Philippine Catholicism is usually seen as a variant of a non-European Christianity, which was formerly introduced by Spanish missionaries and colonizers into the Philippine Archipelago. Philippine passion rituals, especially self-flagellation and rites of crucifixion, are commonly interpreted as bizarre phenomena of a pre-modern folk-religiosity or archaic survivals of âourâ past, or as a post-colonial mimicry of European religious history. The perspective on Philippine Christianity is always governed by European discourses, whether religious, scientific, or common sense. This paper is an attempt to question dichotomies such as âEuropeanâ and ânon-European,â âmodernâ and âpre-modern,â âauthenticâ and âinauthentic,â etc. In the study of religion such dichotomies, I argue, create problems of conceptualizing diversity within one religious tradition and behind such distinctions lurks the implicit self-perception of the West of being exemplary âmodern.â I use Philippine passion rituals as a hermeneutic challenge. Crucifixions are analyzed as media events and from the actorâs perspective, by historicizing the missionary encounter, and by scrutinizing concepts such as âsyncretismâ and âidentity.â âTranslationâ and the âhistoire croiséeâ approach are proposed as helpful analytical tools for the study of Christianity.
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âAs performed on 2 March 2011.
âSee Richard C. Trexler, Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalpa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 144.
âMy field research (1996, 1997, 1998) was part of the research project âPhilippine Passion Ritualsâ at the Dept. of Religious Studies of the University of Bremen, Germany. The research was supported by a grant from the DFG (German Research Foundation). In the Philippines I was kindly accepted as a research affiliate of the IPC (Institute of Philippine Culture) at the Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City. This paper is part of my more general work on Christian rituals of pain in Europe and the Philippines. See Peter J. Bräunlein, Passion/Pasyon: Rituale des Schmerzes im europäischen und philippinischen Christentum (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2010).
âSee Fernando N. Zialcita, âPopular Interpretations of the Passion of Christ,â Philippine Sociological Review, 34 (1986), 56â62, here 60, 61; Alfredo E. Evangelista, âPenitencia: Ritual and Motivation in Flagellation,â Sunday Times Magazine, 17:36 (April 15, 1962), 10â11; Bräunlein, Passion/Pasyon, 366â377.
âSee Niels Mulder, Inside Southeast Asia (Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol, 1992), 5; Bräunlein, Passion/Pasyon, 372â374. Going to confession in preparation for ritual self- mortification is absolutely unusual. This fact underscores the different embedment of self-flagellation in the Philippine context. See Zialcita, âPopular Interpretations,â 60.
âZialcita, âPopular Interpretations,â 62. The statements recorded by Zialcita are in full accordance with my own investigations. The word kasalanan covers a wide gamut of behavior, ranging from heavy to light misdemeanors, such as âsin, crime, offense, error, impropriety, fault,â as Zialcita asserts. Offenses against Godâkasalanan sa Diyosâare âtheft out of sheer greed, murder, adultery, rape,â which are considered to be very serious, âbecause they violate things cherished by the villagers: property, life and honor.â See Fernando N. Zialcita, Notions of Justice: A Study of an Ilocos and a Bulacan Barangay (Quezon City: Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila University, 1989), 34â35. Raul Pertierra's observation in a Northern Luzon community confirms the absence of a developed notion of sin. Highly developed, however, is the concept of fault, which has a negotiable and situational component. See Raul Pertierra, Religion, Politics, and Rationality in a Philippine Community (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1988), 141.
âSee also Zialcita, âPopular Interpretations,â 61. The historical development of Christian rituals of âsacred painâ is elaborated in Bräunlein, Passion/Pasyon, 43â184.
âSee John L. Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines: Spanish Aims and Filipino Responses, 1565â1700 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959).
âBienvenido L. Lumbera, Tagalog Poetry 1570â1898: Tradition and Influences in its Developments (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1986), 57â66.
âNicanor Tiongson, âPasyon: The Best Known Filipino Book,â Archipelago, 4 (1976), 1â28; for a scholarly edition of the two important Pasyon texts, see René B. Javellana, Mahal na Pasiong ni Jesu Cristong Panginoon natin na tolal (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1990), René B. Javellana, Casaysayan nang Pasiong Mahal ni Jesuscristong Panginoon Natin na Sucat Ipag-Alab nang Puso nang Sinomang Babasa (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1988).
âIn his chronicle of 1604, the Jesuit Pedro Chirino mentions a certain Diego de Leon as the first to introduce disciplina as penance on Panay Island. See Pedro de Chirino S.J., Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (Manila: Historical Conservation Society, XV, 1969 edition [1604]), 285. For the history of the Western concept of disciplina and self-flagellation as a monastic and lay practice, see Bräunlein, Passion/Pasyon, 106â117, 196â202.
âSee Caridad M. Barrion, Religious Life of the Laity in Eighteenth-Century Philippines as Reflected in the Decrees of the Council of Manila of 1771 and the Synod of Calasiao of 1773 (Ph.D. dissertation, Manila: University of Santo Tomas, 1960), 304, 307; Philip F. Smith, âThe Acts of the Synod of Calasiao, 1773,â Philippiniana Sacra, 5.14 (1970), 185â229; Bräunlein, Passion/Pasyion, 361.
