Protestant Church in South-East Sulawesi (Gepsultra)

The Gepsultra goes back to the work of Dutch missionaries. It was founded in 1957 and, during the first ten years of its existence, it was under strong pressure. The reason for this was the existence of a militant Muslim movement in South-East Sulawesi whose proclaimed objective was to convert Indonesia into a purely Islamic state. In the course of time, the church's membership increased due to resettlers coming from all over Indonesia. Today it includes members from 14 different tribes. It is still a minority church despite its roughly 25,000 members in a mainly Muslim environment. It is dependent on peaceful coexistence for the sake of its own survival and has been trying to strengthen interreligious dialogue with Islam for decades. 85% of parish members are poor families from small villages, which means that the church, despite all its efforts, cannot cope without financial help from its partners in Germany. Another factor is that, during the past few years, 60,000 people have fled to South-East Sulawesi to escape the violent clashes on the Moluccas. To ease this situation, the Gepsultra has introduced two emergency measures: it has established an office for land law issues in order to achieve allocations of land for the most severe hardship cases, and it equips fishermen with tools.