Rethinking Interreligious Dialogue: Orality, Collective Memory, and Christian-Muslim Engagements in Indonesia

This book's central argument is that oral forms of collective memory in Christian-Muslim engagements in orally-oriented societies are more effective than interreligious dialogue through the dominant written text based on elite-based concepts. The approach has dominated interreligious interactions. From the perspective of the social scientific study of interreligious encounters & collective memory in folklore studies, this book explores how orality and social remembrance articulated through folksong, oral narrative, and ritual performance strengthen interreligious engagements in the post-conflict society. The approach proposed in this book reclaims interreligious engagements based on the local Indonesian dynamic preserved in ritual performance, oral narrative, and folksong. This method articulates a contextualized interreligious engagement grounded in local culture.

Izak Y. M. Lattu is an Associate Professor of Interreligious Studies and Sociology of Religion at the Department of Theology and Sociology of Religion, Satya Wacana Christian University, Indonesia. He earned a PhD in the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, under the Fulbright Scholarship and a Dissertation Writing Grant from Harvard University.