Original Research

Contested peace and Christian praxis: Leos u nate for ecclesial reconciliation

Jefry Kalalo, Rivo R. Ingkiriwang, Thiosani F. Kaat, Joni K. Kampilong

Received: 12 June 2026; Accepted: 09 July 2026; Published: 18 Aug. 2026

Copyright: © 2026. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

Peace language can sustain Christian reconciliation, but it can also conceal unresolved injury when churches equate harmony with silence. This article examines how leos u nate, a Minahasan-Tombulu moral vocabulary of peace in the heart and communal well-being, is interpreted and contested as a resource for ecclesial reconciliation in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. This study analyses how selected Christian actors mobilise leos u nate in relation to institutional rhetoric, local mediation, memory, truth-telling, accountability and solidarity. The research situates the analysis in a regional ecclesial-cultural field in North Sulawesi, with one observed congregational site in Tomohon and interviews with adult church, cultural and community actors. A qualitative empirical practical-theological design was used. The dataset comprised 25 adult interviews, 3 non-intrusive observations, and 5 church-related documents and analytical memos. Reflexive thematic analysis was interpreted through critical inculturation and postcolonial hermeneutics. The analysis constructs four themes: instrumentalised harmony and structural silencing, authentic restoration through local space and time, collective memory and the refusal of theological amnesia, and organic solidarity as embodied peace praxis. The article concludes that leos u nate deepens Christian reflection on shalom when communities link it to truth, memory and justice, but harms reconciliation when institutional power captures it.

Contribution: The article contributes to empirical practical theology by showing how a North Sulawesi moral grammar of peace functions ambivalently within Christian praxis: as restorative reconciliation when linked to memory, truth and solidarity, and as structural silencing when captured by institutional power.

Keywords: leos u nate; Christian praxis; ecclesial reconciliation; empirical practical theology; postcolonial hermeneutics; inculturation; North Sulawesi.

Introduction

Peace has become one of the most repeated words in ecclesial discourse, yet it remains one of the most fragile practices in congregational life. Churches can speak confidently about reconciliation while wounded relationships continue to circulate beneath liturgical politeness, committee procedures and appeals to unity. This tension matters because Christian peace is not merely the absence of audible conflict. Volf (1996) treats reconciliation as a costly movement towards embrace that cannot evade truth, memory and justice. Lederach (1997, 2003) likewise refuses thin settlement and places reconciliation within a relational space where truth, mercy, justice and peace meet over time. These theological and peacebuilding insights press a practical question: What happens when the language of peace appears before injured parties have been allowed to speak?

Recent Indonesian theological work gives this question immediate urgency. Tjandra, Sunkudon and Baginda (2025) construct a contextual theology of peace after religious conflict in Poso by bringing biblical reflection, local suffering, cultural values and the church’s public vocation into conversation. Their analysis shows that peace after communal violence requires more than ecclesial consolation; it requires a truthful engagement with wounds, resilience and reconciliation. Rantung (2024) approaches religious moderation through Christian religious education and shows that Indonesian churches need pedagogies that form peaceful public relations rather than sectarian anxiety. Sirait (2024), by contrast, diagnoses theological polarisation as a contemporary Indonesian problem and calls for a post-conservative posture that refuses ideological captivity. These studies create the state of the art for Indonesian ecclesial peace: peace must be contextual, pedagogical, public and critical.

North Sulawesi gives this debate a distinct ecclesial and cultural texture. Protestant church life, Minahasan cultural memory and inherited practices of mutual responsibility interact in everyday congregational settings. Ratag (2020) frames the church’s mission through incarnation, proclamation and social demonstration, thereby locating mission in embodied presence rather than detached doctrine. Ratag, Sendow and Lalira (2026) then move this concern into empirical practical theology by mapping typologies of hospitality among Gereja Masehi Injili di Minahasa (GMIM) [Christian Evangelical Church in Minahasa] leaders in North Sulawesi. Their Q methodology study shows that leaders hold divergent configurations of welcome, caution and discipleship-oriented transformation. The present article learns from that empirical turn but shifts the object from hospitality to peace language itself. It asks how a local vocabulary of reconciliation becomes both restorative and dangerous when it enters ecclesial governance, memory and formation.

