominational preference as important since it was related to the way people practiced adat. In the early process of indigenous church establishment of the GKII and the arrival of GPIB, preference for the latter was partly influenced by its accommodating stance on Adat Bungan. In the 1960s, the GKII was more hostile and, as explained in Chapter 3, it took the initiative to radically withdraw from traditional adat. However, until recently, or after 1998, it was the aristocrats who had become pastors in GKII that took control of the disenchanted adat described in the previous chapter. After thirty years of mass conversion in central Borneo, the legacy of denominational schism among the Kenyah still matters and tensions still arise, such as in debates about whether a religious singing competition should be held during national independence events in the villages, and in the case of competition to obtain a regional government funding for the construction of a revitalized church. How does this denominational schism present itself as a dynamic form of asymmetric relations? Before addressing this question, a historical context of this religious factionalism bears scrutiny.

Bungan Malan Movement and Early Conversion The recent inter-denominational religious tension in the Apokayan area is strongly related to previous conflict and competition in the late 1960s between the followers of Adat Pu’un, the followers of Adat Bungan, and the first generation of Christian Kenyah. This discord provided the ground for religious factionalism among the majority of Lepo Tau Kenyah in Long Nawang and Nawang Baru. Before it formed as a denominational schism, the socio-religious division began during the early period of Christianity as a result of the rise of the Bungan religious movement. Most of the current followers of GPIB descend from people who were either GKII or Adat Bungan adherents. The church denominational schism was preceded by a schism among adherents of older religious belief systems, which involved Adat Pu’un’s complex system of taboo maintained by adat

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leaders at the time. Adat Bungan was a revitalized version of Adat Pu’un, initiated by commoners and also influenced by the arrival of Christianity, which in this case was the GKII. Therefore, the current religious formation that divides most of the villages in Apokayan between GKII and GPIB also in part resembles or was influenced by the mechanism of this early village schism. When I stayed in Nawang Baru, Pe Gun Dian, a member of the older generation and one of the adat leaders, told a story about this early religious schism with a narrative about the Bungan Malan movement. Her story revealed that Bungan Malan teaching was not popular at first, even in the Uma Jalan Apokayan plateau, the area from which its founder and first priest, Jok Apuy, originated. Only after the outstanding results of Jok Apuy’s harvest and once a few Lepo Jalan aristocrats had provided their support did this religious institution start to become widespread. However, at the time there was little revolutionary about this new tradition, since a few years earlier adherents of Christianity had already begun disobeying the older system of taboo in hunting, collecting forest products, traveling, and adhering agricultural cycle rituals. But while the appeal of this new tradition was based on a similar kind of practicality to Christianity, it did not depart from the older rituals and identities. That is why in the early 1960s, after the appearance of this religious movement, Pe Gun Dian told me, “Bungan dan Kristen itu macam lomba ambil jemaat ” (Bungan and Christianity were competing to take followers). The story was also revealed during my visit to Long Moh, Upper Baram Sarawak. With the historical context of Christianity that influenced its emergence, the Bungan religious movement had its katekis (priests, the term for missionaries and Christian pastors) that it used in providing an alternative to Christianity. I was able to visit two people still practicing Adat Bungan in a Lepo Tau longhouse at Long Moh, Sarawak. One recalled people from Apokayan who had undertaken peselai in the 1970s preaching this new religion. The simplicity of the Bungan ritual, with the sole requirement of praying with an incantation, a machete (parang ), and a chicken egg, was the most appealing factor. As the effect of Bungan practicality reflects the pattern of modern religious institutions, for some researchers in central Borneo, Adat Bungan appears to have been a local response to the massive spread of Christianity and a way of modernizing the indigenous religious tradition of Adat Pu’un (Conley, 1975; Rousseau, 1998; H. L. Whittier, 1973; P. R. Whittier, 1981). However, we should be cautious about this conclusion.

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The stories of the elders I collected revealed details about what appears to have been a “local response.” The Bungan modification of Pu’un came from a revelation in a dream experienced by a commoner in response to the agony and misfortune he had suffered for years with loss of harvests and the death of his children. As in most of the stories I heard from older Kenyah, the dream revealed the transition of guardian and helper spirits from object–animal-oriented spirits to omnipotent female spirits and, more importantly, the transition from aristocrat/shaman mediation to individualistic ritual. The similarity to Christianity boosted Adat Bungan’s appeal: the Kenyah used “Doa and sembahyang Bungan” (Bungan prayer) and katekis (priests) to teach the new rituals and a new set of values in place of the former cosmology. Yet the story of Bungan Malan is also a story about a response to egalitarian rituals and ecological crisis caused by the erratic weather and droughts that affected Apokayan at the time. The new Bungan religion provided commoners with a new contested space of religious authority and, at this point, it was probably the first time Kenyah aristocrats had had to adapt to a new religious authority structure. The Bungan movement, as explained briefly in Chapter 4, arose from a commoner, Jok Apuy, who came from a Long Ampung village. His social background and position expose his lower status in two respects—first, he was a commoner, and second, he came from the Lepo Jalan sub-ethnic group that had been subordinated by the Lepo Tau sub-ethnic group that ruled the Apokayan Plateau. He was already Christian when he had his dream revelation. Afterward, as he practiced the way of praying and the rituals that Bungan Malan spirits told him in his dream, he was asked by neighbors to teach them his ritual. At first, resistance to his teachings was very harsh as a result of paren prohibition. However, after only a short amount of time, many of the villagers in Long Ampung were following his rituals. Later came the decisive moment, as witnessed and told by Henoch Merang, one of the first Kenyah to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Samarinda: Jok Apuy went to Long Nawang, a Lepo Tau village important to the Kenyah cultural-political alliance, to introduce Bungan rituals. When Jok Apuy introduced his new religion in a public meeting, he was scolded by the paren bio. At that time, most of the aristocrats in Long Nawang were still strong adherents of Adat Pu’un. The new ritual was considered a violation of adat and a questioning of the cultural-religious authority of the paren. The adat leader decisively and formally rejected Adat Bungan. Yet the Bungan movement appealed to the community, as it fit with the dramatic social change occurring in Borneo at large, while at

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the same time it reconstituted the hierarchical structure of socio-religious authority just as Christianity had done previously. However, as in other villages already influenced by Bungan teaching, a few paren in 1950s Long Nawang were interested in or practiced the rituals of Bungan as an alternative to Christianity. As soon as Long Nawang aristocrats partly accepted Bungan teaching, people from other villages and sub-ethnic groups (Kenyah Bakung, Badeng, Lepo Tukung, Uma Baka, and some Kayan Uma Leken) were interested and invited Jok Apuy to teach Bungan prayer and rituals at the most upriver villages, including Sungai Barang, Long Uro, Sungai Boh, and Long Betaoh. The massive migration of the 1950s to the 1970s from Apokayan to Sarawak also spread this teaching, which surprisingly expanded quickly and persisted until the early 1980s (Ardhianto, 2017; Rousseau, 1998). Despite its massive development in Upper Balui Sarawak, most of the followers of Bungan who remained in Apokayan during the crisis of 1965–1966 converted to Christianity.3 The interesting part of this shifting of religions is that they chose the Calvinist GPIB rather than the P/E KINGMI that had already been established in Apokayan for 20 years. There was a practical and yet also religious reason for this decision by a few aristocrats and commoners. The first concerns the GPIB church’s advantage in allowing a few pre-existing Bungan/Adat Pu’un customs and habits to continue to be practiced in daily life.4 As soon as the zealous Lieutenant Herman Musakabe (famously called Lieutenant Belawing) arrived in 1965–1966, rather than converting to the KINGMI denomination that had been established decades earlier in Apokayan, most of the Adat Bungan adherents who lived in Nawang Baru converted to GPIB. The followers of Adat Bungan and Adat Pu’un, who had been the holders of religious authority during the vicious proselytizing of Lieutenant Herman Musakabe during the early period of conversion, chose GPIB, which later translated into their having less socio-religious power in the village. Another factor, besides the influence of Bungan Malan, was the schism within KINGMI itself, which had happened before adat followers’ move to Nawang Baru. The KINGMI of that time is remembered as a strict denomination that prohibited divorce and polygamous marriage. However, a few Kenyah in Long Nawang wanted divorces or an additional wife because the first was unable to bear children. Another example concerns dietary issues, such as their hesitation about the rule prohibiting eating the betel nut (pinang ) and smoking. KINGMI at the time expelled

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a few members and banned men who had divorced their wives. A few such men were aristocrats, although most were commoners. As a consequence of these restrictions, they were left in limbo. While they knew they could not return to their old belief of Adat Bungan, they were also excluded from the sole church in the village. It was in this period that they said they preferred that another church denomination be established in Apokayan. The confluence of this religious change, adat to GPIB and KINGMI to GPIB, is the historical underpinning of the denominational schism in Apokayan. The excluded from KINGMI during the early 1960s created their own religious gatherings in the upriver part of the villages and tried to find a way to solve their crisis. They included Ajang Ncuk, Lagun Along, and Helber in Long Nawang, who took the initiative in 1966 to bring a GPIB pastor from Samarinda to overcome the problem. They went downriver to Samarinda by paddling boat for a month in October 1966. They asked the GPIB Immanuel Church committee in Samarinda to send them a pastor to hold a mass baptismal sacrament at Apokayan. The church responded by sending Pastor A.Y.R. Toelle in January 1967 to hold services at Apokayan and perform another mass baptismal sacrament in Long Temunyat. The congregants in Long Nawang and Nawang Baru consisted of the expelled KINGMI members and the remaining Adat Pu’un and Bungan followers who had chosen to become Christian during Lieutenant Herman Musakabe’s proselytizing. Thus, it was during his three-month visit that Pastor Toelle established GPIB Immanuel Apokayan. Two years later, the GPIB congregation found a pastor from Samarinda to work in Apokayan for two years in the 1970s. This establishment of a new church of a different denomination offered the few Kenyah converts an alternative to KINGMI, and most of them chose GPIB because it had fewer prohibitions and more flexibility with regard to adat practices. On the basis of this, some KINGMI members still see GPIB members as belonging to a church of sinners. Their cynical label for the GPIB denomination is Gereja Penampung Insan Berdosa (literally translated as Church of Sinners), reflecting the GPIB followers’ preference at the time to preserve former adat practices. The socio-spatial lines drawn in the villages of Long Nawang and Nawang Baru between this sect and others were contrasting in the 1970s. Whittier’s study and my interviews among the older generation reveal that there was even a geographical boundary between the followers of the different denominations, with the longhouses at the upper end of the village tending to be

