- Name: Marianne Katoppo
- Title: Toward the Pacific Being an Ocean of Peace
- Archive Type: Speech, Video
- Date: 1991
- Place: Christian Responsibilities for Pacific Civilization Conference
- Available File(s): Video
- Keywords: Marianne Katoppo, Pacific Ocean, Christianity ethics, global issues, Indonesia.
- Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQwOJ3UK32E
In 1991, novelist and Asian woman theologian Henriette Marianne Katoppo (1943-2007) was invited to give a speech in front of the audiences at the Christian Responsibilities for Pacific Civilization Conference. This speech covers topics such as “third” world issues, her family’s double-belonging, Christian responsibilities amid many social and ecological catastrophes around the world, and the possibilities of formulating questions.
In the opening, Katoppo asks her audiences to play a game of guessing the English translation for several nations’ names, such as Nusantara (Indonesia), Bharat (India), Nippon (Japan), Chung Kuo (China), etc, to show how name has been used to attribute new identities to the third world countries that are distinct to their own identities. The question of name and English language of one’s country relates to her broader critique of Indonesian injustice that relies on language. This attribution of new identities also occurs in the naming of “Pacific,” a vast ocean that has been a “battleground, testing round, playground, and dumping ground” for the Western countries. She also notes that the nuclear testing before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was one phenomenon that gives an idea of Christian responsibilities in the Pacific.
Mentioning many social and ecological problems in and caused by Western countries, Katoppo asks, “Why organized or established Christianity so often seem to manifest itself as dry intellectualism so lacking in the vibrant radiant life-giving spirituality?” Inviting her audiences to take serious the ethical questions that came from vulnerable countries, she cites John 10 to show that Holy Spirit is the giver of abundant life to all entire world. Accordingly, hoping the Pacific to be truly the “ocean of peace” and the peoples around it to have life of abundance “is our Christian responsibility.”
Video
Source(s)
- Center for Process Studies, “Marianne Katoppo – Toward the Pacific Being an Ocean of Peace,” the 1991 Speech on Christian Responsibilities for Pacific Civilization Conference, video posted on January 30, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQwOJ3UK32E
- Norman Erikson Pasaribu, “Marianne Katoppo: The Frog who Left the Coconut Shell Far Behind,” Asymptote, September 28, 2017, https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2017/09/28/marianne-katoppo-the-frog-who-left-the-coconut-shell-far-behind/
Written by Abel K. Aruan (November 10, 2024); Edited by Abel K. Aruan (January 6, 2025).