Scholarship on Minahasan theology and local tradition also clarifies the stakes. Roeroe (2003), Saruan (1991), Supit (1986) and Kaat (2024) demonstrate that Minahasan Christian identity cannot be understood without local languages, symbols and communal histories. These sources do not permit a simplistic opposition between gospel and culture. They show a field of encounter where inherited practices can mediate Christian meaning, but also where interpretation requires discernment. Tewu (2020) adds a crucial gendered warning. Her discussion of women and tradition argues that tradition can restrict women’s participation in church and society even when it carries religious legitimacy. Tewu’s insight matters for this study because peace vocabulary often falls unevenly on those with less institutional power. Women, young people and vulnerable members can be asked to preserve calm while leaders retain interpretive control.

Recent work on local wisdom sharpens this tension. Pantan, Pakpahan and Wiryohadi (2024) show that the Torajan Rambu Solo’ tradition contains values relevant to Christian spirituality and character formation, yet their analysis still depends on theological discernment rather than uncritical affirmation. Hiebert’s (1984) classic account of critical contextualisation offers a useful guardrail here. He rejects both cultural rejection and cultural romanticism, arguing instead for communal discernment in which local practices are examined through Christian truth. Bevans (2002) and Schreiter (1985) place the same concern inside contextual and local theology: theology becomes credible when it emerges from concrete histories, but local symbols remain theologically accountable. In this article, leos u nate is treated in precisely that way, as a local moral grammar that deserves theological attention without being made immune from critique.

Leos u nate stands inside this unresolved tension. In this article, the phrase denotes a peaceful or rightly ordered heart that seeks communal well-being; it is not treated as a direct lexical equivalent of Christian shalom. Three local practices require clarification for readers outside Minahasa. Tumalos refers here to heart-to-heart truthful speech that makes concealed grievance speakable. Foso refers, in the participants’ emic usage, to a domestic or hearth-like gathering space in which disputing bodies sit, eat, listen and confess before symbolic closure. Mapalus refers to Minahasan mutual help and shared burden-bearing. The empirical material for this study shows that leos u nate can support slow reconciliation through these practices, specific confession and social care. The same phrase can also be invoked to silence questions about finance, gendered harm, youth dissent and unresolved trauma. That ambivalence makes leos u nate theologically significant. It is not merely a case of local wisdom enriching Christian practice; it is a contested site where power, speech, memory and ecclesial authority meet.

The scientific gap follows from that ambivalence. Existing literature has addressed Indonesian religious moderation, post-conflict peace theology, Minahasan cultural resources, gender and tradition, local wisdom, and empirical hospitality in North Sulawesi. What remains underexplored is how a local moral vocabulary of peace becomes contested within Christian praxis itself. The field needs empirical work that traces not only what a local term means, but also how different actors use it in meetings, sermons, mediation, catechesis, documents and everyday care. It also needs a theological reading that can distinguish life-giving inculturation from ecclesial capture. Without such analysis, discussions of local wisdom risk celebrating cultural vocabulary while overlooking the ways churches can use that vocabulary to manage risk, defer accountability or protect institutional comfort.

Postcolonial hermeneutics deepens the gap by turning a cultural question into a question of interpretive power. Kwok (2021) asks theology to examine who controls interpretation and whose experience gains authority as theological knowledge. Donaldson and Kwok (eds. 2002) connect this issue with feminist critique, showing how religious discourse can preserve domination when marginal voices are treated as disruptive. Applied to leos u nate, postcolonial hermeneutics does not reduce all church conflict to colonial history. Rather, it asks how a post-missionary ecclesial context authorises some actors to define peace while others are asked to carry wounds silently. The question is therefore not whether leos u nate is local or Christian enough. The harder question is who gets to say what peace means and what kind of Christian praxis that interpretation produces.

This study therefore aims to examine how selected Christian actors in North Sulawesi interpret, contest and practise leos u nate as a local resource for ecclesial reconciliation. It asks how this vocabulary is mobilised in institutional rhetoric, observed congregational behaviour, local mediation and social solidarity, and how critical inculturation and postcolonial hermeneutics can interpret its theological significance. The article argues that leos u nate deepens Christian reflection on shalom when joined to memory, truth, accountability and embodied solidarity. It becomes harmful when used to demand silence, suppress dissent or transform reconciliation into institutional self-protection.

Research methods and design

Design

The study used a qualitative empirical practical-theological design. It was not designed to measure the frequency of attitudes towards leos u nate across a population. Instead, it examined how selected Christian actors narrated, contested and interpreted leos u nate within concrete ecclesial practice. Empirical practical theology was appropriate because the question concerned Christian praxis: how peace is preached, administered, resisted, remembered and embodied. The design also allowed theological interpretation to arise from lived accounts rather than from doctrinal abstraction alone.