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GPIB and those at the lower end KINGMI. This division carried over, in general, to rice field locations, with each field area tending to be used by members of each sect exclusively (Whittier, 1973, p. 148). The historical context of the first phase of conversion and the former rivalry among Adat Pu’un, Adat Bungan, and KINGMI set the stage for the dynamics of inter-denominational schism from 1965 to 1968. In this period, the KINGMI/GKII Church was dominant and had started to influence the socio-religious order by establishing churches and ethics that caused certain non-Christian aristocrats to find other villages. Despite at first being an egalitarian and autonomous institution, as soon as a church was established, GKII created an inter-group hierarchical relation. Adat Bungan, born out of an internal revitalization of Adat Pu’un, was a response to the increasing power of the Evangelical Church in Apokayan. However, as soon as the New Order state intervened, most people had to choose a world religion, and GPIB as a new denomination offered an alternative for Bungan and old adat followers. The denominational schism thus was a conjuncture of the schism within KINGMI and at the same time the movement of adat followers to accept a version of Christianity that fit with their need to partly maintain the old system of beliefs and rituals. A few aristocrats perceived their shifting religious affiliation as a move toward a lower category of Christianity.

Contrasting Liturgies and Polarized Villages Denominational schism is both a religious and social phenomenon. In the experience of the Kenyah in Long Nawang, it is a matter of difference in religious liturgy and its implication for the polarization of social identity. My observation in the recent context reveals this starkly. It was effortless to identify the uneasy attitudes of members of both denominations regarding their significant religious other. Only simple observation was needed to see a difference in liturgy between the two churches in the villages on Sunday mornings. The matter of ritual as it occurred in the 1960s has likewise arisen in recent years, but now it exists in connection with different debates and preferences of ritual form. On the other hand, the schism in the village was also a result of elite factionalism. The decision to stay with Adat Pu’un, convert to GKII, decide to become a follower of the Bungan movement, or convert to GPIB also reflected the conflict between some paren in Apokayan. Although the tension initially appears to be the consequence of relations between aristocrats and commoners,

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farmers and official religion, it has since the beginning also been the result of a few aristocrats who chose a different path in adapting to the new situation. During my visit, the GKII Church held its Sunday service in a large church building on the hill upriver of the village. The capacity of this building is enormous, reminiscent of megachurches in big cities in Indonesia. When I attended the service, the priest started the Sunday prayer with a band singing a popular modern Christian song by an artist from Jakarta. Approximately two-thirds of the village population attended this church. Every Sunday morning, I could see people in fashionable and formal clothes go to the church using four-wheel drive trucks or motorcycles. I could hear the sounds of the sermon and tambourine music, enhanced by a high-tech sound system and LCD projector, from my place a few kilometers away. Meanwhile, in the GPIB Church located not far from the adat house, Sunday services were also held, with about onethird of the village population, mostly low-income families and peasants. In contrast to GKII, the GPIB congregation did not use sophisticated equipment, but only a microphone with a small sound system and one organ. The GPIB, despite its openness to establishing a church council (majelis jemaat ), is not quite autonomous in terms of religious musical performance during Sunday church. It had material for sermons from pastors who were ethnically different and appointed by the national committee in Jakarta. The pastor lived separately from the villagers and during the Sunday service wore specific garments signifying their different role and authority in the event. The liturgical process is not marked by spontaneity and a standard solemn song, Kidung Jemaat, is always sung with minimal musical instrumentation. This liturgy also represents how formally the congregation was managed by the pastors and national church policy. In contrast to the GKII, which allows laypeople to be involved in many activities and decision making, GPIB members are stricter and more formal, and the criteria to become a pastor are longer and harder than in GKII. That is why in Apokayan, most of the pastors in each village come from either the Torajan or Javanese ethnic groups. The differences between their liturgies and active comparison between church members reveal how Sunday prayers are not merely individual religious practice but also a socio-religious process of marking differences. It was through this comparison and their effort to justify the liturgy that the denominational schism in Long Nawang arose in the first place. The

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difference in liturgical practice reflects the contrast between GKII as an evangelical church and GPIB as a Calvinist one. Evaluation and counterevaluation of the righteous and proper approach to Sunday church is a common feature of their inter-group relations. To GPIB members in the village, GKII members were never seen as serious in their bible reading or in the quality of their sermons. “All they talk about after Sunday church is how good the tambourine music and dance were in that day’s Sunday church,” said a female member of the GPIB Church council. Her judgment made sense within her own religious framework. However, for GKII members, the quality of Sunday church is located exactly in the ability of the congregation to bring about God’s presence using various media that affect bodily sensation, in this case collective dancing and singing with a modern instrument. With this approach to liturgy, they considered the GPIB practices as a bit old-fashioned and rigid, creating a problem of distancing the presence of God during the liturgy. In my observation, the GKII Church is densely sensorial with an emphasis on new audio-visual technology. An LCD projector, high quality speakers, and various musical instruments are the prerequisites of a good Sunday service. The situation differs in the GPIB Church, with the lack of instruments and electrical equipment. Lacking state-supported electricity in Apokayan, they turn on their power generator for the church. Their sacrifice to maintain an expensive liturgy shows the significance of this liturgical form despite the lack of facilities in their remote villages. A spontaneous and improvised liturgy was not new for the GKII members. It had been present from the beginning of C&MA’s introduction of Christianity. Historical information in Rev. Fisk’s notes and letters published in Pioneer Bulletin (Fisk, 1930, pp. 4–8) indicates that it was prayer, musical instruments, and gospel that first attracted a few Kenyah in the early 1930s. The first encounter with the Kenyah from the Pujungan tributary occurred because of their attraction to the singing and musical instruments brought by Rev. Fisk’s Borneo Evangelical Mission. The most interesting aspect of this encounter involves how music and songs were taken seriously as a way to engage with others. Traditionally among the Kenyah, the relation between the 40 sub-ethnic and other ethnic groups was often re-enacted through versification and various formulaic rhymes followed by exchanging dances (Gorlinski, 1995). The gospel and biblical narrative introduced by Rev. Fisk received a reply in traditional dance and songs by the Kenyah.

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Fisk also documented how gospel effectively provided a new concept of origins, which had been a central theme in oral tradition among the Kenyah. Fisk wrote in 1930 about how he taught the hymn “Jesus, the Son of God,” which he first translated into Malay and then a local evangelist among the Kenyah translated it into the local language. Interaction between outside influences such as the consecrated hymns of the church and the traditional forms of musical performance was the basis of religious change and of performing arts among the Kenyah such as Tebeda and Belian Dadu5 (G. Gorlinski, 2017). This narrative is a typical description of the introduction of Christianity in central Borneo, as it also appears in the experience of the Kenyah in Sarawak, with a missionary who had charismatic roots that operated through music and biblical narrative in the form of a song. The story I encountered in the Sarawak part of the Kenyah Uma Kulit settlement, from Pe Gun Imang who, during the initial introduction of Christianity, was one of the local young aristocrats educated directly by the C&MA, also mentions that Rev. Fisk and other local evangelists introduced Christianity through singing and a new mode of praying. He told me that a few of the older generation were still able to sing in the Indonesian language even after decades of living in Sarawak where there are different accents and different church songs. Testimony is also essential in the liturgy. For GKII Church members, local temporal narratives about religious experience are prioritized more than biblical narratives, and a church member’s testimony is usually a vital element of Sunday church. Thus, a spontaneous revelation of God’s presence is personalized and materialized through the member’s narration of God’s miracle regarding psychological stress or pain. The testimony is followed by the priest’s affirmation, which in turn is followed by the collective excitement of the congregation. The liturgy, besides its powerful audio-visual aspect, also includes the voices of members to make God’s presence felt. Testimonies of healing and curing are imperative for Evangelist Church members in Apokayan, as these are the most important things making their liturgy different from that of the GPIB with its atmosphere of solemnity and disciplined rituals. The case of the Kenyah reveals distinctive features of denominational schism to other cases, which show an opposition between denominations that do or do not engage with traditional rituals or material culture (Handman, 2014b). Here, instead, the contrast appears in the tension related to accommodating popular culture, dance, and musical improvisation and the effort to extend the liturgy into everyday life.

