Coverage of the Passion World Tour stop in Jakarta is starting to flood the Internet. Photos and videos are being uploaded. It’s really amazing to see them all. 7000 students gathering at an indoor stadium. They had apparently oversold tickets and had to schedule a new location for the event.
More videos inside the cut.
I am ethnically Chinese. I am Christian. But most of all, I am Indonesian.
The Cathedral (left) and Istiqlal Mosque (right) decorate the skyline of central Jakarta, down the road from each other.
For years, I’ve struggled in finding a way to reconcile these three parts of my identity. I grew up in a Catholic family and went to a private Catholic elementary school, just like many other Chinese families who wanted their children to have a better education than the one provided by the government. Christianity provided the freedom that was stripped away from the Chinese due to legislation. For the younger generation, any sense of identity of being Chinese is faint if non-existent.
To someone outside Indonesia, it may seem inconceivable that a country with more practicing Muslims than any other nation in the Middle East or other countries in the world would have such a passionate group of people devoted to God. But in truth, Indonesia is proud of its tradition of religious freedom, something that is held sacred here. The fact that religion remained unregulated drew more and more Chinese to identify themselves with this group.
“Of the estimated five million ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, well over 70 percent are now Christian. The ebullient and staggeringly rich charismatic churches are thriving by spreading a message of personal confidence and material success that seems to hold special appeal for young Chinese.”
—International Herald Tribune, April 27, 2006
How I wish I could be back at home right now. This is why.
The Passion World Tour is making a stop in Jakarta on August 5. They’ve already visited Manila and Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta will cap its Southeast Asia tour. They have even gone to the extent of making a version of the event information page in Indonesian.
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