This study focuses on the experiences of patients and their families, with particular religious background but choose to get healthcare services at religiously affiliated hospitals that are different from their religion, namely Bethesda, Panti Rapih and PKU Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. This study aims to show the role of the three hospitals in strengthening interreligious relations in Yogyakarta. This expectation is not excessive considering that the three hospitals have served the people of Yogyakarta for tens or even hundreds of years. Bethesda Hospital has been established since 1890, while PKU Muhamamdiyah and Panti Rapih were established in 1923 and 1929. The role of religiously affiliated hospitals in strengthening interreligious relations in Yogyakarta has become relevant and pivotal because in recent years many cases of religious intolerance have occurred in Yogyakarta. These cases occurred in various social settings such as boarding houses, religious events, houses of worship, schools, campuses, even to the cemetery. This has resulted the image changing of Yogyakarta from what has been known as the City of Tolerance to the City of Intolerance. Such a situation raises the urgency to promote a new base of interreligious relations in Yogyakarta. However, the new base should ideally be a social an organization that is conducive to participation, simultaneously tolerant toward ethno-religious diversity, facilitate civility and pluralism and can be supplier of public narrative that encourage to build harmonies interreligious relations. Meanwhile, regarding the non-discriminative principle of hospital service, every year these three hospitals serve tens of thousands of patients from various religious backgrounds and no case of intolerance or discrimination reported. Thus, these three religiously affiliated hospitals have fulfilled all four categories. In conducting this research, I did in-depth interviews from February 2021-April 2022 with forty-five informants consisting of: 12 patients/families from various religious backgrounds except Christian Protestant who have been treated at Bethesda; 12 patients/families from various religious backgrounds except Catholics who have been treated at Panti Rapih; and 9 patients/families from various religious backgrounds except Islam, who have been treated at PKU Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. Furthermore, to get better picture of the hospital history and its service, I also interviewed 3 religious leaders (1 Protestant priest, 1 Catholic parish priest, 1 Buddhist priest); 1 pastoral care staff from each hospital; 1 doctor/cardiologist, 1 nurse, 1 cleaning service, who are not Christian or Catholic from Bethesda and Panti Rapih. Unfortunately, regarding the COVID-19 pandemic during the time of my research, most of my interviews were conducted outside the hospital, with informants who have been hospitalized in one of these three hospitals. Two main theories of this dissertation come from Peter L. Berger and R.D. Putnam. Berger argues pluralism is not only a philosophical concept but also as a human empirical experience of social situations in which people with different ethnicities, religions, worldviews, and moralities live together peacefully and interact with each other amicably. The peaceful and amicable interaction can be realized if there is commensality and connubium or eating together and dinner conversation /pillow talk. Interestingly, Berger argue that the phenomenon of pluralism is happen in one crucially important institution which is hospital, because in terms of attitude, hospital is an institution which is in its service should practice no discrimination toward people from different ethnicity or religion regarding humanity. Finally, following Putnam, religiously affiliated hospital as religious social capital, through their social service may linking, bridging, even bonding interreligious relation to create harmonious interreligious relation in Yogyakarta.
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