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Liturgy, Village Events, and Inter-Denominational Relations The influence of the GKII congregation on the public events of Long Nawang is stronger than that of GPIB. One of the largest events in the villages is related to the regional conference of the GKII Church in the Apokayan region. It is usually held every five years and includes congregations from all the Kenyah villages in Apokayan. Committee appointments are made and each church’s local problems are discussed. Despite the events of the conference being aimed at organizing the church institution, the festivity it brings is marked by the performance of the kind of Christianity that is influential in the villages.6 Village leaders and GPIB priests and congregation are invited to this event. It seems to encompass all of the villagers despite the churches’ denominational difference. I observed both a traditional popular art performance of kantjet dance and a tambourine music dance. The local military officer, district leader, all the village leaders, and the priests from both GKII and GPIB denominations sat together in the front section. The first element of the opening of the event was a church tambourine performance, followed by a traditional dance, and then a religious revival conference (konferensi kebangunan rohani). There was a mixture of what the Kenyah see as traditional and modern musical performances and instruments.7 Such a combination would never exist in the context of the GPIB Church. It was apparent in this GKII event how closely Kenyah identity is associated with Christian identity, in a way that would probably not be true of a more GPIBinfluenced event. The decisions and practices of religious performance in GKII reveal its ability to go back and forth between the realms of adat popular performance and Christian popular singing and dance, something likely near impossible for members of GPIB. Several earlier studies have documented the uniqueness of this denominational liturgy and its role in the embodiment of the sacred and the mediation process. However, during my fieldwork, I observed that this process is also the foundation upon which—from their religious critique of others’ ways of establishing liturgical practices—people reconfigure the social. In doing so, they form an asymmetrical relation of interdenominational social orders. GPIB, which during the 1960s was viewed by the Kenyah as a more autonomous church and denomination, is now seen by several GKII Kenyah as overly hierarchical, with priests who do not originate from among the Kenyah themselves playing a strong role.

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In contrast, GPIB adherents see GKII liturgy, with its autonomous and spontaneous quality, as a liturgy without rules. For several GPIB informants, the GKII liturgy lacks order. It mixes what are supposed to be sacred events and activities with worldly musical performance. However, it is noteworthy to also consider the younger generation of Kenyah who do not feel the inter-denominational tension, especially among GPIB members. I stayed with a family who were GPIB members; their teenager immensely enjoyed the novel Christian popular culture of GKII Sunday church. Every morning, I awoke to a low quality, treble-only sound system playing contemporary gospel songs. In another village’s public event, a decision over Christian popular music performance during the national independence anniversary caused tension and polemics. I heard about the relation between liturgy, youth preferences regarding religious music, and social tension from one of my interlocutors. During the Indonesian independence anniversary of 2017, people in Long Nawang held various events and competitions. Tension between denominations arose during the meeting to decide what kind of performance and what songs should be performed in the competition. One proposal was for a Christian singing competition.8 The leading member of the committee for the independence anniversary in the villages came from a GPIB background. While he knew about GKII liturgical practices, which in this case contrasted with his religious affiliation, he did not have the power to resist the paramount chief decision to accept the proposal, and he acceded to the decision at the meeting in the balai adat (traditional meeting house). As soon as word spread about this event, the GPIB priest felt disappointed with the decision. Many GPIB followers were also disappointed with the man leading the committee, feeling that his acceptance justified a common perception that those from the GPIB Church were less influential than GKII followers. For them, the decision to perform religious songs outside a church was not proper. A few people from GPIB hesitantly got involved in the event and committee. However, it turned out to be the younger GPIB adherents that were in favor of the religious singing competition, as it provided them an atmosphere of festivity. This incident illustrates that opinions on religious musical performance are not only divided across denominations but are also related to the younger generation’s intervention regarding the intersection of mundane popular culture and their church’s preference for art and liturgical performance.

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The example of how different denominations and generations are distinguished by their understanding of and orientation toward liturgy and religious performance demonstrates two levels of hierarchy and tension regarding autonomy. At the first level, the contrastive feature of liturgy illustrates the preferences of socio-religious form in each denomination. The GKII prefers egalitarianism in the sense that they open spaces and practices for everyone to be involved in Sunday church through singing, dancing, testimony, and collective emotional prayer. Their liturgy is loosely regulated and allows the improvisation of audio-visual experimentation. In contrast, GPIB is more hierarchical in terms of church members’ relation to the liturgy. The synod and the structure of the denomination, which is hierarchical and depends on a pastor from a nonKenyah background, both influence this arrangement, and in doing so, they also mark the social significance of the contrasting liturgical form for inter-group relations. This liturgical dissimilarity identifies certain practices as defining and negating the other’s practices. A sensorial experience and a holy atmosphere are the emphasis of GKII, while a sermon and biblical reading, with stories and meaning, are considered central elements for GPIB. The comparison of liturgy and each group’s own practice of liturgy are pragmatic ways to enforce socio-religious differentiation. On the other aspect, the hierarchical or autonomous characteristic in each denomination is used as an indication of which liturgy is more Christian and encompassing of religious performance at the village level. In this inter-denominational relation, GKII is dominant, represented by its domination in various Christian events held outside the church and in the Christian popular culture it brought, such as Christian pop rock music. In this sphere, we can see that the asymmetric relation between GKII and GPIB resembles the inter-group relations of the pre-Christian era. It is the debate about whether a non-church activity should be characterized as socio-religious or just as a matter of mundane activity that crystallizes the contrast and asymmetric relations and it explains how power and socio-religious form are produced as an outline of inter-group relations.

The Complete and Incomplete Church One night during my first stay to Apokayan, I was visiting a Dusun leader in Long Nawang to fulfill the formal requirement of reporting my stay in the village. With the niceties completed, I explained the topic of my research, which captured the interest of the Dusun leader.

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When I proceeded to ask about church history and the denominations, I was surprised that rather than explaining doctrinal or theological differences between the two churches in the villages, he directly explained recent accounts of a local church’s official opening in 2016.9 While he knew that I was aware that there were two denominations in the village, including their location and history, he explained to me that there was a rumor related to the competition between the churches in regard to fundraising for church construction. He told me that the reason the two church structures were of different quality was because GPIB members were not actively involved in local politics and did not maintain relationships with the district bureaucracy. Rather than explaining the doctrinal difference, he was more interested in explaining the division between the churches through their adaptation to the culture of bureaucracy that had become increasingly vital in the era of regional autonomy.10 Why did he feel compelled to emphasize this non-doctrinal aspect rather than a theological explanation of denominational division? In recent times, it has been possible to observe the antagonism between church denominations in Long Nawang in the way the churches are involved in the process of local politics and competition to benefit from support for regional autonomy in church making. Specifically, the relation between denominations arose from their debate about church construction in its literal sense as a strategy to rehabilitate each denomination’s old church through the financial and political support of the district elite. As the title of this subsection suggests, the story of how each denomination in Long Nawang prepared, organized, and sought out supports to build a church represented the act of maintaining a denominational institutional foundation as well as simultaneously differentiating competing views regarding their existence in the villages. The GKII Church members and committee consisted of people involved closely to regional local politics during the decentralization era, as they were also participated in the adat committee at the sub-district level. Adat as an institution that had been revitalized to maintain and expand the control of resources on the part of a few important political-economic players was important in Apokayan for mobilizing votes during the regional autonomy era. These elites have a long history of strong politicaleconomic position as a result both of taking the benefits of becoming middlemen and bosses in non-timber forest production and of extracting profit from government spending to build roads and public infrastructure in the region. Through their overlapping roles as adat elites and

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committee members of the GKII Church, they have access to the privileges and network of political lobbying at the district level through the influence of members who have obtained a position in the district parliament. I found a close relationship between GKII Church membership and the adat institution. The actors in the two spheres are at times the same persons. In mid-2016, the official opening of the new GKII Church was held at the same time as the 49th GKII Church Conference in the Apokayan region. The Malinau District bupati, Dr. Yansen TP, came to the event, booking a small plane to do so. It was attended by almost 2500 people from 18 GKII congregations all over Apokayan. The event was also attended by the people’s representative (dewan perwakilan rakyat daerah) of North Kalimantan Province, the vice bupati of Bulungan, who is the younger brother of the paramount leader of adat , and all the regency state military officials. This official opening occurred in parallel with the confirmation of the Apokayan region’s status as a daerah otonomi baru (new autonomous region) that had split from Malinau District. Each congregation arrived at the same time with the heads of their villages, which was unsurprising, along with a member of the church committee in each of the villages. Thus, the event of the church’s official opening was loaded with regional politics as the incumbent head of regency from Democrat Party (Partai Demokrati), and it also infused a religious sense into local politics by articulating the importance of the Apokayan region. In contrast, GPIB members lack access to district officials, as only a small number of them are involved in the adat committee. Although during my fieldwork a GPIB member held office as a village head, few members of the majelis jemaat (congregation committee) were among the local elite who were influential in bureaucracy and local politics at a higher level, such as district government. Narratives of their frustration about being unable to navigate regional autonomy were presented to me a few weeks after the official opening of the GKII Church. At the time, I was observing in the GPIB congregation’s Christmas fundraising activities by preparing and cutting firewood to be sold in the village. After cutting the firewood together, we took a rest and sat on the verandah in front of the pastori (pastor’s house), just near an unfinished church construction that was starting to look worn out. In front of the house, a large construction was not yet finished. Without being asked, the GPIB priest and a member of the church related a story about the unfinished construction. It had been intended to be finished in 2015, but despite the

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proposal having been sent a few years earlier, there was still no approval or support from the bupati. They assumed that their church would never be finished because the bupati gave privileges only to GKII, a more indigenous church. While I tried not to get involved in rumor and conspiracy theories, it is also striking that it looked like the GPIB pastor and a few important members of the GPIB agreed that authority and domination over the villages were performed partly through the ability to appropriate power and support from the higher levels of government. Rumors spread that their problem with regard to church construction was a result of their inability to persuade the district apparatus, which included GKII members. However, they also believed that there was a religious reason for why the church was still incomplete (Fig. 5.1). The story and rumors about why one church is finished and the other is not expose something crucial about how inter-denominational relations are manifested. In a literal sense, the relation can be analyzed as way of comprehending church making through the way in which the denominations compete with each other to build their own churches.