The design combined reflexive thematic analysis with theological interpretation. Reflexive thematic analysis was chosen because it allows themes to be constructed through sustained engagement with meaning, context and researcher reflexivity rather than through mechanical coding (Braun & Clarke 2006, 2022). The interpretive frame brought critical inculturation and postcolonial hermeneutics into conversation. Critical inculturation examined how a local moral vocabulary can be received, tested and transformed within Christian praxis. Postcolonial hermeneutics examined how interpretive authority, cultural vocabulary and institutional power interact in a post-missionary ecclesial context.

Setting

The empirical field was North Sulawesi, Indonesia, with attention to selected Minahasan Christian contexts and one observed congregational site in Tomohon. Lahendong functioned as a concrete ecclesial site where tensions around peace language, governance, memory and relational repair became visible. The interviews, however, included actors whose ecclesial, cultural and theological experience extended beyond one congregation. The study therefore treats North Sulawesi as a regional ecclesial-cultural field rather than as a statistically bounded population.

This formulation is important methodologically. The study does not claim denominational or statistical representativeness. It offers an interpretive account of how selected adult Christian actors, local cultural figures and community participants make sense of leos u nate as a contested vocabulary of peace. The strength of the design lies in analytic depth, triangulation and theological interpretation, not in numerical generalisation. Claims are therefore made about patterns visible in the selected field, not about all Minahasan or Indonesian churches.

Participants and sampling

Participants were selected purposively to provide variation in ecclesial role, gender, generation, cultural knowledge and experience of conflict or reconciliation. The wider dataset consisted of 25 adult participants. They included pastors, elders, lay leaders, a finance-related church officer, local cultural figures, a theological educator, a diaconal leader, community actors and older congregational members with memories of conflict. All participants were adults. Accounts involving minors or potentially identifiable family members were excluded from direct quotation in the article.

The analysis did not use all interviews equally. Ten participants served as primary quoted cases because their accounts gave thick descriptions of institutional silencing, local mediation, memory, trauma, accountability or solidarity. Other interviews functioned as supporting material in coding and theme review. Redundant excerpts were retained in the audit trail but not repeated as main quotations. This decision reduced unnecessary repetition and protected the article from overstating the frequency of a theme merely because similar voices had been recorded.

Data collection

Data were collected through anonymised semi-structured interviews, three non-intrusive observations, five church-related documents and analytical memos. Interviews explored the meaning of leos u nate, experiences of conflict and reconciliation, the role of speech and silence, memory, forgiveness, accountability, gendered and generational dynamics, and the relationship between local culture and Christian faith. The interviews were conducted in Indonesian, with local terms retained where they carried theological or cultural specificity. Quotations used in the article were translated into English by the authors, while key local terms were preserved in italics and translated at first substantive use. The translations prioritise the sense of participants’ usage rather than literal equivalence.

Observation focused on ordinary ecclesial settings rather than staged research events. Observation O01 examined the gap between liturgical rhetoric on peace and post-worship patterns of social distance. Observation O02 observed a meeting in which a financial accountability question was framed as a threat to leos u nate. Observation O03 observed an informal mediation in which tumalos, foso, shared food and specific confession created conditions for relational repair. Document analysis focused on five church-related texts concerning sermons on peace, discipline and dispute procedure, reconciliation liturgy, meeting records and catechetical formation. These documents were analysed as institutional discourse rather than neutral background.

Data analysis

The analysis followed six movements associated with reflexive thematic analysis: familiarisation, initial coding, construction of candidate themes, theme review, naming and defining themes, and writing the theological interpretation. Initial codes included contested peace, silence-risk, financial transparency, accountability, forgiveness, trauma-memory, inculturation, solidarity and postcolonial agency. The codes were compared across interviews, observations and documents so that a theme was not built on one striking quotation alone.

The four final themes were constructed through iterative reading of the dataset. Theme 1 links interviews with P01, P02 and P11 to O02 and D04. Theme 2 links P07 and P14 to O03. Theme 3 links P18 and P31 to D01 and O01. Theme 4 links P15 and P28 to D05. The writing stage then brought these themes into dialogue with theological literature on shalom, reconciliation, inculturation, practical theology and postcolonial hermeneutics. The analysis treated theological interpretation as part of the analytic process, not as an appendix added after empirical description.

