Daniel Sihombing is the newly appointed Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Pilgrim Theological College, starting in January 2025.

Daniel was born and raised in Indonesia, where he gained his undergraduate degree in theology from South East Asia Bible Seminary and taught as sessional and guest lecturer at Amanat Agung Theological Seminary, South East Asia Bible Seminary, Duta Wacana Christian University, and Jakarta Theological Seminary.

Daniel’s master and doctoral degrees are from the Protestant Theological University, Netherlands. He defended his PhD in 2024, with the title Barth and the Shadow of Nothingness: A Post-Soeharto Contextual Reading, in which he critically engages the theological-political stances of three Indonesian theologians towards Soeharto’s military regime in light of his contextual-liberative reading of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. He is revising the manuscript and preparing it for publication.

Daniel is an early career researcher. He is part of the International Network on Theology in the Capitalocene and a member of Talanoa Oceania. He is the Book Review Editor of Critical Research on Religion journal.

Daniel’s teaching and research are very much informed by his experience living on the other side of empire and his commitment to the liberation of the Global South, as a prerequisite for the wider liberation across the globe. For a few years he was part of the core editorial team of IndoProgress, a major socialist media in Indonesia. He is committed to the nurturing of dialectical thinking through his teaching and research, where discussions of theological thoughts are not abstracted from concrete socio-historical dynamic and where competing historical praxes in theological reflections are critically examined, with a view towards the totality of social relations and contradictions.

In 2025, he taught Jesus, Discipleship and Justice and Christianity’s Big Ideas, co-taught Uniting Church History and Theology and The Cracking of Christendom: Theological Issues of the Reformation and contributed to Thinking Otherwise: Feminist Theologies. In 2026, he teaches Trinity, Society and Solidarity and Christianity’s Big Ideas and contributes to Asian and Pasifika Theologies (with UCLT) and Who and What is the Church?

His current topics of research include the Uniting Church in Australia’s Basis of Union, José Míguez Bonino’s liberation theology, and the theology of Karl Barth.

Daniel is an ordained Minister of the Word in the Uniting Church in Australia and Fellow at The Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy. He is a member of the UCA Assembly Continuing Witness Task Group. Prior to his appointment as lecturer at Pilgrim, he was providing supply ministry in Monash Uniting Church, Korean Church of Melbourne and Caulfield Indonesian Uniting Church.

University Appointments

Lecturer in Systematic Theology (Pilgrim Theological College)