The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of religious authority in reformist Islam in Indonesia. For this, the paper analyzes qualifications of religious leaders, attributes of religious knowledge emphasized in interpreting religious teachings, the process of issuing the fatwa or religious decision and relations between religious leaders and ordinary followers. This study may shed light on the characteristics of reformist Islam in Indonesia and on those of traditional Islam compared with the former. In the second section of this paper, religious authority in traditional Islam is investigated. The following section looks at the perspective of reformist Islam on religious knowledge and authority, and the fourth section deals with, by examining how the fatwa is issued, rational approaches to the scriptures supported by reformist Islam. In order to look at how ideas of reformist Islam are applied to real situations, a case of Javanese village is examined in the last section. I will analyze who are considered as Islamic leaders, what are their major activities and in what mode their interactions with ordinary villagers are made.