Fig. 5.1 Incomplete construction of GPIB church building

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The effort to build a new church is related not only to constructing a building with sand and stones, but also to the ability of church members to mobilize funds with a religious motive, to activate their denominational affiliation and regional political network, and to extend their sense of urgency to actors in a position to use their administrative influence to obtain the funds. The infrastructural manifestation of the physical building of the church is also fundamental for articulating religious identity. Since encountering this issue, it has become ever clearer to me that GKII maintains its authority and power by connecting its denominational affiliation with other powerful political elites who are often on the board of the GKII regional committee in North Kalimantan. Their position in the province’s political landscape is dialectically intertwined with their involvement in the development and growth of church making, both literally and figuratively. The construction of a church in Long Nawang and the socio-political context of its preparation and official opening demonstrate the way that inter-denominational political-religious forms are created and maintained. In this context, GKII, which in terms of liturgy and institutional form, was at some point egalitarian and has turned out to be on the more powerful side in the matter of hierarchical inter-group relations with GPIB. The relation between the denominations is hierarchical, as revealed in the context of regional district support in funding religious activity. This phenomenon brings us to a discussion of the hierarchical relations that I have mentioned in the context of the pre-Christian adat period when the aristocrats held power over the commoners through socioreligious justifications, such as important rituals and control over resource management.

Conclusion This chapter discussed the hierarchical relationships arising from the institutionalization of the church through social practices of differentiating and contesting historical narratives, identity politics, and liturgical practices. Furthermore, it also elaborated the asymmetrical relation of denominational schism by explaining the way congregations navigate the new constellation of power and support of administrative and political actors in the era of regional autonomy in Indonesia. Despite the space opened by Christianity to articulate an egalitarian idea of brotherhood under the institutional body of a church during its initial introduction,

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in some situations hierarchy remains a central feature in the contemporary era; it constructs a congregation’s religious identity by showing their greater righteousness compared to another denomination. A multitude of historical and social specificities set the stage of inter-denominational asymmetrical relations. We can observe this in regard to the socioreligious process both during the formative years of a church and its establishment, and in the present day. The narratives of denominational schism, liturgical critique, and the way each denomination navigates governmental budgetary support disclose the way inter-denominational relations are formed in a hierarchical way. The schism that initially occurred during the 1960s and 1970s illustrates how aristocrats, both adat followers and Christians, chose the affiliation that brought them privilege related to religious authority. The same thing happened for commoners. A few from adat who had moved to GPIB made the decision to hold onto a few adat practices, but with the result that their church denomination was perceived as not quite “Christian enough” by other aristocrats who had already accepted Christianity. In the contemporary period, liturgy and religious performance have become social spheres in which inter-group hierarchy is constructed. Support from outside influences such as the local government is also an entry point from which to observe the construction of this hierarchical relation. My main argument in this chapter was that the construction of hierarchical relations in terms of religious authority is not only related to the church but also permeates and is intertwined in the daily life of politicaleconomic events, especially in the changing formation of local political constellations that respond to regional politics. Furthermore, it is related to the role of revitalized adat , revived primarily by the descendants of paren in Apokayan. To return to Handman’s proposal, the socio-political background influenced the religious form and vice versa, and somehow the boundary collapsed. This theoretical view implicates the boundary between sacred and secular, transcendence and immanence, divine and mundane as a continuum in which it is almost impossible to identify where each aspect starts or ends. Hence, this argumentation has the consequence of seeing hierarchy and egalitarianism as historically situated social forms that influence religious authority, inter-group identity construction, and the structure of their relations. It is important not to limit analysis of liturgy to how people transcend and constitute their place

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in society. We should trace the effect of liturgical practices and perceptions to understand how they mark structural relations between religious groups as a processual form revealing a scheme of socio-religious order and dynamics.

Notes 1. The GPIB is a Calvinist Church and an acronym for Gereja Protestant Indonesia Bagian Barat (GPIB), the Protestant Church of Western Indonesia, a church denomination that was related historically to the De Protestantse Kerk In Nederlands Indie, a church mission established during the early Dutch colonial period in Ambon, Maluku, 1605. 2. As explained in Chapter 2, alok refers to a spectrum of social markers in contrast to the identity of Kayan, Kenyah, and Punan social groups of central Borneo. People who do not belong to these three social groups are irrevocably labeled alok (stranger). However, the term also refers to other groups who were previously excluded, such as the Iban, Lundayeh, and upriver communities in upper Mahakam, and is used for groups that are not swidden farmers and those that are basically coastal Muslims (Lumenta, 2008, p. 87). 3. The development of the Bungan religious movement in the Sarawak part of central Borneo in the early 1960s was explained by Rousseau as the result of Bungan compatibility with both standardized religions such as Christianity and the cosmology of the traditional Kayan and Kenyah aristocratic class. In the context of the process of religious standardization, in 1967 the Lake Baling/Baling Avun chief of the Kayan village of Uma Aging, near Belaga (7th Division, Sarawak), prepared a book about the Bungan cult to document the superiority of Bungan reform over the old religion. Jerome Rousseau made the first translation from the Kayan language in spring 1974. In 2002, the translation was published by the Institute of East Asian Studies, UNIMAS Malaysia, Sarawak. In another context, the different response to Bungan by the Kayan and some Kenyah aristocrats (compared to their counterparts in the Indonesian part of Borneo) is due to the ability of the paren in Sarawak to appropriate elements of

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Bungan in order to minimize the threat to their own social position. Along with this, the absence of state control to force upland peoples in Sarawak to hold one belief or another was different from that in Indonesian Borneo, and as a result, the stratified structure was preserved intact within the religious changes to the old beliefs. This situation influenced the reassertion of aristocrats through their involvement with the priesthood and hence indicates the social difficulty of maintaining a radical egalitarian opportunity for commoners to perform Bungan rituals during the 1960s–1970s in Sarawak. Aristocratic power was reasserted in Sarawak began when the chief and priests converted to Bungan to protect their authority. Their act to reincorporate the old structure of religious tradition in Belaga came about as an attempt to benefit from the phenomenon following one of the chiefs in a Sarawak Kayan village (Uma Bawang ) having a dream in which he was asked to retrieve an old shield of a paren that he had thrown away with other charms; when he did so the weather improved and this later made some commoners believe that they still needed some of the old ways and materials to cope with misfortune such as failed crops (Rousseau, 1998). Through these events, the material erasure in the previous period of the initial stage of Bungan was reversed and the material justification of the religious authority of the paren returned. The old head trophies that were abolished in the initial stages made a return. There is no material erasure from the time between the adat dipuy period and the initial stages of Bungan, and thus, the materials of the old religions remain in place as the Kayan Kenyah in Sarawak did not undergo an intense process of conversion by Christian missionaries. The complex annual ritual cycle also plays a strong role in the resurgence of old structures. 4. This absence of a strong prohibition against maintaining and practicing older rituals of Bungan was probably influenced by the lack of a permanent GPIB priest in Long Nawang. However, my assumption remains speculative since I have found no stories confirming the situation at the time. It was only in the 1970s that GPIB pastors were placed in Apokayan. 5. Tebada is a special rhyming language used to interact with the major spirits of Adat Pu’un and Adat Bungan. It is a kind of versification, performed solo by a ritual specialist. It is non-melodic, rhythmically declaimed, formulaic, and marked by a high degree

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of internal alliteration and assonance. Like similar ritual languages, it is dense with metaphor and replete with strings of synonyms and words borrowed from other languages. Meanwhile, belian dadu’, or long dance songs, have become the best known of all Kenyah song repertoires since their advent in the mid-twentieth century and are linked to the spirit world of Adat Pu’un and Adat Bungan, specifically through the nature of their language (G. Gorlinski, 2017, pp. 40–43). 6. My travel happened to be at the same time as the GKII regional conference in the Apokayan region and with the semi-official meeting for the Apokayan plateau becoming a new autonomous region. During my first trip, I was lucky to have the company of a middle-aged Lepo Tau Kenyah woman who traveled along with me in the same truck from Long Bagun, Upper Mahakam (another major river in eastern Kalimantan), during a journey lasting a day and a night. Neither of us had been able to obtain airplane tickets since they were all booked by officials from the district city of Malinau. As a consequence, we departed from a former logging village and waited for a four-wheel-drive truck that could take us to Apokayan. To me, her efforts were extraordinary and showed the significance of this church conference. 7. The traditional performance and instrument in this context are a pastiche or a mix of various cultural influences. The kolintang (a north Sulawesi region xylophone instrument), made from bamboo and carved with Lepo Tau motives and important animal pictures, and a handmade giant guitar and bass guitar were used first by the Kenyah. They are now widely used among other sub-ethnic groups, at least in my observations, including the Uma Kulit Kenyah settlement in Sarawak, Malaysia, and in the settlements of Kenyah Bakung and Uma Alim near the coastal city of Tanjung Selor. 8. A Christian singing competition (lomba lagu rohani) is common in many public events held by the Kenyah in Kalimantan. Most Kenyah villages I visited in Kalimantan usually have this event during important celebrations or annual festivals. 9. It is understandable that it would not be seen as desirable to discuss religious differentiation with a stranger. When it comes to religious schism in a village community, people tend to prefer to present a

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harmonious depiction of society, despite the fact that, in reality, the opposite is the case. 10. Regional autonomy (otonomi daerah) is a post-reform policy of providing budgetary and political-economic rights to the provincial and district levels of administrative officials in Indonesia. After 32 years of centralized government under the regime of Soeharto’s New Order, after 1998 the provincial and district administrations were given the ability to manage their own resources to some extent and they were afforded a larger budget than previously.

