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From the very outset of European expansion, scholars have been preoccupied with the impact of proselytization and colonization on non-European societies. Anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Bronislaw Malinowski, who witnessed these processes at the beginning of the twentieth century while at the same time benefitting from the colonial structure, were convinced that the autochthonous societies could not possibly withstand the onslaught of the dominant European cultures, and thus were doomed to vanish in the near future. The fear of losing their object of research, which had just recently been discovered, hung above the heads of the scholars like a sword of Damocles ever since the establishment of anthropology as a discipline. They felt hurried to document what seemed to be crumbling away. Behind these fears there was the notion that the indigenous cultures were comparatively static entities that had existed untouched by any external influences for many centuries, or even millennia, and were unable to change. This idea was shared by proponents of other disciplines; in religious studies, for example, up to the late 1980s the view prevailed that the contact between the great world religions and the belief systems of small, autochthonous societies doomed the latter to extinction. However, more recent studies have shown that this assumption, according to which indigenous peoples have not undergone any changes in the course of history, is untenable. It became apparent that groups supposedly living in isolation have extensive contact networks, and that migration, trade, and conquest are not privileges of modern times. Myths and oral traditions bore witness of journeys to faraway regions, new settlements founded in unknown territories, or the arrival of victorious foreigners who introduced new ways and customs and laid claim to a place of their own within society.
Indonesia is a multicultural and multireligious nation whose heterogeneity is codified in the state doctrine, the Pancasila. Yet the relations between the various social, ethnic, and religious groups have been problematic down to the present day, and national unity has remained fragile. In several respects, Christians have a precarious role in the struggle for shaping the nation. They are a small minority (about 9% of the population) in a country predominantly inhabited by Muslims; in the past they were interconnected in manifold ways with the Dutch colonial government; they exert great influence in economy and the military, and constitute the majority of the population in some parts of the so-called Outer Islands (such as Flores, Sumba, and Timor), which are characterized by an attitude fraught with ambivalence towards the state apparatus perceived as ‘Javanese’ and ‘Muslim’. In the aftermath of the former president Suharto’s resignation and in the course of the ensuing political changes – in particular the independence of East Timor – Christians were repeatedly discredited for allegedly posing a threat to Indonesian unity, and have been involved both as victims and perpetrators in violent regional clashes with Muslims that claimed thousands of lives. Since the beginning of the new millennium the violent conflicts have lessened, yet the pressure exerted on Christians by Islamic fundamentalists still continues undiminished in the Muslim-majority regions. The future of the Christians in Indonesia remains uncertain, and pluralist society is still on trial. For this reason the situation of Christians in Indonesia is an important issue that goes far beyond research on a minority, touching on general issues relating to the formation of the nation-state.
This paper examines a practice that is nearly imperceptible to historians because the bulk of evidence for it is to be found in the interstices of the beaten paths of legal and social history and because it mixes economic and religious matters in a strikingly unfamiliar manner. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, excommunication for debt offered ordinary people an economical, efficacious enforcement mechanism for small-scale, daily, unwritten credit. At the same time, the practice offered holders of ecclesiastical jurisdiction an important opportunity to round out their incomes, particularly in the difficult fifteenth century. This transitional practice reveals a level of credit below that of the letters of change, annuities secured on real property, or written obligations beloved of economic historians and historians of banking. Studying the practice casts light on the transition from the face-to-face, local economies of the high Middle Ages to the regional economies of the early modern period, on how the Reformation shaped early modern regimes of credit, and on how the disappearance of ecclesiastical civil justice facilitated the emergence of early modern juridically sovereign territories.
In seinem Beitrag "Von der Idealisierung der apostolischen Armut zur kirchlichpaternalistischen Fürsorge. Kirchliche Reaktionen auf das Arbeiterelend in der Zeit des Vormärz" beschäftigt Jörg Füllgrabe sich mit den differierenden Fürsorgekonzeptionen der christlichen Kirchen in Deutschland. Auf der Basis eines protestantischen Arbeitsethos verbinde Johann Hinrich Wichern die Linderung der Arbeiternot mit der Inneren Mission als einem umfassenden Programm christlicher Versittlichung; dieser Programmatik liege ein Paradigmenwechsel in der Armutskonzeption zugrunde, demzufolge die moderne Armut als Resultat subjektiven Unvermögens und Unwillens zur Arbeit selbst verschuldet sei. Der Katholizismus hingegen, der über die allgemeine Umwälzungen zu Beginn der Moderne hinaus auch noch die materiellen Einbußen durch die napoleonische Säkularisation zu bewältigen hatte, setze auf eine sozialdisziplinierende Einbindung der Armutspopulation in die christlich-bürgerliche Gemeinschaft, wodurch eine gesonderte Instituionen der Armutsfürsorge obsolet erscheine und zugleich die Position der Kirche im säkularen Staat gesichert sei. Spätere Ansätze aus dem ultramontanen Lager plädieren für eine korporatistische Korrektur der aufgeklärt-liberalen Gesellschaftsentwicklung, die sich vor allem in einer Adressierung des prekarisierten Handwerksstandes ausdrückt.