Christianity came to the Minahasa in 1563 when the Portuguese sent a missionary who, after two weeks of preparations, baptized 1,500 people. The war with Ternate, which broke out in 1570, prevented the expansion of the mission to other regions of North Sulawesi where a request for missionaries had been made; as a result, in the next century these regions became Islamicized. Even in the Minahasa, the mission was continued only in a desultory way by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, their successors in the North Moluccas. When the Dutch arrived, what remained of the local Christians, about 2,500 souls, were protestantized (1666, cf. Gereja Protestan Maluku, no. 36, and Gereja Masehi Injili Sangir Talaud, no. 27). But the Dutch never placed a resident church minister in the Minahasa, as they did in Ambon. Thus until the 19th century the number of Christians did not increase, and Christian influence was so shallow that no fusion of the Christian faith and Minahasan religion took place and no Minahasan parallel of the “Ambonese religion” and the Moluccan Corpus Christianum developed. In 1817 Joseph Kam (see GPM, no. 36) came to the Minahasa for the first time. He arranged for missionaries to be sent. In the next half century the Minahasa became the showpiece of the Dutch mission. In 1880 more than 80% of the population had been baptized and numbers of well-educated teacher-preachers were were in charge of the congr. But no independent church was created, and around 1875 the congr were handed over to the established Protestant Church (see GPI). At the same time, the Rcath Mission penetrated into the Minahasa and became a competitor of Protestantism. Under the GPI regime the church continued to grow in numbers, and hundreds of Minahasan teacher-preachers brought the Gospel to mission fields in Central and Western Indonesia. But the church was not prepared for self-government and self-support.It was not until after 1927 that the combined pressure of nationalism and new insights within the mission (H. Kraemer) and the GPI rapidly led to independence. In 1934 the GMIM was instituted. One of the features of the Minahasa in those days was the openness of its people toward modernity and even secularism. During the first years the Synod of the GMIM was still chaired by a Dutch minister. In 1942, however, the Minahasan minister, A. Z. R. Wenas, took his place. From 1942 until his death in 1967 he was the most visible and influential leader of the GMIM. During World War II he found a way to maintain reasonable relations with the Japanese authorities without renouncing the faith; in 1957-1961 he he had to cope with the consequences of the PERMESTA rebellion against the central government. Both wars brought much destruction to the Minahasa, while the civil war of 1958-1961 created bitterness between individuals and villages. Another factor which threatened to tear apart Minahasan society was politics, especially the rise of the Communist party. As early as 1956 this church issued a manifesto against Marxist ideology; the church leadership consistently tried to maintain church unity in the midst of political strife. After 1971 political discord receded into the background, and the church had to face more practical problems caused by corruption, the introduction of large-scale lotteries, and the boom of the clove market which brought sudden wealth to the Minahasa. In the meantime, the church tried to adapt its order, rewriting it to give more autonomy to the local congr in 1951, and centralizing again 20 years later. The church has several hospitals and a large number of clinics; it is very active in school education. Besides the Universitas Kristen Tomohon, which was founded starting from the Theological Academy already there, the large lay training center in Kaaten should be mentioned. It publishes a magazine,Warta GMIM. The GMIM considers September 30, 1934, as its birth date.
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