One iron, two economies Isaiah 2:1–5, ecological conversion and Indonesia’s agrarian conflict
Abstract
Agrarian conflict in Indonesia escalated sharply through 2025, with cases involving the military sector rising by three hundred percent, while the state’s framework of Religious Moderation, consolidated through Presidential Regulation No. 58 of 2023, continued to measure communal harmony exclusively as a relation between religious communities. Land, and the violence exercised over it, remained outside all of its indicators. Research on Isaiah 2:1–5 has clustered around three concerns—textual criticism and its relation to Micah 4:1–5, eschatological-theological readings, and political readings of militarism—none of which has adequately developed the material-ecological dimension of weapons transforming into farming implements. This study analyzes Isaiah 2:1–5 as a text of material-ecological conversion and argues for its relevance for a critique of the ecological deficit of Religious Moderation in Indonesia. It employs a qualitative method with socio-historical, exegetical, ecological-hermeneutical, and contextual-theological approaches. The reading finds that swords and plowshares share one metallurgy, one forge, and one biomass base, so that Isaiah 2:4 describes a reallocation of scarce resources rather than a cessation of hostilities, while Joel 4:10 reverses the same formula. The implication is that ecological conversion—at once spiritual turning, material refashioning, and defense conversion—exposes the limits of a moderation securing negative peace alone. The novelty of this study lies in constructing a relation between religious communities and land that extends Religious Moderation from peace between communities toward ecological peace, proposing land as a third party to interreligious relations.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Rivay Bobby Palempung, Ferry Sonny Nixon Lumintang
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