Lessons About Sacred Sites From Indonesia

Sacred Sites as Educational Tools to Foster Diverse, Interfaith Relationships

Indonesia is a country of nations. The sprawling archipelago of some 14,000 islands stretches from Sumatra in Asia to New Guinea in Oceania. Hosting 280 million people speaking more than 700 languages, diversity is the one commonality across the many peoples who call themselves Indonesians. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to visit Jakarta for the first time.

What brought me to Indonesia was an invitation to speak at the International Conference on Cross-Cultural Religious Literacy, hosted by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and the Leimena Institute. As described in the pre-conference materials,

As the Institute outlined, “Meaningful engagement with those who are different from ‘us’ requires intercultural and interreligious competences as fundamental life skills in today’s interconnected world.” CCRL takes this broad approach, and Leimena has trained over 10,000 teachers since 2021. “Beyond traditional interfaith dialogues that focus on exchanging religious knowledge, CCRL initiatives, such as those in Indonesia, offer a structured educational approach to developing competencies that promote peaceful multi-faith collaboration.”

The conference examined how interfaith and cross-cultural partnerships can strengthen social trust and uphold human dignity in divided societies, the role of education in building and fostering cohesive communities, and ASEAN’s vision for an inclusive region. The opening keynote speaker was Dr. Abdul Mu’ti, the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education and the current Secretary General of the Muhammadiyah organization. He spoke about the need to inspire the next generation to lead, which is like planting a tree for the future. “Fruit will take time,” he said, “and we must give the next generation the social skills to collaborate with one another and form friendships.”

My presentation focused on the role of sacred sites as an overlooked pathway to foster positive pluralism, diversity, and respect for different beliefs. I shared our research on how sacred sites can serve as an overlooked tool for peace amid rising religious nationalism and division. My presentation explored how this new approach offers a customizable framework that emphasizes local histories to address contemporary problems through their stories.

I outlined three commonalities across communities worldwide: (1) every community has a history of diversity of some kind, (2) every community is grappling with how to live together in pluralistic societies, and (3) every community has sacred sites that can promote pluralism. Heritage, belief, and identity are deeply intertwined, and sacred sites carry meaning that motivates both protection and destruction. Sacred sites that promote pluralism, instead of religious nationalism, can foster community among people of different cultures and faiths. As illustrations, I highlighted both shared sacred sites—like Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka and the Tomb of the Prophet Nahum in Iraq—and contested sacred sites—such as Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Mesquita Mosque Cathedral in Cordoba.

I illustrated how combining three traditionally separate fields of work—heritage protection, human rights, and interfaith dialogue—into a new approach can foster cooperation and mutually reinforcing activity among all three. This approach – Sacred Sites Promoting Pluralism – works because it is locally grounded, interdisciplinary, and mutually reinforcing. Through training, convening, and educating, sacred sites can be used as educational tools to teach about past diversity and discuss current diversity, building the relationships necessary for conflict prevention and serving as an antidote to religious nationalism.

After the conference, I stayed an extra day because of a unique speaking opportunity at the Istiqlal Mosque, Indonesia’s national mosque and the third largest in the world. Thanks to the Leimena Institute, I was asked to speak on these same themes to a group of madrassa students. The setting was unique: it was in a room sponsored by the Chinese government, next to an American Corner sponsored by the U.S. Embassy. In 2023, the grand imam invited the United States and then China to open such spaces to foster relationships. The students were engaged in the conversation, and the Istiqlal Mosque provided an excellent backdrop for discussing how sacred sites promote pluralism, with its dedicated spaces for multiple nations, including the United States and China, Australia, and, soon, Japan. As the mosque staff explained, the embassies were invited to open these spaces to foster understanding and combat misinformation about the other.

Dr. Farid Saenong, the Special Staff Coordinator to the Minister of Religious Affairs and Vice Director of the Voice of Istiqlal, followed my presentation to the madrassa students. He spoke of his time serving as an imam in Wellington, New Zealand, at the time of the Christchurch mosque attack in 2019. His mosque became a place where non-Muslim Kiwi neighbors could express support and solidarity with the New Zealand Islamic community. He shared pictures of the dozens, if not hundreds, of flowers and notes left at the mosque gate. Messages such as “You are safe in our community” and “Muslims of NZ, we love you.” The leading rabbi of Wellington made a point of visiting.

Dr. Saenong explained how his sacred site helped build social trust, as the mosque was a physical space where people of different faiths could come together during a time of crisis. By becoming a focal point of community engagement, people from various backgrounds could express empathy and strengthen relationships. It’s not a short effort, he noted, as it takes time to build relationships with people from different backgrounds. However, the mosque served as a venue for the local community to express solidarity in a time of need.

Overall, the visit to Indonesia reaffirmed the unique power of sacred places to foster connection in powerful ways across divides. From the Leimena Institute’s work training thousands of teachers in cross-cultural religious literacy to the Istiqlal Mosque’s deliberate creation of spaces for intercultural dialogue, intentional efforts to engage differences can build the social trust necessary for pluralistic societies to thrive.

The question is how such approaches can be adapted and scaled in other contexts where division, rather than diversity, threatens peace and harmony.

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