References Aragon, L. V. (2000). Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian minorities, and state development in Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press. Ardhianto, I. (2017). The politics of conversion: Religious change, materiality and social hierarchy in central upland Borneo. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 18(2), 119–134. Aritonang, J. S., & Steenbrink, K. A. (2008). A history of Christianity in Indonesia. Brill Press. Atkinson, J. M. (1983). Religions in dialogue: The construction of an Indonesian minority religion. American Ethnologist, 10(4), 684–696. Barker, J. (2014). The One and the Many: Church-centered innovations in a Papua New Guinean community. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S172–S181. Conley, W. W. (1975). The Kalimantan Kenyah: A study of tribal conversion in terms of dynamic cultural themes. Fuller Theological Seminary, School of Psychology. Fisk, G. E. (1930). In contact with the Dyak in Dutch Borneo (Extracts of a letter). Pioneer, I , 4–8. Gorlinski, V. K. (1995). Songs of honor, words of respect: Social contours of Kenyah Lepo’Tau versification, Sarawak, Malaysia. PhD diss, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gorlinski, G. (2017). Abandonment vs. adaptation: Religiosity and the sustainability of Kenyah traditional vocal performance in central Borneo. Malaysian Journal of Performing and Visual Arts, 3, 31–53. Handman, C. (2014a). Becoming the body of Christ: Sacrificing the speaking subject in the making of the colonial Lutheran church in New Guinea. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S205–S215. Handman, C. (2014b). Critical Christianity: Translation and denominational conflict in Papua New Guinea. University of California Press.

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Keane, W. (2007). Christian moderns: Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter. University of California Press. Kipp, R. S. (1995). Conversion by affiliation: The history of the Karo Batak Protestant Church. American Ethnologist, 22(4), 868–882. Lumenta, D. (2008). The making of a transnational continuum: State partitions and mobility of the Apau Kayan Kenyah in central Borneo, 1900–2007 . Dissertation Kyoto University. Marshall, R. (2014). Christianity, anthropology, politics. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S344–S356. McDougall, D. (2009). Christianity, relationality and the material limits of individualism: Reflections on Robbins’s Becoming sinners. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 10(1), 1–19. Niebuhr, H. R. (1929). The social sources of denominationalism. H. Holt and Company. Robbins, J. (2014). The anthropology of Christianity: Unity, diversity, new directions. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S157–S171. Rousseau, J. (1998). Kayan religion: Ritual life and religious reform in central Borneo. University of Washington Press. Weber, M. (2000) [1905]. The Protestant ethic and the “spirit” of capitalism and other writings. Penguin. Werbner, R. (2011). Holy hustlers, schism, and prophecy: Apostolic reformation in Botswana (Vol. 11). University of California Press. Whittier, H. L. (1973). Social organization and symbols of social differentiation: An ethnographic study of Kenyah Dayak of East Kalimantan (Borneo). Michigan State University. Whittier, P. R. (1981). Systems of appellation among the Kenyah Dayak of Borneo (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses). Michigan State University, Department of Anthropology.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

This book argued that the adaptive characteristics of the PentecostalEvangelical mode of religious authority and organization to local politicalcultural situations and its mutual relation to the transformation of adat among the Kenyah are influential in the development of this denomination in central Borneo. It has been important within the context of Kenyah experience of religious change as it has enabled myriad actors from various social classes and cultural categories to obtain and perceive different modes of religious authority in specific local and regional political-religious situations. Hence, it has also been used to incorporate religious power by both aristocrats (paren) and commoners (panyin) in various social spheres and periods of history. This book as a whole has sought to demonstrate cases and problematics relating to how they interpret and live their lives within the hierarchical social context often, but not always, influenced by adat while at the same time being imbued with egalitarian ideas and practices introduced by the church. The complexity of the initial stage of church making, religious factionalism, inter-denominational relations, and the fall or rise of adat is the main phenomenon that I described to answer the central question of this book: How do historical transformations and various narratives among the Kenyah on the relation between adat and Church influence the growth of the P/E Church?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 I. Ardhianto, Hierarchies of Power, Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3_6

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Answers to that question were illustrated chronologically in the chapters. I described that from the beginning of the 1950s to the end of the 1960s, despite the fall of old adat in Apokayan, paren who obtained their roles and justification from this institution were able to navigate the new religious structure of Christianity and to tap into the church institution. For example, they enjoyed the privilege of becoming pastors. Some of them knew, at the initial stages of conversion, the politicaleconomic potential of becoming Christian. The close affinity between Christian identity and modern life that contrasted with coastal Muslim society also made them a new source of symbolic power that could lure aristocrats to get involved in the church. However, in the context of church making, the ideas of global evangelism that emerged from American-based missionaries were influential in opening socio-religious space for Kenyah commoners to get involved in the church. On the other hand, the Indonesian revolution and the isolation of Apokayan during the late 1940s also influenced the growth of the local evangelists and their migration to various parts of central Borneo, creating more space for individual-egalitarian authority. Furthermore, since the establishment of the first GKII church in Apokayan, egalitarian liturgy has persisted and has become a prominent feature of religious practices marked by open and spontaneous Sunday church activities. More recently, post-New Order regional autonomy and the policy and discourse of kabupaten perbatasan (borderland district) that influenced adat revitalization also enabled the return of hierarchical characteristics of social life, which were supported by the church despite the fact that in the beginning the church had introduced new spaces for commoners among the Kenyah. The event of ladung bio, the mass gathering of Kenyah in Apokayan since 2008, has brought a disenchanted and Christianized tradition as an institution that opens new spaces of “cultural” authority for the paren. The construction of belawing poles and also the harvest festival of uman jenai are other specific local practices that have paved the way for the return of adat hierarchical structures. This recent reinterpretation of adat has been pivotal for the cultural elite, mostly the descendants of paren, as it is through this process that they are able to play a central role in numerous important affairs and drive their cultural role even further in the present-day situation. Furthermore, the return of adat also supported them in maintaining the benefits derived from regional autonomy in terms of political-economic resources, especially given President Widodo’s promotion of kabupaten perbatasan. These phenomena

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show the actions of the descendants of aristocrat leaders, as elaborated in detail in Chapter 6, in exercising power in recent local and regional socio-political contexts by making adat revitalization central in Kenyah contemporary social life. In the context of inter-denominational relations, the hierarchical mode of relation between commoner and aristocrat is articulated at another level of the socio-religious sphere represented in the asymmetrical contrast between GPIB (Calvinist Church) and GKII (Evangelist Church). Starting in the initial stages of conversion that divided the village into evangelical Christian followers and adat , and later through state military intervention that forced the followers of adat into Calvinist Christianity, the dynamics of the inter-religious group structure have been polarized ever since. The transition from adat as a dominant religious affiliation into evangelical Christianity was influential in leading aristocrats to become involved in the church organization. Furthermore, the conversion of other aristocrats that were also adat followers to Calvinist denominations in anticipation of this process resulted in another form of hierarchical inter-group relation wherein the cultural elite considered Calvinists as being of lower status or not “as Christian.” In a contemporary case, my observation of the liturgical dimension of Christianity in Apokayan revealed a hierarchical inter-religious group relation. The GKII, supported by local political and cultural elites, mostly the descendants of important paren aristocrats who were among the first to adopt evangelical Christianity, has maintained its sense of being the true Christianity and has exercised this belief in various public village events and in taking advantage of regional autonomy funding for religious activity. This belief includes the right to decide in the example of the religious singing competition as described in Chapter 5. However, despite the strong feature of hierarchical social life in recent Kenyah religiosity, the impulse for egalitarianism introduced by the church and also by the narratives of Adat Bungan is still apparent. As illustrated in the issues of gender norms and practices regarding adat and the Church, the masculinized adat was transformed in different periods into an institution that accommodated and opened space for women to be involved in socio-religious life. It is this dynamic that made the Kenyah experience of adat and Christianity relevant to the basic argument of this book about the parallel emergence of this socio-religious form and its role in the development of Christianity. Based on my findings, often in various contexts, hierarchical and egalitarian socio-religious forms appear

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to overlap in different spheres. In the context of the liturgy, the GKII has perhaps shown a more egalitarian and individualistic mode of praying and congregation, while the GPIB exposes its hierarchical nature in the strong intervention of a foreign pastor and a rigid liturgical socio-religious order. However, in terms of their relation to adat, the dynamics are starkly different. The GKII was, to some extent, the main religious affiliation of a new political elite of adat, most of whom were descendants of an aristocratic ruler. Meanwhile, the GPIB, despite in the initial stages accommodating the people, has maintained the older tradition and now is the church for the village’s peasants. In the context of inter-group relations, the denomination that is egalitarian in terms of liturgy and church organization places itself, in a hierarchical manner, over the other church. It does so by maintaining its social differences and exercising authority over what constitutes a “true Christian.” The general chronological narrative about hierarchy and egalitarianism among the Kenyah that answers this book’s driving question likewise brings us to the theoretical problems that I posed in the first chapter: In what way does the inter-relation of the two forms of social dynamics that are typical in the Southeast Asian context enrich and provide novel understanding about the mechanism and form of modern religious change and its socio-political effects? Recent theoretical debates in the comparative study of Christianity take a dichotomist approach to observing the form of cultural change, exemplified by the illustration of the transformation from the cultural values of hierarchical traditional sociality into individual autonomous Christian experience. In the context of Pentecostalism in Southeast Asia, scholars mostly identify the development of Pentecostalism as a new kind of Christianity that emphasizes experience and has a personal nature that cuts out institutional requirements like catechism class and in which the believer-divine relationship is not mediated by institutional hierarchy (Chong, 2018, p. 3). If we return to many narratives about the persistence of the hierarchical dimension of adat during the emergence of an egalitarian model of church making among GKII church followers, I find this approach problematic, as it may lead to the possibility of both socio-religious forms existing in parallel or within different spheres of Christian Kenyah social lives in central Borneo being overlooked. Furthermore, the dichotomous perspective could also be problematic in view of the fact that the common patterns that emerge in Kenyah religious change comprise a dialogic religious form that resulted from an interaction between adat, often represented

