Thoughts and religion

Students’ Name
Professors’ Name
Thoughts and Religion in the Philippines
Date
Folk tradition in the Filipinos religious thinking developed at a time when it was hard for Spanish priest to relay proper Christianity message to new converts effectively. The folk tradition considerably brought cohesion between local value and the foreign ideologies. For example, to make locals attend mass service, priests used the name of the native god (Bathala) to refer to Christian God. As a result of Christian teachings, Filipinos conceptualized God as the Father, Son, and the virgin as all-powerful savior of their lives. The perception of such enormous power brought division on the worship of saints, martyrs, and apostles among locals which brought about clashes. The effort to train Filipinos as secular priesthood by Bourbon kings failed and got discredited because it got rushed and most of the new priests were perceived incapable (Rodell 34).
Up until the 19th century, Spain controlled a vast portion of natives when they began losing their ground to local priests who became leaders of the anti-Spanish revolution. By the end of the 18th century, religion in the Philippines took the central point in the establishment of nationalism. It is at this time when concepts of racial and national identity were brought into focus by the abused priests. The execution of three Filipinos fathers (Zamora, Gomez, and Burgos) by Spanish had a significant impact on young and learned natives resulting in the entanglement of nationalism, religious supremacy, and causes of native clergy.

During this time, peasants who were the majority, by then continued interpreting Christian doctrine in their native perspective of worship. The Filipinos culture survived from being subsumed by the foreign culture by firm adherence to their indigenous ways of reverence. For example, fork worship which exists up to date in the form of Easter’s Holy week which enables Christians to meditate on the meaning of Christ’s story (Rodell 35).

Works cited
Rodell, Paul A. Culture and Customs of the Philippines. Vol. 1097. No. 738. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.