Trustworthiness

Credibility was strengthened through triangulation across interviews, observations and documents. For example, participant accounts of structural silencing were read alongside observation of a church meeting and a church document that deferred questions about financial accountability in the name of peace. Transferability was supported by a thick description of the regional ecclesial-cultural field and by caution against claims of statistical representation. Dependability was supported through an audit trail that included interview summaries, observation notes, document matrices and coding memos. Confirmability was strengthened by distinguishing verbatim or cleaned participant quotations from analytic notes.

Researcher reflexivity also mattered because the topic touched sensitive ecclesial relationships. The analysis therefore avoided presenting one group as simply virtuous and another as simply oppressive. Institutional misuse of peace language was named where the data supported it, but the article also retained accounts of authentic restoration and organic solidarity. This balance matters theologically because the study does not reject ecclesial order, liturgy or leadership. It questions forms of ecclesial order that use peace language to close down truthful speech before wounded relationships have been repaired.

Ethical considerations

The Universitas Kristen Indonesia Tomohon granted an ethical waiver for this minimal-risk qualitative study (No. 114/LPPM-UKIT/V/2026). The waiver covered anonymised adult interviews, non-intrusive observation and church-related document analysis. All participants received information on the purpose of the study, voluntary participation, confidentiality and their right to withdraw. Identifying details were removed from quotations, especially material concerning conflict, finances, gendered harm and trauma.

Results

The analysis generated four themes. They show why leos u nate must be read as a contested resource. The same vocabulary can function as a mechanism of institutional control, a grammar of authentic restoration, an ethic of memory and a practice of social solidarity. Table 1 summarises the final thematic structure.

Instrumentalised harmony and the risk of structural silencing

The first theme concerns the institutional misuse of leos u nate. Participants did not reject peace; they rejected the use of peace language to end difficult speech before truth had been heard. P01, a pastor, described leos u nate as ‘a peaceful heart that radiates into communal tranquillity’, but immediately distinguished that meaning from its bureaucratic use in church decision-making. He argued that leaders had sometimes reduced the phrase to a mechanism for managing dissent rather than repairing relationships:

‘Leaders often reduce this term into a tool of bureaucratic control. We force the congregation to remain silent and accept unilateral decisions in order to protect the image of institutional harmony. That is not leos u nate at all. It is structural oppression wrapped in symbolic violence with religious language.’ (P01, male, 47 years old, congregational pastor)

This account gained empirical weight through governance and finance data. One participant narrated a meeting in which a request for receipts was framed as a threat to peace. His language was deliberately moral and theological: ‘True leos u nate cannot be born from financial darkness. Peace built on unclear budgets is corrupt peace’ (P11, male, 38 years old, church finance officer). The point was not that finance replaced theology. Rather, participants perceived transparency as part of reconciliation because mistrust can lodge in budgets, minutes and decisions as much as in interpersonal offence.

The document analysis confirmed that this was not an isolated interpersonal problem. Document D04 recorded that questioning over receipts had been deferred ‘for the sake of preserving leos u nate and focusing on ministry’. The phrase functioned as a procedural veto. Observation O02 showed the same pattern in behaviour. When a younger office-bearer asked for budget clarification, a leader warned that excessive debate could disturb leos u nate. The participant withdrew the question, and the room became cautious. Silence did not indicate shared peace; it indicated the immediate effect of hierarchy.

The theme also carried gendered and generational dimensions. Supporting interviews with women and younger participants described situations in which calls for harmony became pressure to stop speaking about gendered unfairness, youth participation or exclusion from decision-making. These accounts do not prove that every invocation of leos u nate silences marginal voices. They do show, however, that appeals to peace can fall unevenly on those with less institutional authority. In these cases, karema, socially enforced shame or reluctance, did not function as moral humility. It became a pressure that taught people to withdraw before truth had been heard.

The empirical meaning of Theme 1 is therefore precise. Leos u nate was instrumentalised when leaders converted peace from a relational discipline into institutional risk management. Congregational calm then protected authority from critique, while those who raised questions were labelled divisive. Theologically, this pattern exposed a distortion of shalom: calmness without justice became ecclesial self-preservation rather than reconciliation.

