New Religions and Controversial Groups in Indonesia

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It's this, Eden's outspoken criticism of religion, that attracted researcher Al Makin to study the group. He eventually wrote a book about his time with Eden titled, Challenging Islamic Orthodoxy: Accounts of Lia Eden and Other Prophets in Indonesia, where he argued that Eden was a New Religious Movement (NRM), not a cult.

Al Makin tracked the emergence of groups like Eden at the turn of the new millennium as a response to the political turmoil of the time and beliefs that we were entering the end times—because 99 is the final number, and 00 is an end, or a new beginning, depending who you ask.

He discovered that as many as 1,300 NRMs had taken root in Indonesia since the country declared its independence in 1945. Most of them were concerned with syncretism, the blending religions, cultures, and schools of thought. But Eden was alone in offering a clearly articulated criticism of organized religion. The members of Eden had actually read all of the holy texts of the Abrahamic religions, studying them and using scriptures and verses in an attempt to bolster their own beliefs, Al Makin told me.