page_title: Batak
section_title: Batak churches
hierarchical_section_title: Batak / Religions / Christianity / Batak churches
caption_attribution_description: English: HKBP church in Balige, Sumatera Utara
context_page_description: Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of closely related Austronesian ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia who speak Batak languages. The term is used to include the Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Toba, Angkola, and Mandailing which are related groups with distinct languages and traditional customs.
context_section_description: The Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) Church was established in Balige in September, 1917. By the late 1920s a nursing school was training nurse midwives there. In 1941, the Gereja Batak Karo Protestan (GBKP) was established. Although missionaries ceded much power to Batak converts in the first decades of the 20th century, Bataks never pressured the missionaries to leave and only took control of church activities as a result of thousands of foreign missionaries being interned or forced to leave after the 1942 invasion of Sumatra by the Japanese.
  The Gereja Kristen Protestan Simalungun, originally part of the HKBP and preaching in Batak Toba language, eventually became a distinctively Simalungun church, adopting Simalungun customs and language, before finally incorporating as GKPS in 1963.
caption: Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) Church in Balige, North Sumatra, built circa 1917.
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