The Central Sulawesi Christian Church ( id, Gereja Kristen Sulawesi Tengah) is the largest Christian church in

Central Sulawesi Central Sulawesi ( Indonesian: ''Sulawesi Tengah'') is a province of Indonesia located at the centre of the island of Sulawesi. The administrative capital and largest city is located in Palu. The 2010 census recorded a population of 2,635,009 fo ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. It belongs to the Reformed family of churches. The church was established in the early 1893 through the mission work of the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...

(— A.C. Kruyt and N. Adriani — ) and became an independent denomination in 1947 when Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands and ordered all Dutch nationals to go home. November 1993, there was in Tentena a celebration feast for 100 years Christianity. According to the 2004 statistics the GKST (Central Sulawesi Christian Church) now has over 342 congregations and 160,000 members spread throughout the province of Central Sulawesi as well as the northern part of South Sulawesi province. The church is headquartered in the town of Tentena, at the northern end of Lake Poso. In 2006 the church had 188 000 members and 376 congregations served by 625 pastors. On 29 October 2005 three girls who attended the Church's school were found

beheaded Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the ...

near Poso. The girls were killed by six unidentified assailants while on their way to class. The victims were identified as Yarni Sambue (15), Theresia Morangke (16), and Alfita Poliwo (17).

Police The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...

obtained the descriptions of events and the attackers from a survivor, Noviana Malewa (15), who suffered wounds to her face and is in intensive care. The murdered girls are all cousins of Noviana Malewa, who has not been told of their deaths. The girls' bodies were found at the scene of the attack — near a cocoa

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

— and their heads were found at separate locations; one near a church. Reverend Renaldy Damanik heads the synod of the Central Sulawesi Christian Church. Rev. Damanik has been instrumental in attempts to stop the violence that continues to disrupt the lives of both Christians and Muslims since December 1998. The incident described above is only one of many that has occurred in the years since then. The church is affiliated with the

World Communion of Reformed Churches The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) is the largest association of Calvinist churches in the world. It has 230 member denominations in 108 countries, together claiming an estimated 80 million people, thus being the fourth-largest Chris ...

References

{{coord missing, Indonesia Calvinist denominations established in the 19th century Central Sulawesi Members of the World Communion of Reformed Churches Reformed denominations in Indonesia Religious organizations established in 1893