West Java was Islamized in the 16th century. Christian missionary work was started in 1863 by a Dutch mission body, the NZV. The missionaries took a very antithetic attitude toward Islam and Sundanese culture. Progress among the Sundanese was extremely slow. In the meantime a Dutch layman, member of the Supreme Court of the Dutch Indies, gathered a number of converts using less orthodox methods together with the forms of Javanese magical learning. In 1885 the two streams converged, and in 1934, when there were 4,000 Sundanese Christians, the first Synod of the Gereja Kristen Pasundan convened. Until World War II the Synod was chaired by a missionary. In 1942 a troubled period began which, for the GKP, lasted into the fifties due to an Islamistic revolt which broke out in West Java after the War of Independence ended in 1949. However, the church survived, and after the revolt petered out, it entered upon a period of quiet consolidation. The church has a number of schools and a large hospital in Bandung. The church publishes a monthly magazine. It considers November 14, 1934, as its birth date.
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