How Religious Marginalization Shapes Political Life in the Philippines

From the World Politics Review (Mar 14): How Religious Marginalization Shapes Political Life in the Philippines



Muslims from Marawi and other Filipinos march to protest the city’s siege and the martial law imposed by President Rodrigo Duterte in the southern Mindanao region, Manila, Aug. 31, 2017 (AP photo by Bullit Marquez).

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world.
In late January, the Department of Tourism in the Philippines announced plans to make the country a significant “religious pilgrimage destination,” especially for Catholic communities in Asia, by restoring old churches and historical shrines. Yet efforts to capitalize on its status as the largest Catholic-majority country in Asia and draw in more tourists could create problems in the Philippines, which has sizeable non-Catholic Christian communities and a Muslim population that has long felt marginalized by a state heavily linked to the Catholic faith. In an email interview, David T. Buckley, an assistant professor of political science and Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science and Religion at the University of Louisville, discusses the historical experiences of religious minorities in the Philippines, how they have informed the country’s politics, and the state of religious freedom today.

WPR: What is the historical experience of religious minorities in the Philippines? Do religious minorities hold grievances against the state?

David T. Buckley: Grievances on the part of religious minorities against the state are rooted in the Spanish colonial period, which stretched from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Under Spanish rule, friars from Roman Catholic religious orders enjoyed significant political authority. Beginning in the mid-1800s, nationalist propaganda attacked this “friarocracy” while calling for church-state separation. The arrival of American colonialism at the turn of the 20th century complicated this dynamic, as American authorities limited the power of friars, and Protestant missionary organizations enjoyed expanded opportunities to “Christianize” the Philippines. In the later U.S. colonial period, and after independence from American rule in 1946, various non-Roman Catholic Christian communities expressed frustration at alleged state privileging of Catholicism, in spite of the lack of a legally established religion. For example, aspects of the civil legal code pertaining to family matters, such as divorce, draw explicitly on Catholic canon law.

The Philippines’ Muslim minority has a unique historical experience and set of grievances, largely because of its concentration in portions of the southern islands of Mindanao and Sulu. This led to distinct patterns of colonialism under both Spanish and American rule. While American authorities promoted local and federal governance in partnership with Filipino elites in “civilized,” or Christian, provinces, military rule was the norm in Mindanao. In some ways, even after the U.S. recognized the Philippines’ independence in 1946, Muslims enjoyed unique legal autonomy, for instance over personal law, but this was always within a context of limited access to national-level politics and persistent regional poverty. This history of isolation and neglect fueled armed resistance to the central state from separatist groups like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, which formed in the 1970s. A 2014 peace agreement that was meant to devolve centralized power to a newly recognized Bangsamoro Autonomous Region was hailed as a major step in resolving these grievances, but its implementation has stalled.

WPR: How do religious demographics and the experiences of religious minorities shape the country’s politics today?

Buckley: Demographically, commentators often observe that the Philippines is “Asia’s only Christian nation.” This actually says both too much, as East Timor has a higher share of Christians in the population, and too little, as there are significant minorities beyond the roughly 80 percent Catholic population. Christian minorities can be roughly divided among national non-Catholic Christian churches like the Iglesia ni Cristo, or Church of Christ, and the Philippine Independent Church; denominational Protestants that loosely correspond to American mainline Protestant churches like the United Church of Christ in the Philippines; and generally newer evangelical and Pentecostal Christian congregations. Of course, there is a significant Muslim minority that, while accounting for only 5 to 10 percent of the national population, is a majority on portions of the island of Mindanao. And many indigenous communities retain traditional beliefs and practices, at times alongside their own conversions to Abrahamic religions.

While Catholic elites are the most visible in the political space, many of these religious minorities play an active role in local and national politics, as well. Muslim leaders are obviously involved in efforts to bring lasting peace to troubled areas of Mindanao, but they also play a role in less dramatic policy areas like education reform. The Iglesia ni Cristo, in contrast, is noted for supposed “bloc voting” in elections, and thus is aggressively courted by politicians looking for an endorsement on the national stage. Denominational Protestants organized under the National Council of Churches in the Philippines are quite active in social justice advocacy, such as protecting indigenous communities and supporting environmental conservation. Evangelical leaders are internally diverse; several high-profile leaders supported controversial President Rodrigo Duterte on the campaign trail, but many have been vocal critics of the extrajudicial killings associated with Duterte’s “war on drugs.”

WPR: How does the Philippine state and society at large approach religious freedom and practice today? Are there opportunities to improve religious freedom and lessen interreligious conflict?

Buckley: The state generally respects religious freedom in formal legal institutions, including for religious minorities. Minorities even enjoy some unique accommodations intended to address historical exclusion—for instance, through the government-backed Sharia courts, which follow Islamic law. This is an important contrast with several of the Philippines’ neighbors in Southeast Asia that impose more restrictions on religious groups, such as Myanmar. In the Philippines, there is limited social violence on what I would consider “religious” grounds. It is true that the terrorists who took over the city of Marawi last year, from May to October 2017, made an effort to target Christians and churches. But reporting indicates that these acts of terrorism provoked several acts of Christian-Muslim solidarity in Marawi, with Muslims protecting Christian neighbors at risk to themselves. Terrorist networks could certainly succeed in future attacks on Christian festivals or houses of worship, but so far there is limited evidence that attacks like the one on Marawi are fanning broader interreligious violence.

While the Philippines experiences little formal legal discrimination and interreligious violence, there is a stubborn sense that, in spite of formal religious freedom guarantees, minorities, particularly Muslims, still face marginalization. In general, current and future governments could improve on this score by aiming for evenhandedness in engagement with religious groups, including symbolic matters like recognition of holidays and substantive areas like policy consultations on high-profile laws. Regarding the Muslim minority in particular, progress in peace negotiations leading to viable, devolved governance in Muslim-majority areas of the country remains both important and elusive.

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