Authentic restoration through local space and time

The second theme prevents a one-sided critique of local culture. Participants also described situations in which leos u nate enabled genuine restoration. These accounts usually took place outside formal liturgical procedures and within slower local spaces of speech, bodily presence and shared time. P07, an elder involved in mediation, described a conflict over land boundaries that had nearly become violent. He did not begin with a sermon or an order to forgive. He brought the two families into a foso and allowed anger to be spoken before asking for confession:

‘On the first night, we only listened to them pour out their anger. I did not interrupt; I did not advise. Let the fire of anger die down by itself. On the third night, we made a specific confession of wrongdoing. Not merely, “forgive me”, but “I was wrong because I moved the boundary marker on a rainy night”. After that confession, only then did we eat together. Leos u nate born from this process was not false harmony. It was the healing of a broken bone.’ (P07, male, 72 years old, church elder and conflict mediator)

P14, a Minahasan Christian cultural figure, gave a similar interpretation. In his account, ancestral practices of mapalus and tumalos were not nostalgic ornaments. They named a communal discipline of shared burden-bearing, truthful speech and public restoration. He criticised what he called instant reconciliation in churches: two parties shake hands near the altar, photographs record the moment, but hostility continues outside worship. For P14, the missing elements were time, acknowledgement and restoration. Without those elements, leos u nate becomes a liturgical slogan.

Observation O03 gave behavioural support for this theme. In an informal mediation setting, the parties were not rushed towards agreement. The mediator allowed anger, memory and admission to appear before any symbolic act of closure. The use of tumalos and foso emerged organically, not as a quotation imposed from above. Space mattered because the domestic setting loosened the hierarchy of the church office. Time mattered because confession could not be scheduled into a brief ritual. Food mattered because eating together followed truthful speech rather than replacing it. The sequence matters empirically: anger was received, wrongdoing was named, confession became specific and the shared meal came after truth rather than before it. In this example, truthful memory initiated repair because the parties could name the offence without being forced into instant closure.

The empirical pattern shows that local practices do not merely decorate Christian reconciliation. They can preserve temporal and relational conditions that formal procedures sometimes compress. This does not mean that adat practice is inherently more faithful than ecclesial procedure. It means that the church can learn from local practices when they protect presence, speech, confession and restored communion. Theme 2 therefore identifies a constructive possibility: leos u nate becomes theologically fruitful when it is embodied through slow restoration rather than managed through institutional efficiency.

Collective memory and the refusal of theological amnesia

The third theme concerns memory. Several participants resisted the idea that reconciliation requires forgetting. P18, an older congregational member, recalled a conflict between extended families that had been publicly quieted but never healed. Church leaders had invited members to forget in the name of leos u nate. One participant rejected that logic:

‘Peace built on forgetting is fragile peace. True leos u nate does not ask us to erase memory. It invites us to remember the wound in the light of gospel justice and transform it into wisdom. When the church forces victims to be silent and forget for the sake of calm, the church betrays shalom.’ (P18, male, 68 years old, senior congregational member)

P31 extended this theme through collective trauma. Having experienced social-political violence, he described institutional fear of memory as a theological failure. Forgetting protected the surface of peace but left victims without a truthful hearing. In his words, ‘Forgiveness without truth is double oppression against victims’ (P31, male, 70 years old, senior congregational member and survivor of social conflict). The statement is severe, but it captures a repeated concern in the data. Participants did not reject forgiveness; they rejected forgiveness detached from truth, narrative space and justice.

Document D01 sharpened the contrast. A sermon series on peace repeatedly urged members to ‘guard the tongue’ and ‘yield’ for communal tranquillity, but it gave little space to restorative justice or narrative testimony. Observation O01 showed a similar disjunction. A sermon invoked leos u nate as a divine call to forgive and preserve the body of Christ, yet post-worship interaction revealed rigid spatial clustering and avoidance between groups. The data therefore suggest that amnesia can be produced liturgically and socially. People can repeat words of peace while bodies still remember injury through distance, silence and avoidance.

This theme does not glorify memory as resentment. Participants distinguished destructive rumination from truthful remembrance. Their concern was that churches sometimes treated memory itself as the enemy of peace. The empirical evidence suggests the opposite. P18’s sequence clarifies the healing logic: public quieting failed because it denied narrative space, while truthful remembering began repair because it allowed injury to be named within gospel justice. P31’s account makes the same point at the level of collective trauma. Memory becomes the beginning of healing when it allows wounded persons to name what happened, refuse erasure and locate forgiveness within justice. The refusal of theological amnesia therefore became one of the clearest theological contributions of the fieldwork.

