Chinatown as a Hybridized Socio-Religious Space for Chinese-Christian Diaspora: An Indonesian Case

As Chineseness keeps evolving beyond geographical boundaries, the face of Chinese Christianity has become more hybridized and ambivalent as it keeps being renegotiated in its socio-cultural context. Thus, there lies the need to understand the Chinese Christian diaspora experience that goes beyond resinicization or assimilation. In this paper, I propose looking at Chinatown as a socio-religious space that encapsulates this hybrid experience. Chinatown has become the space that symbolizes marginalization and exclusion as well as survival and resistance. After conceptually exploring the making of Chinatown, I will make a study case from Glodok Chinatown located in Jakarta, Indonesia. I identify three meanings that Glodok Chinatown signifies: migration, remembrance, and embrace. I then conclude by drawing theological implications from the Chinese-Indonesian Christian perspective, focusing on the ecclesiological identity as migrant, the church as the site of remembrance, and the call to embrace others.