[citation needed] West Sulawesi is predominantly Islamic along the coastal areas, but the interior Mamasa Regency, culturally part of the Toraja lands, is 75% Protestant.

[citation needed] In the Middle Ages, Nestorian Christianity was the first denomination of the religion to reach the Malay archipelago, brought over by Arab, Assyrian, and Persian traders who adhered to the Church of the East.

At the turn of the 19th century the southernmost Batak people, the Mandailing came, through their subjection in the Padri War, to follow Islam, rejecting traditional beliefs and, frequently, their identity as 'Batak'.

Nommensen initially established Huta Dame, his 'village of peace', as Christian converts were excluded from their home villages, becoming knowledgeable in matters of Batak custom.

[citation needed] The (Batak) Karo people were harassing European interests in east Sumatra, and Jacob Theodoor Cremer, a Dutch administrator regarded evangelism as a means to suppress this activity.

The Netherlands Missionary Society answered the call, commencing activities in the Karolands in 1890, where they engaged not only in evangelism but also in ethnology and documenting the Karo culture.

[28] Although the mission was headquartered in Banjarmasin, where the pastoral needs of European residents were supplied, it was apparent that converting the Muslims who dominate the cities of Kalimantan was an impossible task, and instead, efforts were focused on the Dayak people of the interior, who practised traditional religions.

It has been suggested that this slow progress was due to the fragmented nature of the Dayaks—with no king or dominant regional powers, there was little prospect of mass conversion, while new converts faced exclusion from their traditional ceremonies.

[citation needed] Chinese, historically a major force in West Kalimantan, included among their number some Catholics, who had migrated from other parts of the region.

The first new missions (1905–1913) were aimed at the coastal Chinese of Pamangkat, Pontianak (location of West Kalimantan's Bishop, as it was the largest town in the region) and Sambas, as well as the deep Dayak interior, where the Catholics hoped to convert without competition from Islam, before working back towards the coast.

The reaction of the Hindu Balinese to the missionary's edicts – to destroy idols and temples as being of the devil – was hostile: the Christian converts had their rice fields sabotaged and they were expelled from their villages.

In its early years, the GKPB and its antecedent followed the theology of Hendrik Kraemer in the Dutch Reformed tradition, explicitly rejecting most of Balinese culture as heathen and unchristian, disposing of gamelan orchestras in favour of Western arts.

A new mission was established in 1617, which successfully furthered the spread of Catholicism in the region, including minor military ventures led from Larantuka on Flores, rejecting the dominions of Islamic Makassar.

Portugal, severely weakened, withdrew from all but East Timor, but thanks to treaties signed in the 1850s, freedom of religion were guaranteed in areas being exchanged between the two countries.

[38][39] The leaders of Makassar in southern Sulawesi expressed an interest in Christianity on several occasions in the 16th century, and while a request was made to Malacca for missionaries, none were forthcoming, perhaps because of the lack of commercial opportunities (spices) in the area.

Portuguese missionary activity continued in northern Sulawesi between 1563 and 1570, but following the murder of Sultan Hairun in Ternate and the ensuing anti-Portuguese attacks, the mission was abandoned.

Jesuit missionaries were also active in Minahasa and neighbouring areas in the first half of the 17th century, but attacks from Muslims from Ternate as well as local animist peoples meant that priests had a short life expectancy.

While the Portuguese religious influence over Malacca and Sumatra was very small, their mission to Maluku, the important spice islands of the eastern archipelago, was more significant.

[42] The Islamic Sultanate of Ternate sought the patronage of the Portuguese, offering a trading monopoly in return for military support against rival local kingdoms.

He appealed for support to save souls in Maluku, which arrived in 1547 in the shape of Nuno Ribeiro, a Jesuit who is said to have converted five hundred people before being murdered in 1549.

The faith survived only around the Jesuit fort in Ambon; even there, there was a shortage of priests due to dangerous conditions, and many local people did not have knowledge of Christian creeds and were easily apostatised to Islam or traditional beliefs.

Subsequently, the UZV mission had more success, with a mass conversion near Cenderawasih Bay in 1907 and the evangelisation of the Sentani people by Pamai, a native Papuan in the late 1920s.

Due to the Great Depression, the mission suffered a funding shortfall and switched to native evangelists, who had the advantage of speaking the local language (rather than Malay) but were often poorly trained.

[citation needed] After World War Two, New Guinea remained outside of Indonesian control, under the Dutch administration, but in 1963, it was absorbed under dubious circumstances into Indonesia.

The 2006 execution of three Catholic citizens in Sulawesi nurtured further fears that the Indonesian state favoured Muslims while penalising the Christian minority.

[56] Even after the subsiding of the Maluku conflict, Christians are victims of minor, but regular, attacks by radical Muslim organisations such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).

[58] On 8 February 2011, trial spectators attacked the defendant, prosecutors and judges,[59] and Muslim rioters severely vandalised Protestant and Catholic churches, schools, and other property in Temanggung, Central Java in protest that prosecutors only demanded that the court sentence Antonius Bawengan to five years in prison (the maximum sentence permitted by law) for his alleged blasphemy against Islam via distributed leaflets.

[citation needed] On the other hand, and also in February 2011, a local FPI leader and followers each received at most a 5½-month sentence and were released based on time served after members of the group struck a Batak Christian Protestant Church (a.k.a.

[72] A number of Indonesian Christians have fled persecution since 1998 reformation riot, forming a sizable diaspora abroad, in countries including the United States.

The court blamed the rise of anti-Christian sentiment on Suharto consorting with militant Islamic groups in the 1990s in order to maintain his power, noting that he had "purged his cabinet and army of Christians and replaced them with fundamentalist Muslims", and adding that support and protection for violent Islamic militia such as Laskar Jihad by the military and political elite had continued since Suharto's exit from power.