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as having a holistic/hierarchical sociality, and the Christian influence of a congregational institution characterized by individuality and egalitarianism. Hence, I argue that both socio-religious forms are intrinsic and necessary in the context of religious change, especially after the adoption of Christianity in the 1930s, in the landscape of different local and regional socio-economic changes. I argue that it is important to elaborate the whole spectrum of the dynamics of social forms and their inter-relations that emerged in the introduction and establishment of the church institution. This approach, I think, could be a new point of departure for understanding Christianity beyond the terms of individualism and Christian personhood. Rather than focusing too much on individualism as an ideology and as an end point of religious change into Christianity, I follow Hann’s proposal to analyze and compare church institutional dynamics (Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Congregational) and the concrete social form that often preceded the establishment of the ideology of individualism. Hence, how this relational form is enmeshed with the existing structure of pre-Christian socialities in church making, as few scholars in the anthropology of Christianity have addressed, could provide a comparative case for church institutional dynamics in the context of various Christian communities’ tendency to engage with a unitary, singular form of church all around the world (Barker, 2014, p. 173; Robbins, 2014, p. 162). The second crucial discussion generated by the insights of this study concerns the significance of socio-religious form analysis in the context of the mass conversion to Christianity that occurred among Bornean upland groups. This framework could be an essential entry point for understanding the changing forms of the socio-cultural landscape of Christian indigenous population in Borneo in the last decade, one that marks the area’s most dramatic demographic and infrastructural change. Let me interrogate these two discussions as concluding notes to help summarize the insights from this study and their implications for further research.

The Articulation of Socio-Religious Forms and the Development of P/E Christianity The most influential approaches in the anthropology of Christianity, as elaborated in Chapter 1, revolve around two central concepts. The first is the Dumontian notion of ideology, or in Robbins’ terms, how a paramount value is influential in organizing a set of values used by

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people to experience religious life and how they are strongly connected with the social formation that emerges as the consequence of that value. The second is the notion of cultural change as illustrated in Robbins’ case of paramount value change among the Urapmin of highland Papua New Guinea that marked a transition from a society based on relationalism to one of Christian individualism. I consider the central role of these concepts to be dominant among anthropologists studying P/E Christianity. Yet problems are evident in this approach. First, understanding the dynamics of a Christian community in terms of values neglects what Hann calls the “macromaterialities” (Hann, 2007, 2014) that reveal the diverse socio-political contexts that arose as a result of Christian institutional dynamics. In this book, the dynamics are demonstrated in terms of the hierarchical and egalitarian modes of religious authority and the interdenominational relational form that was infused, largely through change, in the larger socio-religious context and was locally orchestrated. Despite Robbins’ explanation of his approach’s strong emphasis on the dynamic aspect of individualism, marked by his emphasis on the dynamics of value relations during cultural change (Robbins, 2015a, b), I nevertheless find that he considered one or more values, which in this case he calls individualism and relationalism, as driving factors of social reality. This explanation seems somewhat deterministic in the sense that once a value is established, it becomes the sole driving factor of social formation and people’s actions, despite potential alternative theoretical approaches that look at values the other way around by emphasizing values as the results of patterned actions (Graeber, 2001, 2013). By taking the dimension of action that is mutually constitutive to value as a framework of analysis and how it connects to the broader structure of a socio-political field, as is also elaborated in other social theories such as Bourdieu’s approach of practices (Bourdieu & Nice, 1977), this approach could provide an additional explanation of religious change that seems to have been neglected by Robbins. The intent of this book is to provide an alternative to the Dumontian approach by focusing on the socio-religious formation of Christianity as exemplified in the self-planting church and its dialogue with the pre-existing socio-religious formation of adat among the Kenyah in central Borneo. Defining the kind of values that have resulted from these dynamics is not the main aim of this book; I will leave this interesting matter to future study.

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Addressing at least two conceptual implications of this study demands attention. Crucially important is the emergence of the egalitarian institutional form within P/E Christianity, represented in its congregational orientation and how it was articulated within the existing or preceding structure of religious authority in a particular community. When taking this perspective, what previous research tells us about individualism as a paramount value should first be elaborated in regard to its relational form and its institutional level—in this case the self-planting church driven by local evangelists and the congregation. Egalitarianism, defined as a relational form of equal and open socio-religious relations, seems more useful for understanding the concrete manifestation of the church community institution within a specific social world. Hence, the discussion of Christian influence should move on from merely discussing the tension between individualism and hierarchy/relationalism as ideologies, to the dynamics of the social form embedded in changing political and institutional situations. In this case, the dynamics of Christianity not only emerged as a result of a problem of ontology and values, as is widely discussed (Keane, 2007; Robbins, 2004), but it also reflected patterns “for institutionalizing religion in the contemporary world” and in different political-economic situations across history (Hann, 2014). With this approach, we may add another goal to the anthropology of Christianity, from a comparison of the differences in the primary cultural categories of Christianity to a comparison of forms of the church institution, taking seriously the development of that institution in shaping the religious life of a particular community. I do not deny that what Robbins elaborates with regard to the Urapmin—in terms of the introduction of Christian individualism as the paramount value—may exist among the Kenyah. However, to follow what Hann calls a move away from a conversion-obsessed study of Christianity, the field would be enriched by a cross-comparison study regarding Christianity’s institutional establishment, seeing this religion as a “heritage” maintained and also contested by the established church community. Hence, this analytic approach could contribute to discussion of how Christianity’s development in relation to the collapsing structure of social relations resulted from various levels of structural change. In such a study, it would be crucial to identify and compare the concrete social form and collective arrangement of the church community in order to understand the dramatic transformation of the Kenyah Christian community in

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Apokayan amid the unique institutional ideas and practices introduced by P/E missionaries regarding the self-planting church. The second aspect relates to the possibilities and potentialities of the egalitarian social form’s entanglement with the hierarchical socio-religious formation that had been influential in the period before Christianity, or that developed along with the establishment of P/E Christianity. The inter-/intra-denominational dynamics that I illustrated in Chapters 3 and 5 illustrated this problematic. In these sections, I described narratives and observations related to an oscillating structure in which particular social formations are intertwined and influenced by each other. My elaboration of the dynamics of the Kenyah’s ritual comparison between adat and Christianity in the initial stages and the differentiation that they made to comprehend differences between denominations reveals how actors concurrently fluctuate between modes of socio-religious formation. The influence on church activity of Bungan Malan religious reform, the autonomy of the local evangelists and commoners in establishing a church, and the role of aristocrats show this mix of socio-religious reform that transformed within different spheres of religious life. In the context of liturgical and organizational structure, Kenyah P/E Christians were perhaps more egalitarian, but in the context of inter-denominational relations, they were happy to maintain the hierarchical form as something important in their daily life. The two aspects that I have elaborated here are relevant as alternatives in the study of Christianity. Haynes’s ethnography in Copperbelt Africa may show the contradiction, or plasticity, as I prefer to call it, of the aspect of Pentecostal social life that proved to revolve around the interactive features of hierarchical and egalitarian religious life (Haynes, 2012, 2015; Haynes & Hickel, 2016). It is this multiple potentiality that lends P/E Christianity a powerful social mechanism through which it can adapt to the changing structure of the political landscape of a particular community.

Reassessing Religious Change in Borneo, Southeast Asia, and Beyond The process of Christian evangelization among numerous upland ethnic groups in Borneo and its context of socio-political formation are crucial yet understudied. Most previous studies explore the dynamics of religious conversion to Christianity in terms of the complicated cultural transition toward modern identity, citizenship, and state building (Chua, 2012;

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Connolly, 2003; King, 2013, p. 189). While anthropologists acknowledge the fruitful insights to be obtained with this already established focus of study, the Christian phenomenon, in its unique ideas of its institution and its radical role in reconstituting structural aspects of a particular society, is overlooked as a comparative case in itself in Borneo and beyond. On the last day of my fieldwork, the adat leader showed me a photograph on his digital camera from his meeting with a Malaysian oil palm investor in Tarakan. He said that while they would still maintain their tana ulen (territory) as customary land, some forested areas surrounding Apokayan would be given over to palm oil investors when Apokayan became a new district. His role in political-economic brokerage with investors and regional politics is partly influenced by the resurgence of adat and church justification of his status. The hierarchical structure enabled a few elites to extract cultural justification and, as mentioned in Chapter 5, Christianity likewise introduced novel ideas of disenchanted nature that were able to transform society in a radical way that facilitated the expansion of plantation capitalism, demographic change, and infrastructural rearrangement. The swift move from adat and its radical withdrawal related to spirits-focused practices influenced the complicated transformation of the relation between society and the natural landscape in Borneo. Christianity, before and after the arrival of plantation capitalism, transformed the structural relations of society and people’s relations to spirits and nature. This change was possible only in the context of changing the relation of religious authority and institutions. The case of the Kenyah in Apokayan, with their large, forested areas, already displayed this orientation. This reality could also arise in various areas of Borneo already penetrated by logging and oil palm expansion. Looking at another aspect, the Kenyah experience of Christianity is one among many cases that illustrate Christianity’s central role in cultural and social change in Borneo. Significant ethnic groups still follow local ritual, cosmology, and tradition that mark a distinct characteristic of Bornean society, as can likely be seen in the upper Baram and Balui in Sarawak, in the upper Barito, Mahakam, and in most of the tributary of the Kapuas such as upriver Melawi (Baier, 2007; A. Schiller, 1986; A. Schiller, 1996). Yet the fact of the increasing population of Christian followers and the massive expansion of the church institution into most of upriver Borneo is remarkable. In my experience, traveling upriver of Barito, Mahakam, and Kapuas, I saw churches rooted in the P/E denomination in every village. The existence of this church institution often disappoints anthropologists

