Abstract
In this chapter, the author grapples with the question: What happens when the “One True Story” encounters other faith stories? Riffing off her co-edited book titled, Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory, the author narrates her personal journey growing up as a Methodist pastor’s kid, becoming a born-again believer and an aspiring Christian missionary trained by Philippine Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and belatedly coming to grips with her relationship to her country’s colonial history and its consequences for her and her people’s struggle for wholeness and authenticity. Informed by a rich cultural memory bearing shades of Jonah’s story in the belly of the whale, she traces her faith learnings from encounter with deep ancestry in the “belly of the beast” and its larger significance for today’s struggle for sustainability and global co-existence.
An earlier version of this chapter was published in HTS Theologiese Studies/Theological Studies. Vol 73 no3 (2017), a4660. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4660
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Notes
- 1.
A festival or ceremony of tribal peoples in Northern Philippines involving the ritual slaughter of a pig, chicken, or other animal as a thanksgiving offering to the deities, anitos (nature spirits), and departed ancestors for protecting and watching over their land.
- 2.
David Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 103.
- 3.
Thomas Paine, The complete writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. 2 (New York, NY: The Citadel Press,1895), 402.
- 4.
The term “babaylan” refers to the indigenous healing tradition that among our various tribes in the Philippines is known by the differing names of mumbaki, dawac, ma-aram, catalonan, beliyan, balyan, baylan, patutunong, etc.
- 5.
Mendoza & Strobel (eds.), Back from the crocodile’s belly, 13–14.
- 6.
The interview is one I remember viewing on YouTube, but is now no longer available.
- 7.
Cf. Reginald Horsman, Race and manifest destiny: Origins of American racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Winthrop D. Jordan, The white man’s burden: Historical origins of racism in the United States (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1974); Stuart C. Miller, “Benevolent assimilation”: The American conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982).
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Daniel B. Schirmer & Stephen R. Shalom (eds.), The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 22–23.
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Cf. Pennee Bender (Producer, Screenwriter, Director), Joshua Brown (Director), Andrea Ades Vasquez (Director), Savage Acts: Wars, Fairs, and Empire 1898–1904 (2006) New York, NY: American Social History Project, viewed July 11, 2023, from https://vimeo.com/299901299
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- 12.
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On the colonial misinterpretation of Filipino cultural values and their reinterpretation by Filipino psychologists, birthing a distinctive Filipino psychology, Sikolohiyang Pilipino, see “Sikolohiyang Pilipino: Beginnings, institutionalization and pioneering gains” in S. Lily Mendoza, “Theoretical Advances in the Discourse of Indigenization,” in Rogelia Pe-Pua (ed.), Handbuk ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Handbook of Filipino Psychology) Bolyum 1: Perspektibo at Metodolohiya (Vol 1: Perspectives and Methodology) (Diliman, Quezon City: The University of the Philippines, 2018), 252–86 at 252–62. For an understanding of Filipino cultural values based on the core concept of “kapwa,” see Virgilio G. Enriquez, Kapwa: A Core Concept in Filipino Psychology (Kapwa Isang Buod na Konsepto sa Skilophiyang Panlipunang Pilipino), in Pe-Pua, Handbuk ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino.
- 16.
On the Filipino transpersonal worldview (belief in the spirits or anitos and in trees, rivers, and nature) which was demonized by the colonizer and yet remains in the consciousness of many Filipinos today, see Jaime C. Bulatao, SJ “Filipino Transpersonal World View (Ang Trasnpersonal na Pananaw sa Mundo ng mga Pilipino)”, Rogelia Pe-Pua (ed.), Handbuk ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Handbook of Filipino Psychology) Bolyum 2: Gamit (Volume 2: Application) (Diliman, Quezon City: The University of the Philippines, 2019), 43–47
- 17.
Cf. nuanced discussion of the debate around the attributed quote in Merchant, Carolyn. “The scientific revolution and the death of nature.” Isis 97.3 (2006): 513–533.
- 18.
De Leon in Grace Nono, Song of the babaylan: Living voices, medicines, spiritualities of Philippine ritualist-oralist-healers (Quezon City, Philippines: Institute of Spirituality in Asia, 2013), 27.
- 19.
Cf. Stannard, David. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, (1992). ftnt 9, 317
- 20.
Cf. Prechtel in Derrick Jensen, “Saving the indigenous soul: An interview with Martin Prechtel,” The sun magazine (2001), viewed 8 May 2017, from http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/304/saving_the_indigenous_soul
- 21.
Prechtel in Jensen (2001).
- 22.
Prechtel in Jensen (2001).
- 23.
Cf. Larry Rasmussen, Earth, community, earth ethics (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1996); Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1992/ 1995, 1996); Paul Shepard, “A Post-Historic Primitivism,” in J. Gowdy, (ed.), Limited wants, unlimited means (Washington, D.C.: Island Press,1998), 281–328; Paul, Shepard, The tender carnivore and the sacred game. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1973/1998); Paul Shepard, Nature and madness (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1982/1998): Spencer Wells, Pandora’s Seed: The unforeseen cost of civilization (NY: Random House, 2010); John Zerzan (ed.), Against civilization (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2005).
- 24.
S. Lily Mendoza, “Savage representations in the discourse of modernity: Liberal ideology and the impossibility of nativist longing,” Decolonization, Indigenization, Education, and Society, 2(1) (2013): 1–19; Bhikhu Parekh, “Liberalism and colonialism: A critique of Locke & Mill,” in Jan N. Pieterse & Bhikhu Parekh (eds.), Decolonization of imagination: Culture, knowledge and power (London: Zed Books, 1995), 81–98.
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Albert Alejo, “Popular spirituality as cultural energy,” in Lecture series 3 on spirituality: Context and expressions of Filipino spirituality (Manila: Center for Spirituality, 2004), 33–52 at 34.
- 26.
Alejo, “Popular spirituality as cultural energy,” 35.
- 27.
Alejo, “Popular spirituality as cultural energy,” 39.
- 28.
Mendoza & Strobel (eds.), Back from the crocodile’s belly.
- 29.
Prechtel in Jensen (2001).
- 30.
Alejo, “Popular spirituality as cultural energy,” 45.
- 31.
S. Lily Mendoza, “Out of modernity into deep ancestry: A love story,” in K. Sorrels & S. Sekimoto (eds.), Globalizing intercultural communication (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2016), pp. 44–55.
- 32.
Mendoza & Strobel, Back from the crocodile’s belly, 8.
- 33.
Mendoza & Strobel, Back from the crocodile’s belly, ii.
- 34.
Alejo, “Popular spirituality as cultural energy,” 46.
- 35.
Melba P. Maggay, A clash of cultures: Early American Protestant missions and Filipino religious consciousness (Manila: Anvil Publishing, Inc. for De La Salle University, 2011), 198.
- 36.
See within this volume the chapter by Lledo Gomez regarding colonial oppression of Filipinos resulting in colonial mentality, in Cristina Lledo Gomez, “Bangon Na. Pinays Rise up”.
- 37.
Andrew Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996).
- 38.
Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History, 120–121.
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Mendoza, S.L. (2024). Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Christian Formation Meets Indigenous Resurrection Redux. In: Lledo Gomez, C., Brazal, A.M., Ibita, M.M.S. (eds) 500 Years of Christianity and the Global Filipino/a. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47500-9_10
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