Godly Play as Contextual Christian Religious Education in Indonesia: Nurturing Children’s Spiritual Identity in a Multireligious Society
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Abstract
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, is also home to Christian minority communities that must negotiate both faith formation and interreligious coexistence. Within this context, Godly Play—a Montessori-inspired, story-centered approach to Christian education—offers potential for nurturing children’s Christian identity while cultivating openness toward religious diversity. Although widely studied in Western Christian-majority contexts, little is known about its long-term impact in plural societies such as Indonesia. This study adopted a qualitative phenomenological design to examine how early exposure to Godly Play shaped the spiritual and social development of Christian young adults in Batam, Indonesia. Fifteen participants aged 18–25, all of whom had attended Protestant Sunday schools where Godly Play was consistently practiced, were recruited through purposive sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews in Bahasa Indonesia, transcribed and translated into English, and thematically analyzed following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase framework. Findings reveal three key themes. First, Godly Play nurtured personal encounters with God through reflective silence and imaginative storytelling, which participants recalled as foundational to their prayer life and sense of divine presence. Second, the method cultivated relational consciousness, fostering moral integrity and an awareness of living before God and others. Third, participants reported that Godly Play indirectly prepared them for interreligious engagement by encouraging respect, openness, and wonder toward religious difference. These findings suggest that Godly Play functions in Indonesia not only as a method of Christian education but also as a form of public theology, equipping believers with resilient Christian identities and dialogical capacities essential for life in multireligious societies.
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