Table of Contents
The Christianization and colonization of the Philippines and the Pacific Islanders under Spanish and American rule took divergent paths. Under Spanish rule, the Philippines was Christianized to a high degree, yet the Spanish Crown did not regard the colony as a primary income source. Under American rule, the conversion to Protestantism was primarily secondary to America’s global civilizing role throughout the world in which enlightened democratic liberalism was the keystone to the modern rational nation/state.
In the Pacific similar processes occurred but on a smaller scale. Furthermore, given the absence of hegemonic Catholicism, European and American Protestant churches and sects flourished throughout Pacific Island societies. The impact of Protestant churches in the Pacific is still critical and has far-reaching consequences wherever Micronesians and Polynesians relocate.
Christianity in its many forms and expressions came into insular Southeast Asia and the Pacific with the colonial expansion of European states. In more specific terms, the Austronesian portion of Southeast Asia went through various phases in which Christianity and colonialism worked in some contexts within a common and unified framework, while in others the Church and the State diverged in separate directions. For instance, early Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia was primarily a political and economic venture, and it was only in the nineteenth century that Dutch versions of Protestantism and Catholicism became active forces within the colonial regime. However, whereas the Dutch domination of Indonesia was primarily economic, the Philippines and other parts of the Austronesian world represent a different ensuing pattern in which the Church played a much stronger and more lasting role.
Within this comparative framework I plan to focus on the kinds of interactions which took place in the Philippines between Christianity and “native” Philippine culture(s) during the period of Spanish colonial rule (1520s to 1900), and on the kinds of changes expressed through Christianity during the American regime from 1900 to 1945. Some of the issues also have a bearing on conversion to Christianity in Micronesia and Polynesia, though the scale of the conversion process, its impact on native cultures and its time duration were markedly different in Oceania in comparison to the Philippines. Furthermore, the commercial and economic aims of Spanish policy in the Philippines were not comparable to what happened in the Pacific Islands under German rule, nor were they congruent with what American and English interests envisioned as economic ends.
Spanish rule in the Philippines, which lasted for almost 400 years, was in many ways a departure from Spanish policy and domination in Latin America. By definition, Spanish colonial rule always involved a close linkage between the aims of the Crown and the Church, not only in terms of their own particular ends but also in how they understood each other’s roles. Moreover, the bloody conquest in Mesoamerica, the Caribbean and Peru were to be avoided at all costs in the Philippines. Thus, pressure on the Crown to curtail the disastrous policy of human carnage on native peoples came from within the Church as well as through the writings of colonial church historians. Consequently, the Philippines were colonized in a more harmonious manner than Latin America, primarily because the Church was allowed to take the initiative.[1]
Throughout the initial 300 years of Spanish rule in the Philippines it was apparent that the colony was not going to render the quick and vast wealth which was found in Mexico and Peru. Thus, by the 1680s if not sooner, the Crown realized that the Philippine colony had to be sustained from the Iberian and Mexican treasuries and that it would be a costly as well as a long-term negative economic venture. As early as the 1660s the Crown wanted to withdraw from the Philippines, but the linkage of Crown and Church meant that if one party desired to pursue its ends, the other also had to take part. It was only in the 1820s that the Spanish colony received an economic boost through the galleon trade which linked Mexico with China and later in the 1850s, after gold was discovered in the northern Luzon cordillera. Both ventures came too late and could not turn the colony around from its situation of economic stagnation and fiscal demise.
In a unique way, the spread of Christianity throughout the lowlands of Luzon and the Bisayas was initiated without the kind of violence which occurred in Latin America. Different parts of the archipelago were allocated to different Church orders; thus, the Augustinians, Franciscans, Recollectos, Dominicans, Jesuits, and others were allotted certain areas and spheres of social action in which the local peoples would not only be converted to the teachings of the Church, but would also become part of the civilizing process. However, the policies of the religious orders, apart from the general framework of religious conversion, differed from one another in many important directions. Just as one still finds remnants of a utopian social framework based on the writings of St. Thomas More among the Tarascans of Michoacán, Mexico, similar processes also occurred in the Philippines. These local social variants not only initiated the civilizing process, but also promulgated each order’s vision of an ideal society as isomorphic with the teachings and dogma of the Church.
Furthermore, the use of local languages or dialects was basic to the priesthood and was widespread. Virtually all of the Church orders conducted masses, baptisms, weddings and other holy functions in the local Austronesian languages. Thus, Spanish did not become a lingua franca as it had throughout Latin America, and even after 370 years of Spanish rule (ending about 1900), only ten per cent of the population could speak Spanish fluently. Although this policy and practice did have the virtue of maintaining local societies and cultures, it also limited social mobility. For example, local administrative officials were Spaniards, and it was only in the nineteenth century that a segment of the Spanish bureaucracy was penetrated by the Spanish mestizo class or by indios.
The conversion process throughout the lowlands and the plains of the Philippines required the sedentarization of the population into barrios, villages and towns. Like Mexico and Latin America, the plaza complex became the centre of local government, Church administration and economic activity. Major forces which attracted people to move from hinterland to the population centres were the pageantry of the mass, the sacredness of local festivals named after patron saints, and the existence of daily and weekly markets. Yet, throughout the first 200 to 300 years, an indio could only attain inclusion in Spanish cultural, religious, and political institutions by becoming baptized, for it was through this pivotal act that one became not only a Christian, but also obtained the status to work within the framework of Spanish institutions. As late as the 1960s and 1970s, this pattern of religious conversion still existed among the upland Mandaya of southeast Mindanao. Baptism was interpreted by some of the Protestant denominations and their missionaries as the beginnings of spiritual rebirth; however, the Mandaya saw baptism as the beginnings of being a Cebuano who occupied the coastal areas of eastern Davao. Baptism along with the cutting of hair and wearing Western clothing were all markers of the shift to being a Cebuano (Yengoyan 1966:324-327).