Organic solidarity as embodied peace praxis

The fourth theme shows that leos u nate extends beyond conflict resolution. Participants described it as an impulse towards social solidarity and diaconal action. P15, a woman leader involved in ecclesial diaconal coordination, described a church-based instance of authentic leos u nate. She rejected the idea that leos u nate only matters after conflict has erupted. She narrated the response to a woman who had lost her husband and faced medical debt. The community did not wait for a formal programme. Women organised meals, school support and sustained care:

‘Leos u nate is an inner condition that refuses to let another person suffer alone. When our hearts are made peaceful by the love of Christ, we cannot sleep well if our neighbour is hungry. The women in my area took turns cooking at the mourning house for 40 days. We supported the children’s schooling together. This is the embodiment of si tou timou tumou tou.’ (P15, female, 41 years old, diaconal leader)

‘Si tou timou tumou tou’ is a Minahasan ethic that can be rendered as ‘human beings live to give life to other human beings’.

P28 interpreted the same logic through distributive justice. He argued that mapalus is not merely a church-cleaning activity or a monthly group routine. At its root, it is an egalitarian support system. His question was pointed: ‘How can the heart be peaceful if another church member is hungry while we are busy singing about peace?’ (P28, male, 76 years old, Minahasan cultural leader). This account widened the meaning of reconciliation. A community may not be in open conflict, yet peace remains incomplete when vulnerability is left unattended. Together, P15 and P28 show an ecclesial counter-example to institutionalised harmony: authentic leos u nate made grief, debt and hunger visible without shaming the vulnerable household.

Document D05 showed why this theme matters for formation. The catechetical material tended to teach leos u nate as obedience to elders and leaders. Participants’ accounts of organic solidarity offered a different pedagogy. Young people and vulnerable members do not learn peace by being told to keep quiet. They learn it when the church demonstrates that peace feeds, visits, supports, listens and restores. In this sense, leos u nate becomes a lived pedagogy of Christian praxis rather than a rule of submission.

Theme 4 balances the article’s critique. The data do not portray leos u nate as merely a tool of silencing, and they do not make local cultural practice a perfect alternative to the church. They show that the phrase can name a constructive social ethic when it joins inner tranquillity to external care. Peace becomes embodied when it redistributes burden, protects dignity and refuses to leave the vulnerable alone. Theologically, this theme connects leos u nate to diakonia and to a practical account of shalom as concrete well-being.

Discussion

From romantic inculturation to critical inculturation

The findings complicate celebratory accounts of local wisdom. Pantan et al. (2024) show that Indonesian local tradition can contribute to spirituality and character formation when read through Christian discernment. The present study agrees, but it adds a harder practical-theological warning: the same local vocabulary can become an instrument of domination when captured by ecclesial power. Leos u nate therefore cannot be celebrated as local wisdom without asking how it is used, who benefits from its use and who must remain silent when it is invoked.

Hiebert’s (1984) critical contextualisation helps interpret this ambivalence. Rejecting leos u nate as merely cultural would impoverish local theology. Accepting it uncritically would baptise institutional manipulation. Critical inculturation requires a third movement: the church receives local moral grammar as a possible medium of Christian truth, but tests it through the gospel’s demand for justice, confession and restored communion. Bevans (2002) and Schreiter (1985) support this movement by treating context as a source of theology that remains subject to theological discernment. The data sharpen their claim by showing where discernment must occur: in meetings, budgets, sermons, memories and meal practices.

This is also where the article contributes to empirical practical theology. It shows that inculturation is not only a question of doctrinal translation. It is a question of practice. A term may sound local and theologically warm while functioning institutionally as a barrier against truth. Conversely, a local practice may appear ordinary, such as sitting in a foso or cooking for a grieving family, yet embody a more truthful account of shalom than formal speech about unity. Critical inculturation must therefore read the social life of doctrine, not only its conceptual meaning.

Peace, memory and the refusal of cheap reconciliation

The theme of memory places this study in dialogue with Volf and Lederach. Volf (1996) does not allow embrace to bypass truth; memory must be healed, not erased. Lederach (1997, 2003) reads reconciliation as the creation of relational space where truth, mercy, justice and peace meet over time. The North Sulawesi data confirm that insight. Participants resisted reconciliation that arrives as command before injured relationships have been heard. They did not reject forgiveness; they rejected forgiveness used to close the past before the past had been truthfully named.

Tjandra et al. (2025) reach a similar point in their contextual theology of peace after the Poso conflict. They argue that local churches must integrate biblical teaching, lived suffering and cultural values in a framework of reconciliation, interreligious dialogue and resilience. The present study works on a smaller ecclesial scale, but it exposes a related danger. Churches can invoke peace as a theological good while avoiding the testimonies that peace requires. P18 and P31 show that wounded memory does not necessarily threaten reconciliation. It threatens only those versions of reconciliation that depend on amnesia.

