The Philippines is not a Christian nation.
Indeed, Christianity remains relevant, a force to be reckoned with in society. However, to define our nation as Christian is not only contentious, but also spurious, ill-informed of our collective history and diverse realities.
Christianity is neither state religion nor its tenets state policy. As a democratic and republican state, the Philippines holds the separation of Church and State inviolable without preference and prejudice to any belief system.
Despite a majority population adhering to Jesus Christ and widespread Christian displays in government spaces, the “Almighty God” implored in the Preamble does not exclusively refer to the Judeo-Christian deity. The term replaced “Divine Providence” under past Philippine constitutions, reflecting either our peoples’ wide belief in the Divine or the force of faith across the nation.
Christians, and the government staffed mostly by them, cannot also claim absolute compliance to Christlikeness enough to build the Christian integrity of the country. We have a lot of religious and non-religious people who claim allegiance to Christ yet rationalize and justify lesser, greater evils and other unchristian deeds.
In Matthew 7:16, Jesus categorically states by their fruits you shall know them — -behaviors, practices that elevate God and love people. Clearly, if Jesus is to be followed, faith must be present from private to public life, in the personal as well as in the political of the believer.
But then again, most Christians neither take Christian theology nor social practice seriously. It is enough for them to know that Jesus loves them, forgives them, blesses them. Everything is about them, individually. What matters is kingdom come, never mind the miserable present. Many are notorious for cherry-picking verses, appropriating them outside their contexts like the much abused Jeremiah 29:11 and Romans 13:1–6.
Christianity in the Philippines is a Colonial and Imperialist enterprise. The cross was weaponized to destroy our existing cultures, put our first peoples to the sword, and consigned the richness of their lives to barbarism and obscurity.
Most Christians’ attitudes and actions towards corruption and violence always pale in comparison to their vitriolic behavior towards LGBT Rights, Divorce, and Abortion. Their fanatical fixation on matters of sex, gender, and reproductive health shows their impotence to pursue what Micah 6:8 admonishes: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.
Indeed, most Christians preach subservience to authorities without making them accountable. They frequently denounce activists and protesters. But like vultures out for spoils, they eagerly partake of the social benefits secured by collective political action. They enjoy rights and privileges at the cost of the lives of advocates, whose blood, like those of the prophets, are shed by the state they unquestioningly obey.
Despite the words of Christ, many Christians separate Biblical morality from public and political life. Especially when faced with issues of social justice, they forget the prophets: the loud, hurtful, demanding messengers of righteousness. When it comes to profit, expect them to flock over preachers of prosperity, claiming loud and proud wealth and success.
“Christianity cares about human development, about the political and social aspects of life.”
~Oscar Romero, Priest, Martyr, Saint
We have Christians who publicly support immoral and politically evil leaders like Marcos, Duterte, and Trump. It is not surprising then that these Christians find it hard to justify their votes using Biblical standards and so they turn to the rhetoric of traditional politics and dubious narratives instead. Rather than become active truth-seekers and truthtellers, many Christians choose silence even as disinformation, misinformation, violence, and corruption poison our social fabric.
The Apostle Paul aptly describes these kinds of people in 2 Timothy 3: lovers of themselves, lovers of money, without love, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power … always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
From these we see that popularity, branding, organizational prowess, and numbers are not reliable indicators of being faithful Christians, as attested both by doctrine and history.
Majority of German Catholics and Protestants supported the Nazis using Romans 13. Christian colonialists and imperialists like Spain and America justified slavery, the destruction of peoples, and denial of rights and freedoms to other human beings who, according to Christian doctrine, are created in the image and likeness of God.
When Christianity came to the shores of these lands, it was for conquest, not for Christ, for gold, not God.
Christianity in the Philippines is a Colonial and Imperialist enterprise. The cross was weaponized to destroy our existing cultures, put our first peoples to the sword, and consigned the richness of their lives to barbarism and obscurity. Through extensive preaching, threats, and giftings, Christians built shame into the minds and bodies of our people, branding them indecent, of the devil, sources of sin, and object of God’s wrath.
