While the coastal areas of Sulawesi were Islamicized between the 17th and 19th century, the inhabitants of the central highlands adhered to their ancestral religion. When the established Protestant Church started missionary work in the highlands after 1910, it also sent preachers to Mamasa and the neighboring districts in the south-western part of Central Sulawesi (first baptism 1913). One Dutch minister and a number of Ambonese and Minahasan teacher-preachers worked here until 1928, following the usual Protestant method of Christianization by mass baptism as a preventive measure against Islamicization. In 1928, when this area was taken over by the mission of the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerken (CGK), a conservative Calvinist church body in the Netherlands, the mission made a fresh start, recognizing baptisms administered by its predecessor but counting as Christians only those who went through an intensive process of religious education. The church organization was built up in the same systematic way as in the neighboring GZB mission field (cf. Gereja Toraja no. 40). The elders especially were carefully selected and prepared for their task before they were ordained. GZB and CGK intended the congr on their respective mission fields to coalesce into one church, and in fact around 1950 the church in Mamasa was considered as a regional synod of the Christian Toraja Church. However, several factors, among them the long isolation caused by the Muslim guerilla action between 1950 and 1965, which brought much suffering, caused the Gereja Toraja Mamasa to consider itself as an independent church. After 1965 the church entered upon a phase of reconstruction and consolidation. Around 1982, however, most congr in the northern region of Galumpang seceded and formed a regional church, which took the name Gereja Protestan Sulawesi Selatan. The GTM is active in education, health care (hospital in Mamasa), and agricultural development, and has lay training programs. The church considers June 7, 1947, as its birth date.
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