The phrase ‘theological amnesia’ names this danger. It refers to a religious demand to forget injury before truth, confession and justice have been pursued. The concept should not be confused with the healing of memory. Healing allows memory to be re-narrated within grace; amnesia erases memory to protect institutional comfort. In this distinction, leos u nate becomes a test of ecclesial integrity. It can help wounds become wisdom, or it can ask wounded people to disappear for the sake of calm.

Postcolonial hermeneutics and the authority of local voices

Postcolonial hermeneutics helps name the power dynamics within the data. Kwok (2021) insists that theology must ask whose knowledge counts and who is authorised to interpret culture. Donaldson and Kwok (eds. 2002) add that feminist and postcolonial readings expose religious discourse that sustains domination under sacred language. In this study, the crucial issue was not whether leos u nate belonged to local culture. The issue was who gained authority to define it in practice. Leaders sometimes defined it as quiet acceptance; wounded participants defined it as truthful restoration; women and younger members defined it as the right to speak without being condemned as divisive.

This postcolonial reading has limits. It does not reduce every ecclesial conflict to colonial history, nor does it romanticise the local against the institutional. Rather, it examines how interpretive authority, cultural vocabulary and institutional power interact in a post-missionary ecclesial context. The data show a form of internal coloniality when local peace language is used by ecclesial elites to discipline those with less power. That domination is not colonial because it comes from outside; it is colonial in form because it controls meaning, silences dissent and presents obedience as peace.

This finding resonates with Tewu’s (2020) critique of patriarchal tradition. Tewu argues that tradition can restrict women’s agency in church and society, while the gospel opens a liberating horizon. The present study shows a similar structure in peace discourse. The question is not whether tradition is good or bad. The question is whether tradition is interpreted in ways that protect the vulnerable or protect hierarchy. Manampiring and Tewu’s (2025) analysis of Christian political polarisation in Tomohon also matters here. They argue that Christian public life needs a theological ethic capable of resisting polarising power. Leos u nate offers one such vocabulary only when it refuses to become a quietist ethic.

Embodied space, time and ecclesial accountability

The discussion of space serves the article’s central argument rather than a separate architectural thesis. The article uses foso cautiously. Published studies of Minahasan celebration describe foso primarily within ritual and feasting culture rather than as a stable architectural category (Jura, Simatupang & Rumbay 2024; Weichart 2007:12). The field data, however, show that participants used foso emically to name a domestic or hearth-like gathering space where disputing bodies stayed present, ate, listened and confessed. The study therefore treats the term as a spatial clue that reveals how leos u nate becomes embodied practice.

The contrast between Observation O02 and Observation O03 turns space into theological evidence. In Observation O02, the church meeting room organised authority through agenda, office, procedural calm and the leader’s power to close financial questioning. In Observation O03, the local domestic setting organised reconciliation through shared sitting, waiting, food, narrative and specific confession. De Beer (2016) argues that reconciliation requires attention to the spaces where injustice becomes organised and sustained. The North Sulawesi data confirm this insight at congregational scale: space did not simply host reconciliation; it disciplined the form that reconciliation could take.

This spatial reading does not romanticise domestic or customary space. Jura et al. (2024) show that Minahasan cultural practices such as mapalus and foso have undergone religious and institutional reshaping, including shifts in authority towards church and government structures. Domestic and adat-centred spaces can also reproduce seniority, patriarchal authority and male-dominated speech. Tewu’s (2020) critique of tradition and women’s agency therefore remains necessary. The theological value of foso lies not in cultural form as such, but in the relational conditions it can generate when women, youth, injured parties and socially weaker actors receive genuine space to speak.

Ratag’s (2020) incarnational account of mission strengthens this ecclesial reading because it treats mission as embodied presence and social demonstration. Ratag et al. (2026) show empirically that North Sulawesi church leaders hold different theological postures towards hospitality, with tensions between compassion, protection, reciprocity and structural change. This article extends that trajectory. Peace language itself has divergent practical forms: it can protect institutional order, or it can become a bodily discipline of presence, confession and care.

