Religion, Society, and the Philippine Experience: An Overview

Religion, undoubtedly, is an important aspect of culture of every society. In the Philippines, it is part of the country’s historical development. Before the coming of the West, natives in the Philippines professed a belief system characterized by nature worship and animism. Then Islam, the first major religion came to the country via Malaysia and Indonesia. It was a well-developed religion which easily gained converts in southern Philippines.1 It quickly spread northward, but its advance was checked when the Spaniards colonized the Philippines. The Spanish occupation broke this precolonial system and introduced an imperialistic approach using the Catholic religion as a prime mover of colonialism in the Philippine archipelago. Of course, resistance to this imperialism can be gleaned through the various social movements during the entire Spanish occupation. One of which resisted the imposition of foreign religious system was the Cofradia de San Jose, a group headed by Apolinario dela Cruz AKA Hermano Pule whose organization became very influential in Southern Luzon. There was also the secularization issue, a breakaway from the Catholic hierarchy that led to the birth of the reform movement and ended into the launch of the Philippine revolution in 1896