Traditional Tunes Transformed: Resonances and Dissonances between Theology and Lived Religion in the Protestant Church on the Central Moluccas

Abstract

This anthropological research studies the contextualization of church music. At the theological university in Ambon (the Moluccas, Indonesia), UKIM, theologians are developing contextual theology based on the living cultural context of Moluccan Christians. Theologian and musician Christian Izaac Tamaela taught and instigated the transposition of Moluccan traditional music to the Moluccan Protestant church, the GPM. This research asks how traditional music as framed within contextual Moluccan theology is interrelated with lived religion. It traces the grammar and lexicon of the contextual discourse in relation to religious attitudes and practices among UKIM theologians and students, pastors, GPM officials, church council members, congregants, and musicians. Moluccan contextual theology, religious practice in congregational life, and Moluccan traditional music are analyzed. The concept of ‘the Moluccan traditional’ is introduced to disclose the resonances and dissonances between Moluccan theology and lived religion. Defined by openness and mixing, the traditional refers to the process by which a cultural form becomes seen as traditionally Moluccan. It is argued that the implementation of traditional church music depends on a distance between theological innovation and original ritual context. The theological idea is fully brought into practice by resonances between conceptualizations of key terms in the contextual discourse. The recently established ethnic worship service is identified as having the potential to bridge idea and practice when it catches the flexibility of the traditional. Through the entanglements between traditional music, Moluccan culture and Moluccan Christianity, mediated by the ancestors, traditional church music can arouse a sense of Moluccanness.