Borneo: Island of Contrasts

by Wesley Kawato
Borneo, the world's third largest island, is a land of darkness and light-a place of stark contrasts. Some of the most Christianized people groups live on this tropical island next to some of the most unreached people groups in the world. Three sovereign nations have holdings on this island: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The island has deposits of oil, coal, natural gas, and possibly uranium, yet many people groups live in stark poverty.
Borneo's HistoryBorneo's first settlers were the various Kutei people groups who migrated from the neighboring island of Sulawesi around AD 400. At that time the Kutei were Hindus. Chinese traders later brought Buddhism to the Kutei. There were many conversions to the new religion, but the majority remained Hindu. The Kutei people groups lived in the southern half of the island.
Around AD 1200 events in China sparked a second migration to Borneo. As the Mongols, led by Kublai Khan, invaded China, many people groups fled before them. The Dayaks were one such group. They took to the sea and migrated en masse to the north coast of Borneo. As their population grew, the Dayaks migrated south and contacted the various Kutei people groups migrating north because of population pressure. The two groups intermarried between AD 1200 and 1600. During that time languages evolved, and the Dayaks fragmented into over a dozen people groups, each speaking a related language.
But the Dayak conquest of Borneo was never completed. In 1600 there was still an independent Kingdom of the Kuteis on the south coast of the island, barely hanging onto life. Kutei was under attack from the various Dayak tribes, who by this time had lost all traces of Chinese civilization. Head hunting and cannibalism had become common Dayak practices.
Around this time Indian merchants brought Islam to Kutei and mass conversions took place. By the time Dutch explorers contacted Kutei in 1655 the country was completely Muslim. There were no Hindus or Buddhists left among them.
Some time after 1655, the Malays, a people group from the Malay Peninsula, invaded Borneo. The interior Dayak tribes proved too strong for them, so the Malays only managed to conquer and settle the coastal areas. Kutei collapsed as a result of Malay attacks.
After 1700 the Dutch came in force to Borneo looking for spices they could sell in Europe. They conquered the Malay city-states on the south coast of Borneo. The Dutch called their new colony Kalimantan, from a native word that means "River of Diamonds." While the Dutch were conquering Southern Borneo, the city of Brunei on the north coast conquered one neighbor after another. But the fierce Dayak tribes who controlled the interior slowed Brunei's expansion.
Over the years the various sultans of Brunei did conquer some Dayak territory in what is now the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah. This led to frequent revolts. During the 1830s Sultan Hassim, a brutal Malay dictator who understood little about diplomacy, exacerbated the problem. His policies sparked a civil war in Sarawak in 1838. By 1840 the Dayak rebels were at the gates of the capital city of Brunei. Hassim felt he had no choice but to accept British military aid. Britain felt it was in their best interest to prop up Brunei. A military expedition, led by James Brooke, landed in Sarawak. Brooke used a combination of force and diplomacy to crush the Dayak rebellion.
Christian Missionaries Arrive in BorneoOut of gratitude Sultan Hassim made James Brooke the governor of Sarawak. Brooke wanted to "civilize" the Dayak tribes so he opened Sarawak to Christian missionaries. This action angered Sultan Hassim, a Muslim, so he negotiated a compromise: Missionaries could work with the Dayaks, but would be forbidden to witness to Malays or other Muslim people groups.
Brooke, an Anglican, invited his denomination to evangelize Sarawak. They sent their first missionary in 1848. In 1855 the Roman Catholics sent their first long-term missionary to Sarawak. During the previous two hundred years Catholic missionaries had stopped in Borneo on their way to the Philippines. Some of them had secretly won converts, but no follow-up had ever been done.
The Methodists began a work in Sarawak in 1901. Governor Charles Brooke, who'd succeeded his uncle James, gave a group of Chinese Methodists permission to settle in Sarawak. They were looking for a safe haven after China's bloody Boxer Rebellion.
The Chinese settled in the territory of the Iban, a subgroup of the Dayaks, but they ran into problems when they tried to evangelize these tribesmen. The outreach methods that had won them many Chinese converts didn't work. The Methodists failed to understand the communal mindset of the Iban. Few Ibans would think of changing religion without the approval of the tribal elders.
During the 1920s a group of Australian seminary students saw that the various church mission boards weren't winning many genuine converts among the Dayak tribes. Most fell away from God after a few years. In 1928 Hudson Southwell, Carey Tolley and Frank Davidson formed the Borneo Evangelical Mission (BEM). Governor Charles Brooke assigned the BEM a territory on the Limbang River near villages inhabited by the Bisaya, the Kelabit and the Iban, all Dayak subgroups. They won only a few converts between 1928 and 1936. Some of those converts took the gospel to the Lun Bawang, outside the territory assigned to the BEM. These local missionaries won few converts, but did create curiosity among the Lun Bawang people, thus planting the seeds for a future harvest.
The Lun Bawang were a Dayak people group who lived on both sides of the Sarawak/Kalimantan border. It was common for this people group to be drunk before dawn 100 days out of the year. Disease, crop failure and drunkenness were gradually reducing the Lun Bawang population, which is what Governor Charles Brooke desired. He wanted this people group to die off so their land could be given to other tribes.
But God had other plans. In 1936 Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) missionaries won converts among the Lun Bawangs in Kalimantan. The Lun Bawang people in Sarawak heard stories of changed lives among their countrymen across the border and remembered that the BEM preached a similar message in the nearby Limbang Valley. They invited BEM missionaries to preach among them.
Governor Brooke, blinded by his hatred of the Lun Bawangs, refused to extend the territory assigned to the BEM. For four years the BEM could do nothing except pray for that people group. During those years, local missionaries from across the border reached out to the Lun Bawang in Sarawak. In 1940 Brooke changed his mind and a team of BEM missionaries began working among this people group. By 1941 the Lun Bawang were completely evangelized.
Japan invaded Borneo in December of 1941, disrupting that work. Japan coveted the newly discovered oil fields in Dutch-controlled Kalimantan. All Christian missionaries were herded into prison camps. Between 1941-45 Dayak guerillas tied down thousands of Japanese troops with guerilla attacks. British agents encouraged the Dayaks to eat the Japanese soldiers they killed. The imprisoned missionaries could do nothing to stop this. By 1900 an earlier generation of missionaries had almost ended cannibalism on Borneo. In four years British spies undid that work. After the war missionaries began the process of ending cannibalism once again.
Aft1er Japan surrendered in 1945, missionaries continued their work in British controlled North Borneo and in Kalimantan, which became part of the new country of Indonesia. In the north, the Chinese and Dayak churches merged to form the Evangelical Church of Borneo (SIB) in 1959. More and more the SIB has taken over the job of taking the gospel to unreached people groups, but missionaries still serve among them, mainly in leadership development roles.
Progress has been slower in Kalimantan. Nominalism has almost undone the work of various mission agencies such as the CMA. Indonesia requires all citizens to join one of its five authorized religions. Protestant and Catholic Christianity are two of the choices. That law wasn't enforced until after the abortive communist revolution of 1964. After that the army executed people who refused to register with a religion, fearing they were communists. Many from the Dayak tribes registered as either Protestants or Catholics, flooding churches with nominal believers. They chose Christianity because they hated the coastal Muslim peoples who'd oppressed them for centuries. When Indonesia settled coastal peoples in the interior, many Dayak tribesmen went on a head-hunting rampage in 2001. People claiming to be Christians committed some of the atrocities.