Pillay’s (2022) account of social justice and diakonia in the Reformed tradition helps interpret Theme 4. Peace becomes credible when it feeds, supports and restores the vulnerable. P15’s account of women organising food, school support and communal care after a death shows leos u nate as diaconal praxis. Louw’s (2016, 2017) work on hospitality, displacement and home adds another layer: a church becomes a home when vulnerable persons find recognition, belonging and care. Leos u nate becomes Christian praxis when it creates that form of home.

Implications for ecclesial leadership and formation

The findings have four implications. Firstly, church leaders should not invoke leos u nate before injured parties have spoken. Peace language must follow truth, not replace it. Secondly, transparency in finance and governance should be treated as a practice of peace. When financial questions are labelled divisive, the church confuses unity with unaccountable authority. Thirdly, women, young people and vulnerable members need protected spaces for speech because calls for harmony often fall most heavily on those least able to resist them. Fourthly, formation materials should teach leos u nate as truthful solidarity rather than mere obedience to elders or leaders.

The church does not need to reproduce foso, tumalos and mapalus mechanically. Their deeper logic matters more: time, presence, mutual responsibility, specific confession and shared burden. These elements can help churches move from ritual harmony to restorative Christian praxis. Leos u nate therefore offers a contribution to wider practical theology, not as a model to export, but as a local grammar that forces churches to ask whether their peace heals bodies or merely protects institutions.

Ratag’s incarnational account of mission sharpens this implication. If Christian reconciliation follows the logic of incarnation, the church cannot remain a managerial body that summons wounded people into controlled spaces, declares calm and calls that peace. Incarnational praxis requires the church to inhabit slow, vulnerable and embodied spaces where pain can be heard before reconciliation is announced. The practical issue, then, concerns more than mediation technique. It concerns the church’s mode of presence among wounded bodies: whether it arrives as an administrator of closure or as a patient witness to truth, confession and restored communion.

This also guards the article against anti-institutional misreading. The study does not argue that liturgy, leadership or ecclesial procedure are inherently oppressive. It argues that they require constant theological accountability. In this dataset, liturgical speech more clearly covered memory than opened it, while diaconal and small-group ecclesial practices offered stronger examples of authentic leos u nate. Leadership can protect the vulnerable or protect itself. Procedure can create fairness or compress confession. Leos u nate becomes a resource for Christian praxis when it presses institutions towards truthful speech, not when it shields them from it.

Conclusion

Leos u nate emerges in this study as a contested local resource for ecclesial reconciliation in North Sulawesi. It cannot be reduced to a simple cultural synonym for peace, and churches should not treat it as a ready-made method for conflict resolution. The empirical findings show that leos u nate heals when communities embody it through tumalos, foso, patient memory, specific confession, social solidarity and justice. The same vocabulary harms when leaders use it to demand silence, suppress dissent, defer accountability or ask victims to forget unresolved wounds.

The study contributes an empirical practical-theological reading of a local moral grammar. It brings interviews, observations and documents into dialogue with critical inculturation and postcolonial hermeneutics to show how local theology emerges from contested practice rather than romanticised culture. Theologically, leos u nate deepens Christian reflection on shalom by insisting that a peaceful heart cannot be separated from truthful speech, wounded memory, accountable leadership and embodied care.

This study draws on selected adult Christian actors and ecclesial materials in North Sulawesi and does not represent all Minahasan or Indonesian churches. Some data came from observed ecclesial sites, while broader interviews extended across a regional field. Future research could compare leos u nate with other Indonesian or Global South vocabularies of reconciliation, examine congregational practices over a longer period or focus specifically on how women and young people contest inherited peace language. The urgent question for churches, then, is not whether they possess local vocabularies of peace, but whether they have the courage to audit how those vocabularies heal, silence or redistribute power within Christian praxis.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the institutional facilitation and collegial support that enabled the completion of this study. The authors also thank the church, cultural and community actors who shared their reflections anonymously.

The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

Jefry Kalalo: Conceptualisation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Rivo R. Ingkiriwang: Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Thiosani F. Kaat: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Joni K. Kampilong: Formal analysis, Methodology, Resources, Writing – review & editing. All authors reviewed the article, contributed to the discussion of results, approved the final version for submission and publication, and take responsibility for the integrity of its findings.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available because they contain anonymised interview material, observation notes and church-related documents concerning sensitive issues of conflict, finance, gendered harm and trauma. Selected anonymised excerpts are included in the article. Further access to the raw data is restricted to protect participant confidentiality and may be considered by the corresponding author, Jefry Kalalo, only under appropriate ethical and institutional conditions.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency, or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings, and content.

References