âReynaldo Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840â1910 (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979), 5. With the imposition of martial law and the anti-Marcos struggle during the 1970s and 1980s, a centuries-long tradition of anti- colonial resistance was made known by scholars such as Reynaldo Ileto, Alfred McCoy, or William Henry Scott. The Philippine people as docile disciples, Christianity as an unproblematic gift of colonial ruleâsuch a view was no longer convenient. James C. Scott's The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) has had the most profound impact on such a new perspective. See also William H. Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, and Other Essays in Philippine History (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila Press, 1985), Alfred W. McCoy, âBaylan: Animist Religion and Philippine Peasant Ideology,â Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 10.3 (1982), 141â193.
âDanilyn Rutherford, âAfter Syncretism: The Anthropology of Islam and Christianity in Southeast Asia: A Review Article,â Comparative Studies in Sociology and History, 44.1 (2002), 196â205, here 196. See also Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw (eds.), Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis (London: Routledge, 1994); Luther H. Martin and Anita Maria Leopold (eds.), New Approaches to the Study of Syncretism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004).
âSee Phelan, The Hispanization, 80. Phelan connects âidentityâ with pagan beliefs and rituals, and the new âblendingâ called âpopularâ or âfolk Catholicismâ is associated with the loss of that identity. John N. Schumacher defined syncretism in Philippine folk Catholicism as an âadmixture of elements of pre-Hispanic animistic practices and beliefs with Catholic ritual elements, so as to form what is essentially a different religion from orthodox Catholicism.â See John N. Schumacher, âSyncretism in Philippine Catholicism: Historical Causes,â Philippine Studies, 32 (1984), 251â272, here 251.
âMax Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 138; Charles Macdonald, âFolk Catholicism and pre-Spanish Religions in the Philippines,â Philippine Studies, 52.1 (2004), 78â93, here 79.
âSee Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Stuart Hall, âCultural Identity and Diaspora,â in: Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, and Difference (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 222â237; Serge Gruzinski, The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization (London: Routledge, 2002). We can also add here James Cliffordâs effort to revaluate that pejorative term âsyncretismâ by coining the term âinventive syncretism.â See James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 22â23.
âRobert D. Baird, Category Formation and the History of Religions (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 151.
âMichele M. Moody-Adams, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 62.
âSee Portia L. Reyes, âFighting over a Nation: Theorizing a Filipino Historiography,â Postcolonial Studies, 11.3 (2008), 241â258.
âRutherford, âAfter Syncretism,â 196. Behind such questions lurks, of course, a general discomfort with the concept of âreligionâ authoritatively expressed by Talal Asad's Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993), or recently, with a different emphasis, by Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe. The critique of a Eurocentric concept of religion by Syed Farid Alatas draws its conclusions mainly from Joachim Matthes' exploratory work. See Syed Farid Alatas, Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Sciences: Responses to Eurocentrism (Delhi: Sage Publ., 2006), 179â186; and Joachim Matthes, âReligion in the Social Sciences: A Socio-Epistemological Critique,â Akademika, 56 (2000), 85â105.
âVicente Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1988), 15.
âGavin Walker, âPostcoloniality in Translation: Historicities of the Present,â Postcolonial Studies, 14.1 (2011), 111â126, here 120.
| å ¨é¨æé´ | è¿å»ä¸å¹´ | è¿å»30天 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| æè¦æµè§æ¬¡æ° | 2971 | 388 | 27 |
| å ¨ææµè§æ¬¡æ° | 292 | 8 | 0 |
| PDFä¸è½½æ¬¡æ° | 312 | 19 | 0 |
Philippine Catholicism is usually seen as a variant of a non-European Christianity, which was formerly introduced by Spanish missionaries and colonizers into the Philippine Archipelago. Philippine passion rituals, especially self-flagellation and rites of crucifixion, are commonly interpreted as bizarre phenomena of a pre-modern folk-religiosity or archaic survivals of âourâ past, or as a post-colonial mimicry of European religious history. The perspective on Philippine Christianity is always governed by European discourses, whether religious, scientific, or common sense. This paper is an attempt to question dichotomies such as âEuropeanâ and ânon-European,â âmodernâ and âpre-modern,â âauthenticâ and âinauthentic,â etc. In the study of religion such dichotomies, I argue, create problems of conceptualizing diversity within one religious tradition and behind such distinctions lurks the implicit self-perception of the West of being exemplary âmodern.â I use Philippine passion rituals as a hermeneutic challenge. Crucifixions are analyzed as media events and from the actorâs perspective, by historicizing the missionary encounter, and by scrutinizing concepts such as âsyncretismâ and âidentity.â âTranslationâ and the âhistoire croiséeâ approach are proposed as helpful analytical tools for the study of Christianity.
| å ¨é¨æé´ | è¿å»ä¸å¹´ | è¿å»30天 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| æè¦æµè§æ¬¡æ° | 2971 | 388 | 27 |
| å ¨ææµè§æ¬¡æ° | 292 | 8 | 0 |
| PDFä¸è½½æ¬¡æ° | 312 | 19 | 0 |