Religion in Society
Interdisciplinary Social Sciences
Marlene Lorraine Martin
Karen Walker
Pieter Verster
Darrell Norman BurrellHalim Wiryadinata’s Shares
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Aluk Todolo: The Journey of Puang Matua's Wisdom from Dormancy to Revival
his article traces the journey of Puang Matua’s wisdom as a local religion from dormancy to revival in the digital era, thus becoming a universal guideline for the Toraja people in maintaining harmony, balance, conformity, and peace between the cosmos and society. Aluk Todolo is the ancestral religion of the Toraja ethnic group, which developed from a belief that the Toraja people came from heaven. Its concepts and teachings are not just in the understanding of epistemology but have become a mindset, behavior, and relationship with others, nature, and the Creator affecting society today. Those concepts are the life patterns that allow the Toraja people to worship the ancestral spirits, which Puang Matua (God the Highest) instructed. This understanding inherits knowledge and instructions for the Toraja people to carry out ceremonies in worshipping Puang Matua and ancestral spirits as the contents of dogma in the rites and rituals of Aluk Todolo. This study has been carried out using the sociology of religion approach by accessing primary sources: books, journal articles, academic writings, and old manuscripts. The study shows that digitalized people return to traditional religious values as their foothold to compromise their lives. This article concludes that indigenous religion, culture, and digital ethics reinforce each other.
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Mulajadi Nabolon: From Indigenous Religious Practice to Contemporary Society in the Public Sphere
Mulajadi Nabolon is a personification of God in the tribal religious concept that departs and develops from within the culture of the Batak tribe in Indonesia. Its images and teachings are not only limited to epistemological constructions of religion that persist in dogmatic beliefs but become instructions, norms, ways of life, and behavioral control integrated into modern society’s social life in the technological era. Even this concept rests on the harmony that humans are part of nature and vice versa, so the two should not destroy each other. This concept bequeaths knowledge and instructions to the Batak people in building social behavior wherever they are from generation to generation. The movement of religion and culture triggers the indigenous religion’s travel to contemporary society. This research will answer why the Mulajadi Nabolon concept persists in contemporary Batak society in this all-digital era. The problem statement of this research is discussed with the critical thinking method and sociological religion approach through books, journal articles, and the old manuscripts of the concept of Mulajadi Nabolon. This research shows that the indigenous belief system sustains and impacts contemporary society. In conclusion, personifying Muljadi Nabolon creates the space of traveling the local religion to contemporary religion through the local values as the holder for behaving and instructing ways of life.