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who are infatuated with the idea of radical alterities such as local ontology and complex ritual. In fact, the ideology of a radical break and the hard work of indigenous local evangelists to withdraw from spirits-related adat were common features all across Borneo. Considering this parallel and massive spread of Christianity, two topics seem interesting for further research and might shift the discussion of religious change in Borneo, and perhaps elsewhere in the southeast Asian region, beyond merely comparing local indigenization of world religions or the revitalization movement. The first topic is, as explicated in this study, the micro-political processes that emerged in the process of becoming Christian and its implication for identity politics and the political economy of cultural change. The Christian population amounts to 22% of central Borneo’s population and consists of the majority of indigenous ethnic groups, most of which live from mid-river to upland Borneo. Despite the increasing role of the adat movement and the indigenous political movement that color the political landscape of Borneo, Christianity has also taken a central role at the lowest level of local politics, such as village political dynamics. Furthermore, it is interesting to see that the church has been able to become another central institution, beside adat, strongly related to the disenchantment that upland indigenous peoples of Borneo experienced regarding the forests and natural landscape. This sentiment has occurred in the context of massive economic change and the introduction of modern administrative state institutions that have made inroads since the 1970s as a result of logging and oil palm plantations. Most studies of Christianity in Borneo hardly consider the religion as an institution in itself. Further, elaboration of the church institution, especially P/E Christianity, as well as its continuity, transformation, or discontinuity with the widespread local cultural institution of adat, would be an important topic for a study of Sarawak, Sabah, and Indonesian Kalimantan. This issue also matters for many indigenous and upland ethnic groups in Southeast Asia in both the mainland and archipelagic region in which the P/E church is slowly increasing its followership and taking a significant part in social and political transformation. Another topic for future study is that of the relation between the shifting political-religious form of church and adat in its relation to inter-ethnic relations. As we saw in Chapter 2, the relation of upland ethnic groups and their relationship with many ethnic groups located in more downriver areas in Borneo has a long history of antagonism.

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The massive influx of migrant workers in mining, logging, and plantations has resulted in an inter-religious or inter-denominational relation that may be influential in the dynamics of religious life. The growth of Buginese, Javanese, and Banjarese populations as a result of natural resource companies’ expansion to upland Borneo and the earlier state program of population redistribution during the colonial era and accelerated later by the New Order, known as transmigration, are a context in which the identity of Christianity may be starkly contested, since most of the migrants were and continue to be Muslim. We can see, in the early part of the century, cultural antagonism between the coastal Malay and people from upriver where the animist Dayak were apparent. Most of the time, however, the different peoples encountered each other only when upland groups went downriver. We might ask what kind of inter-religious life exists when different social groups meet in the terrestrial landscape of Borneo, where new road infrastructure and plantations connect them, and when Muslim migrants from the coast and other island penetrate into upriver Borneo. Numerous cases in various regions of upland Borneo and other parts of Southeast Asia may have features similar to those described in this book. They may apply in the context of other sub-regions of central Borneo: in Kayan, Kejaman, and Bukit in Sarawak; in Modang, Bahau, and Penihing in the upriver area of Mahakam; upland Kapuas in the tributary of Mendalam, Maloh, and Mandai; and the Southern Schwaner region of Borneo, the upriver area of the Pawan River and its meeting point, and the upriver part of the Melawi Rive. Additionally, the upper Barito and its connection with upper Mahakam provide a strong example of hierarchical adat meeting a new mode of religious authority introduced by P/E. In Southeast Asia and other regions in Asia, the political transformation brought by particular religions, especially the P/E church, with their spirits of proselytization and egalitarianism, despite their tendency to stay away from national and local politics, could contribute to the transformation of interclass relations. In short, opportunity exists to compare the issues of hierarchy and egalitarianism in all these regions and, even further, we can also observe the similar trajectory of the form of religious authority in other major religions such as Salafi and Wahabi Islam, which also increasing in many part of Southeast Asia, that to some degree have similar forms of promoting proselytization, apocalyptic narratives, and religious institutional forms.

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Following Sather’s elaboration on hierarchy versus egalitarianism among the Iban in Sarawak, the dynamics of social structure and ideology appear to result from the interaction of locally situated practices and regional political-economic change (Sather, 1996). This book applies comparative efforts to understand the massive change to Christianity and its social form. Hence, by understanding micro-political and interclass dynamics as represented in the parallel and sequential emergence of hierarchy and egalitarian socio-religious forms, we can understand how P/E Christianity has opened spaces to exercise either or both forms as a flexible social mechanism to cope with massive change in the political and economic milieu of Borneo. It is this specific characteristic that helps them pave the way to their adaptive form. A comparison of that kind of experience among ethnic groups in Borneo and beyond would contribute a theoretical dialog fruitful for explaining the dynamics of religious change in Borneo, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

References Baier, M. (2007). The development of the Hindu Kaharingan religion: A New Dayak religion in Central Kalimantan. Anthropos, (H. 2), 566–570. Barker, J. (2014). The one and the many: Church-centered innovations in a Papua New Guinean community. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S172–S181. Bourdieu, P., & Nice, R. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice . Cambridge university press. Chong, T. (2018). Pentecostal megachurches in Southeast Asia. Flipside Digital Content Company Inc. Chua, L. (2012). The Christianity of culture: Conversion, ethnic citizenship, and the matter of religion in Malaysian Borneo. Palgrave Macmillan. Connolly, J. (2003). Becoming Christian and Dayak: A study of Christian conversion among Dayaks in East Kalimantan. New School University Graeber, D. (2001). Value as the importance of actions. In Toward an anthropological theory of value (pp. 49–89). Springer. Graeber, D. (2013). It is value that brings universes into being. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(2), 219–243. Hann, C. (2007). The anthropology of christianity per se. Archives Europeennes De Sociologie, 48(3), 383–410. Hann, C. (2014). The heart of the matter: Christianity, materiality, and modernity. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S182–S192. Haynes, N. (2012). Pentecostalism and the morality of money: Prosperity, inequality, and religious sociality on the Zambian Copperbelt. Journal of the

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Royal Anthropological Institute, 18(1), 123–139. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1467-9655.2011.01734.x Haynes, N., & Hickel, J. (2016). Hierarchy, value, and the value of hierarchy. Social Analysis, 60(4), 1–20. Keane, W. (2007). Christian moderns: Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter (Vol. 1). Univ of California Press. King, V. T. (2013). Borneo and beyond: Reflections on Borneo studies, anthropology and the social sciences. Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Robbins, J. (2004). Becoming sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. University of California Press. Robbins, J. (2014). The Anthropology of Christianity: Unity, diversity, new directions. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S157–S171. Robbins, J. (2015a). Dumont’s hierarchical dynamism: Christianity and individualism revisited. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(1), 173–195. Robbins, J. (2015b). Ritual, value, and example: On the perfection of cultural representations. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(S1), 18–29. Sather, C. (1996). “All threads are white”: Iban egalitarianism reconsidered. In J. J. Fox & C. Sather (Eds.), Origins, ancestry and alliance. ANU E Press. Schiller, A. (1986). A Ngaju ritual specialist and the rationalization of HinduKaharingan. Sarawak Museum Journal, 36(57), 231–240. Schiller, A. (1996). An “old” religion in “new order” Indonesia: Notes on ethnicity and religious affiliation. Sociology of Religion, 57 (4), 409–417.

Index

A adat , 1–4, 6, 7, 14, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26–29, 37, 38, 45, 49, 55–57, 61, 62, 64–69, 71–73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83–85, 89–95, 97–106, 109, 110, 113–119, 122, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 135–138, 140, 142–145 Adat Bungan, 67, 80, 84, 90, 113–118, 131, 137 Adat Pu’un, 61, 66–69, 76, 83–85, 113–118, 131 agama, 1, 90, 107. See also religion Apokayan, viii, 15–18, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 38, 41–49, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74–81, 84–86, 91–97, 99, 107, 109, 110, 112–122, 124–126, 129, 131, 132, 136, 137, 142, 143 Daerah Otonomi Baru Apokayan, 17 plateau, 15, 16, 20, 22, 43, 44, 57, 76, 107, 114, 132

region, 20, 26, 51, 78, 95, 122, 126, 132 aristocrat, 2, 14, 43, 45–48, 55, 56, 62, 64–66, 69, 75, 80, 81, 90, 91, 93, 98, 101, 103, 110, 113–118, 121, 128–130, 135–137, 142

B Banjar, 18, 39 Banjarmasin, 46, 48 baptize, 9, 50, 52 belawing , 69, 97, 98, 136 Belayan, 94, 96 Brooke, Rajah Charles Vyner, 25, 42–46, 48, 93, 107 Buginese, 18, 54, 145 Bulungan, 16, 19, 38–44, 54, 57, 95, 126

C C&MA (Christian and Missionary Alliance), 17, 21–23, 38, 43, 47,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 I. Ardhianto, Hierarchies of Power, Contestations in Contemporary Southeast Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0171-3

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48, 50, 52–56, 58, 63, 70, 71, 73–79, 81, 85, 86, 110, 120, 121 Catholicism, 4, 9, 17, 39, 53, 85 Central Borneo, 15, 25 Christianity, 1–14, 17, 19, 21–27, 29, 30, 37–39, 43, 45, 47–50, 52, 54–56, 62–69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81–85, 89, 91, 95, 99, 102, 105, 106, 110, 112–114, 116, 118, 120–122, 128–130, 136–146 Christianization, 8 proselytization, 6, 9, 17, 23, 38, 43, 49–52, 61, 68, 69, 116, 117, 145 Church, vii, 5–7, 11–15, 17–24, 26–29, 37, 38, 44, 50, 52, 53, 55, 57, 61–66, 69–80, 82, 84–86, 89–91, 93, 96, 98, 99, 101–103, 105–107, 109–113, 116–130, 132, 135–145 Calvinist Church, 1, 137 indigenous church, 27, 70, 79, 85, 113, 127 local church, 55, 76, 77, 125 Pentecostal-Evangelist Church, 1–5, 9, 15, 27, 64, 112, 135 Protestant Church, 130 colonialism, 4–10, 18, 23–25, 29, 37, 39–42, 44, 46–48, 54, 56–58, 81, 102 communists purge of 1965, 68, 76, 85 conflict, 28, 30, 41, 45–47, 91, 93, 111, 113, 118 inter-ethnic conflict, 45 conversion, 1–3, 6–14, 23, 24, 27, 44, 47, 51, 53–55, 62–64, 66–69, 71, 75, 76, 81, 83, 86, 89, 90, 93, 103, 105, 110–112,

