A Familiar Book in a (Un)Familiar Context: A Comparative Qualitative Study on Bible Usage of Indonesian Congregations in the Netherlands

Abstract

After Indonesia’s war of independence, a flow of migration was triggered to the Netherlands, the former colonizer. Some of the Christians who migrated to the Netherlands founded their own congregations in Dutch society. The present article regards how these Indonesian congregations shaped their use of the Bible, in light of their community formation under the influence of migration, through a heuristic comparison with the results of research conducted by Foppen et al. on Bible readers in the Netherlands at large. The empirical study of three Indonesian congregations shows that one of the key elements of the Bible usage of ordinary readers in the three respective congregations is that they view the Bible as a guide to life. They further appreciate the polyphony of biblical texts, since it enables contextual theologies. Further results regard preferred language, Bible translation, and digitalization.