Indeed, we must be able to say loud and clear that part and parcel of Colonial Mentality is to hold everything in Philippine society under the lens of Christian values and worldviews. We must speak of its hegemonic character and its complicity in the oppression of various peoples across the world.
Still, the Oppressed, through this inherited, alien faith, managed to pierce through the veil of power, ritual, and dogma, towards the Spirit of Christ. Revolutionaries and Liberators alike had among their ranks Christians and other Scripture-inspired individuals who believed that the liberation of all people is the greatest expression of God’s justification on earth.
Despite monolithic posturing, Christianity in the Philippines has multiple denominations.
Aside from the supermajority Roman Catholic Church, several denominations boast considerable membership such as the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI), the Born Again denominations of Evangelicals under the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC), Pentecostals of the Assemblies of God (AG) plus other Christian churches that trace their lineage to the Protestant Reformation.
… part and parcel of Colonial Mentality is to hold everything in Philippine society under the lens of Christian values and worldviews. We must speak of its hegemonic character and its complicity in the oppression of various peoples across the world.
Recently, PCEC and CBCP have exhorted their flocks to reflect their Biblical faith publicly through the ballot by choosing leaders who embody the goodness and servant-leadership of Christ in the upcoming 2022 National Elections.
However, a Christian Vote is glaringly absent in the Philippines, especially a Christian Vote for good, competent, and accountable governance. The two failed presidential bids of Jesus Is Lord (JIL) founder and pastor Bro. Eddie Villanueva is a case in point. And down the grapevine, one hears stories where bigtime leaders of megachurches and large denominations withheld their support from their fellow brother-in-Christ to support candidates like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
This is not to say that people should be voting strictly according to religion. But this acknowledges the critical role of inherited values and faith in informing our political choices, more so in the face of lack and absence of a critically empowering public education. But despite these, Christians, on the basis of Biblical morality and governance, should have been able to unite in order to support leaders who embody good leadership principles. In the absolutist character of Christian dogmatism, choosing lesser evils should have been out of the question.
Says the Rev. Pastor. Dr. Leonard Ravenhill: “There are no seven deadly sins; all sins are deadly. It is written: the wages of sin is death.”
With the exception of the INC, no Christian denomination can lay claim to effective bloc voting. This reveals not just organizational issues, but more so questions of spiritual foundations and moral unity.
Filipino Christians cannot even unite as one on the basis of shared Biblical, Christ-centered valuations to elect politically good leaders.
What past elections have shown is that Christian Filipinos do not vote simply according to faith — -material conditions, practical considerations, and inherited worldviews and histories appear to be weightier than the words of Christ.
This is the sad tale of historical Christianity across the world: the Body of Christ divided, the God of the Bible turned into a tribal god, invoked to justify the things that men contrive, especially in the name of power and prosperity.
Is there a possibility for a genuine, Christ-based vote this coming elections? The prospects remain weak.
Despite the exhortations of known Christian leaders to their flocks, political stances have always been largely subject to personal tastes, preferences, and information among believers. National groups like CBCP, PCEC, PGCAG may preach constantly from the pulpit, but the possibility of compelling members to vote in a certain way for a certain candidate has been the desire for years but has not been successfully met.
The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
In this Christian worldview, the personal, political, and moral are extensions of the Christ-centered life. These are to be reflections of the supremacy of Christ in the lives of believers. Sadly, this is neither the spiritual, moral nor political reality for most Christians.
But all is not lost for the Christians of this nation, if only they strive to go back to the Spirit of Christ.
History also attests to the contribution of liberating theologies and movements for social justice and freedom. And in the words of El Salvadoran priest, martyr, and saint Oscar Romero:
“Christianity cares about human development, about the political and social aspects of life. When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God’s promise.”
Follow Christ, Serve the People.
