Booming Internet Use during Pandemic on Indonesian Students' Faith: Threat and Opportunity for Sustainable Religious Education and Religious Inherency Formation

Focusing on Indonesia's case, this research discusses how booming internet use impacts students' faith, functioning as both threat and opportunity concerning students' religious inherency and sustainable religious education (RE). This qualitative study analyses six public junior high schools and 48 interviewed participants. To reveal various religions' views, the participants belong to six recognised religions in Indonesia: Islam, Christianity (Protestant), Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. According to thematic analysis, the findings show that teachers and students face challenges in the early shift to online RE, such as technical problems and learning ineffectiveness. These challenges impede student understanding, study preparation and learning motivation, resulting in decreased social skills, lack of communication, declining faith, and weak religious inherency. However, the internet fostered RE continuity during the pandemic, especially contributing to the time efficiency of RE. Therefore, this research formulates the concept of tri-centred religious education, which integrates the roles of family, school, and society to create the students' self-control. Religious values and social norms should be connected to strengthen students' religious inherency.