Global Pentecostalism in the 21st Century

8. Politics, Education, and Civic Participation: Catholic Charismatic Modernities in the Philippines

EIGHT Politics, Education, and Civic Participation: Catholic Charismatic Modernities in the Philippines KATHARINE L. WIEGELE The Catholic charismatic group El Shaddai is among the most prominent of the renewalist movements in the Philippines, with followership estimates between 3 and 8 million worldwide, up to 7.5 percent of the domestic population .1 It is likely the largest Catholic charismatic group worldwide with a well-developed prosperity gospel. In 2011 WikiLeaks released a 2005 cable from the U.S. embassy in Manila indicating that the embassy saw El Shaddai and the block-voting Iglesia ni Cristo (the country’s largest independent indigenous Protestant church) as highly influential in national politics, a pattern they felt would continue for years.2 Like other charismatic groups in Catholic majority countries, El Shaddai must contend with the Church hierarchy.However,it operates as an independent church,and this,combined with its prosperity gospel,means it shares much with its Pentecostal counterparts worldwide; members are“renewed” Catholics, therefore their Catholic identities and lifestyles are consciously chosen over other ascribed, mainstream , leftist-influenced, or secular-cultural forms of Filipino Catholicism. Renewalism in the Philippines cuts across all sectors,though El Shaddai has been mostly a religion of the urban poor and overseas workers. In 2005 I documented the rise of El Shaddai among the marginalized urban poor in the Philippines.3 I described how, through this new movement, Filipinos fashioned a renewed sense of socioeconomic self-determination, optimism, community,and national political relevance.Residents of the sprawling capital , Manila, created unique ritual forms using mass media and urban spaces that fostered a sense of social and spiritual connectedness. In this chapter, I describe how these ritual forms, along with the movement’s prosperity gospel, have transformed not just popular Catholic practice but also understandings and practices of citizenship. Using 2010 fieldwork data, I then examine the developmental tensions that have arisen with the movement’s recent investments in education,civic engagement,institutional growth,and 224 Katharine L.Wiegele national policy debates on population control and poverty. These developments impact attitudes toward gender roles and families, civic participation, and the Catholic hierarchy. They may also impinge on the sense of egalitarianism and spiritual animation that has characterized El Shaddai religious experience up to this point. Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians in the Philippines While the percentage of Catholics has remained largely stable at around 81 percent since the 1940s, charismatics (Pentecostals and charismatics in Catholic or mainline Protestant denominations) and Pentecostals (people belonging to Pentecostal churches) have accounted for an increasing segment of the Christian population since the 1970s. In the post-authoritarian era (post-1986) especially, the popularity of both Evangelical and renewalist groups has surged.4 Around 19 percent of Christians are involved in the Pentecostal or charismatic renewal (15 percent of Catholics and 39 percent of non-Catholics).5 Because of the Catholic majority, this means that the renewalist movement is largely a Catholic one, as 70 percent of Filipino renewalists are Catholic.6 Charismatic Catholics are in general more religiously active than Catholics; therefore they may have a disproportionate impact on the Church.7 Indeed,the charismatic movement is one of the main preoccupations of the Philippine Catholic Church at present,and El Shaddai is the largest of the charismatic groups. Charismatics and Pentecostals share a distinctive religiosity that they practice diligently.8 Socioeconomically and attitudinally they resemble the general population, with the educated slightly overrepresented.9 However, different communities cater to different social classes. According to El Shaddai’s social services department,the majority of their members are below the national poverty line,an observation confirmed by my own 1996 surveys. Other Catholic charismatic groups, such as Couples for Christ (CFC) and Loved Flock, cater to the middle class, while still others attract celebrities, businessmen, and other segments of the upper class. El Shaddai began in 1984, while CFC, the second largest Catholic charismatic group, began in 1981, both in Manila. CFC has some 980,600 members in seventy-six countries.10 They aim to renew and strengthen Christian family life and values, but they do not espouse the prosperity gospel. Classic Pentecostal churches like Assemblies of God and Church of the Foursquare Gospel began in the 1950s and 1960s.11 Some of the big players among the independent “indigenous” Pentecostal churches are Jesus Is Lord (1978), Politics, Education, and Civic Participation 225 the largest, and Bread of Life (1982).12 In...