116, 118, 131, 136, 137, 141, 142 mass conversion, 3, 24, 84, 90, 94, 97, 113, 139 cosmology, 9, 12, 24, 69, 85, 91, 102, 106, 115, 130, 143 crisis, 45, 65, 76, 77, 115, 117 cultural crisis, 44, 49 political crisis, 49 cultural change, 4, 8, 9, 12, 29, 45, 48, 111, 138, 140, 144 Cunningham (Rev.), 3, 17, 23, 25, 52, 78, 79 D Dayak, 19, 25, 55–57, 79, 98, 145 decentralization, 52, 106 denomination, 1, 4, 6, 15, 18, 21, 26, 27, 50, 51, 69, 92, 100, 103, 109, 110, 112, 116–118, 121–125, 127–130, 135, 137, 138, 142, 143 Pentecostal-Evangelical denomination, 1–7, 9, 12, 14, 15, 18, 26–28, 48, 50, 52, 53, 55, 63, 64, 69, 75, 82, 91, 110, 112, 116, 135, 139–146 Dutch, the, 6, 17, 18, 24, 37, 40, 42, 43, 46–48, 51, 54, 56, 65, 70, 93, 110, 130 Dutch East Indies, the, 6, 17, 18, 24, 38, 42, 46, 47, 51, 56, 57, 110, 130 E East Kalimantan, 19, 52, 54, 70, 77, 86, 105 election, 18 elite, 19, 25, 26, 29, 38, 43, 64, 70, 75, 81, 84, 91, 94, 95, 101, 106, 118, 125, 128, 136–138, 143

INDEX

local elite, 6, 17, 19, 20, 26, 64, 102, 126 military elite, 19 F Fisk (Rev.), 25, 43, 47, 49, 51–54, 61, 62, 71, 74, 81, 86, 103, 120, 121 G GKII (Gereja Kemah Injil Indonesia), vii, 26, 27, 73, 75, 76, 82, 96, 100, 110, 112, 113, 118–126, 128, 132, 136–138 globalization, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 21, 26, 64 God, 6, 55, 70, 72, 74, 100, 120, 121 GPIB (Gereja Protestan Indonesia Barat), 27, 90, 100, 110, 112, 113, 116–131, 137, 138 Great Awakening Movement, the, 50 H headhunting, 16, 22, 25, 38, 44–49, 55, 56, 65, 81, 85, 99, 103 heathen, 49, 50, 96. See also pagan hierarchy, 2, 6–9, 12–15, 20, 26–29, 38, 39, 57, 62, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 75, 80, 83, 84, 91–93, 100, 101, 105, 106, 109, 110, 113, 116, 118, 122, 124, 128, 129, 135–138, 140–143, 145, 146 historical turn, 21 I Iban, 30, 40, 43, 45, 46, 130, 146 identity, 2, 8, 15, 17, 20, 26, 44, 47, 86, 91, 107, 110, 114, 118, 122, 128–130, 142, 144, 145

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Christian identity, 122, 136 ethnic identity, 10, 15, 19 religious identity, 19, 44, 128, 129 indigenization, 9, 11, 144 individualism, 9, 13, 29, 63, 84, 139–141 Indonesian military, 68 J Jakarta, 19, 20, 119 Javanese, 18, 58, 145 K Kapit Agreement, 48 Kayan, 15, 17, 18, 21, 22, 30, 38, 39, 41–43, 47, 48, 51–57, 61, 68, 70, 71, 79, 94, 95, 116, 130, 145 Kenyah, viii, 1–4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14–27, 30, 37, 38, 41–49, 51–58, 61, 62, 64–85, 89–91, 93–97, 99–103, 105–107, 109–113, 115–118, 120–122, 124, 130, 132, 135–138, 140–143 KINGMI (Gospel Tabernacle Church), 70, 73, 75, 77, 80, 82, 84, 110, 116–118 kinship, 11, 13, 17, 22–24, 82, 106 Kutai Kertanegara, 19 L ladung bio, 17, 19, 27, 93–98, 105, 136 Leppo Tau, 15–17, 22, 41, 46, 48, 49, 53, 57, 94 liturgy, 7, 27, 52, 53, 73, 103, 109, 110, 118–124, 128, 129, 136–138, 142 Long Bagun, 16, 94, 132 Long Nawang, vii, 1, 16–18, 20, 22, 23, 42, 43, 46, 65, 67, 70, 73,

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80, 85, 97, 98, 103, 104, 106, 113, 115–119, 122–125, 128, 131 Lundayeh, 19, 107, 130 M Mahakam, 16–18, 21, 39–41, 49, 94, 95, 130, 132, 143, 145 Makassar, 50, 51, 53, 54, 70, 71, 81, 86 Malay, 18, 38–40, 42–44, 54, 58, 121 Malaysia, 1, 3, 15, 16, 81, 95, 130, 132 Malinau, 19, 20, 22, 30, 90, 95, 106, 107, 126, 132 missionary, 3, 8–11, 16, 17, 21–25, 38, 39, 43, 47–52, 54–56, 59, 61, 63, 66, 67, 70–74, 77–79, 81, 84–86, 103, 105, 114, 121, 131, 136, 142 Western missionary, 22, 77 modernity, 4, 8, 11 Molenaar (Captain), 46 moral frontier, 26, 38, 51, 56 Musakabe, Herman (Lieutenant), 69, 94, 97, 116, 117 Letnan Belawing, 97 Muslim, 18, 19, 38, 39, 42, 43, 54, 110, 111, 130, 136, 145 N natal keliling , 19 New Order, 2, 6, 19, 107, 133, 145 New Testament, the, 17, 79 Niebuhr, Richard, 111, 112 Njock Lenjau, vii, 95, 96 North Kalimantan, vii, 3, 15, 20, 22, 96 P pagan, 49, 56, 96

panyin, 2, 14, 27, 63, 65–69, 74, 80, 110, 135 paren, 2, 20, 27, 48, 53, 54, 62, 65–67, 70, 74, 80, 81, 85, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 106, 110, 115, 116, 118, 129, 130, 135–137 performance, 52, 91, 93, 97, 101, 119, 121–123, 132 liturgical performance, 123 religious performance, 122, 124, 129 peselai, 43, 47, 54, 65, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 94, 102, 103, 114 pre-Christian period, 46, 55, 72, 75, 80, 90, 99, 106 Protestantism, 28, 50, 85, 111, 130 American Protestantism, 50 Punan, 17, 49, 130 R regional autonomy, 6, 26, 27, 90, 91, 94, 95, 97, 105, 125, 126, 128, 136, 137 religion, 1–5, 7–11, 17, 26, 28, 29, 48, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 82, 85, 89, 90, 92, 101, 114–116, 119, 130, 141, 144, 145 world religion, 2–4, 8–11, 76, 110, 118, 144 religious change, 2–5, 7–14, 22, 26, 48, 62, 67, 80, 81, 84, 91, 109, 111, 117, 121, 131, 135, 138–140, 144, 146 revitalization, 2, 6, 7, 11, 18, 23, 27, 63, 68, 90, 92, 96–98, 101, 105, 106, 118, 136, 144 ritual, 1, 10, 13, 17, 24, 27, 38, 40, 44, 45, 47–49, 55, 56, 58, 62–69, 72, 75, 80, 81, 84, 85, 90–93, 99–103, 105–107, 112–116, 118, 121, 128, 131, 142, 143

INDEX

Mamat, 47, 48, 58, 69, 80, 93, 99, 107

S sacred, the, 97, 122, 129 sacrifice, 10, 97, 99, 120 Sahlins, Marshall, 21, 29, 37 Sarawak, vii, viii, 1, 3, 11, 15–18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 30, 39, 41–49, 56, 65, 67, 68, 71, 76, 78–81, 85, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 107, 114, 116, 121, 130, 132, 143–146 schism, 12, 27, 82, 111–114, 116, 118, 119, 121, 128, 129, 132 Second Coming of Jesus, the, 49, 50 social transformation, 9, 75 Soeharto, 19, 85, 91, 133 Soekarno, 76, 85 South Kalimantan, 48 Surabaya, 51

T Tanjung Selor, vii, 38, 41, 43, 46, 47, 53, 54, 61, 70, 75, 86, 95, 96, 106, 132

153

Tarakan, 38, 43, 46, 47, 51, 54, 95, 143 U Uma Alim, 15, 16, 41, 46, 54, 132 Uma Jalan, 67, 94, 97, 114 Uma Kulit, vii, 15, 16, 19, 23, 25, 30, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 57, 70, 78, 79, 96, 121, 132 umanjenai, 27, 93, 99, 100, 103, 105, 107, 136 Uma Tukung, 94 United States of America, the, 24, 56, 71 Upper Balui, 15, 22, 30, 48, 49, 67, 78, 79, 84, 94, 116 Upper Baram, vii, 15, 22, 90, 94, 114 V value, 5, 9, 12, 14, 28, 29, 47, 63, 74, 80, 83, 84, 99, 100, 102, 115, 138–141 W Weber, Max, 111, 112