Throughout the western Bisayas, missions spread from the major towns and the poblacions to small towns. In their concern to baptize the population as well as to keep count of individuals and groups, missionaries attempted to systematize the population in various ways. Thus, in Capiz, which is located on the northern part of the island of Panay, the Dominicans not only baptized in large numbers, but each individual and each family was provided with a surname which was commonly of Spanish origin. Small towns and villages were also named by the missionaries, and, in most cases, all individuals and families from one town would have surnames starting with the letter A, the next town with B, the next town with C and so forth. Even today this pattern is still evident, and one can always note the degree to which individuals migrated from the town of their origin or have married into neighbouring towns. In many of the Tagalog speaking areas of central Luzon, this pattern of naming did not exist, or, if it was implemented, it did not have a lasting impact. To this day, a great majority of Tagalog and Zambal surnames are native pre-contact names which were not changed to Spanish.
The missionization of the coastal plains not only created a stable population which was linked to the Church, but it also created economic inducements which gradually attracted inland populations. This pattern is quite evident when one reads Alcina’s (1960) account of how Catholic missions operated in Cebu in the 1650s.
The form of civilization which was embedded in the conversion process also meant that certain “native” customs and institutions had to be changed in accordance with the missionaries’ criteria for producing ideal Christians. For instance, almost all existing forms of communalism were rendered obsolete in the “new order”. Thus, the rules of collective land tenure, including institutions such as the barangay and bayanihan which stressed collective work activities, were gradually replaced through the introduction of concepts embracing private property in land, commodities and labour. In this way, rational action became the foundation and an expression of the “new order”.
Nevertheless, missionization could not prevent the emergence of syncretism in religious expression between Christian and native beliefs. The experience from Latin America indicated that many aspects of Church dogma and practice had been violated or rendered obsolete through contact with local and native beliefs. These not only persisted but also corrupted dogma and practice in ways which were difficult to control, much less eradicate.
One of the best examples of this kind of religious syncretism, which the Church attempted to control, was the widespread belief in witchcraft. Throughout the Bisayas, especially in Panay and Negros, and in Bicol, witchcraft beliefs are still widespread and integral to local religious belief and thought. The common belief, still current, is that witchcraft represents a pre-Christian system which still lingers as part of magical as well as religious thought. In reality, the opposite is more nearly the case.
Prior to Spanish contact, most local cultures had a belief system of benevolent and malevolent spirits which inhabited various parts of the environment, most often dark areas such as forests and caves, or remote areas such as the sea and sky. This spirit world, commonly labelled anito, asuwang or diwata, occurred in lowland societies as well as among upland groups such as the Kalinga, Ifugao, and Mandaya. In all cases where we have accounts of such spirits they often have a corporeal existence, although never in an anthropomorphic form. Even now, the spirit-world of the Mandaya is divorced of anthropomorphism. However, among the lowland groups malevolent spirits do have an anthropomorphic expression which can have the form of a whole human, or the lower half of the body with a head placed on the torso, or a severed body with each half travelling in different directions to different localities.
This conjunction of malevolent spirits with humanized bodies first appears in missionary accounts from the Bisayas in the early 1600s; as the basis of witchcraft, it was part of seventeenth century Spanish culture in Iberia. After the introduction of witchcraft to the Philippines, the emerging syncretism evolved into a complex set of relationships which are now dominant throughout the Bisayas. To this day, the Church has attempted to argue that witchcraft in this form is a pre-contact pagan custom which must be erased.
In the Philippines, native attitudes and actions towards Spanish political hegemony and Catholic policy and practice were not passive. Throughout various areas of the Bisayas, such as Bohol, and parts of Luzon, the historical record indicates a number of regional and local armed uprisings against Spanish policy and Church abuse. Most of these rebellions, which might have lasted from a few weeks to about a year in some cases, were suppressed and controlled by the Crown and the Church. However, in numerous cases one finds that a miracle or a divine event occurred shortly after the uprising was suppressed. The exact nature of these divine events is difficult to assess, for the descriptions are either vague or poorly recorded. What is of particular interest, however, is that, once these “miracles” occurred in the locality of the previous rebellion, one seldom or never finds another uprising occurring in that specific locality. By invoking the mystical, the creation of these “miracles” denoted that the specific vicinity had become sacred due to divine intervention and that future political action in that area might bring forth irreparable harm or even death.
Although Catholic conversion in the Philippines was not passively accepted, the Church had a fairly free reign in accomplishing its ends. The Crown, economically crippled throughout this period due to the fact that quick wealth never resulted from the discovery of precious metals nor vast profits realized from commercial export crops, expressed its presence as the arena which embraced religious restructuring with the hope of minimal involvement and cost. The indigenization of the clergy only occurred during the latter part of Spanish rule, since the Spaniards thought Filipinos could not master the Latin liturgy, let alone the various mysteries of the faith. Although the indigenization of the faith gradually occurred in the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century as a native Church, in reality, as the Filipino Jesuit Horacio de la Costa (1972:119) cogently argued, it was “not a native church, but a church staffed by natives”.
By 1900, and on the eve of the coming of American Protestantism, the Catholic faith was the dominant religious structure in the northern and central Philippines and was well implanted throughout most of Luzon, the Bisayas and parts of Mindanao. The Church canons were also the canons of the social fabric and thus the civilizing influence which ideally would fashion and refashion Filipino culture.