AMERICA AND
PROTESTANTISM IN
THE PHILIPPINES
PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY IN
THE PHILIPPINES
Protestant Christians make up nearly 6% of the Filipino
population and include a wide variety of Pentecostal,
Evangelical, and independent churches.
Protestant influence and missionary activity began in the
early 20th century with the advent of American imperialism in
the Philippines.
• Protestantism developed in
the Philippines after the Spanish–
American War when the United
States acquired the Philippines
from the Spanish with the 1898
Treaty of Paris.
• In addition, there was a backlash
against the Hispanic Catholicism and
a greater acceptance
of Protestantism represented by
the Americans.
• American leadership was strongly Protestant and guided by
Protestant values, as well as by Protestant-Catholic cultural
conflicts taking place in the United States during the late
19thand early 20th centuries.
• The Spanish-American War, for example, was deeply informed
by anti-Catholicism in the United States.
• Thus, Christianized Filipinos were considered by Protestant
Americans as not fully Christian until they became Protestant, and
as such annexation was strongly supported by most Christian
Evangelicals.
• However, some American Christian groups opposed annexation,
arguing that it would open the door to Catholic, non-white
immigration.
• Protestant missionaries began arriving after the establishment of
the 1901 Comity Agreement between various Protestant missions,
separating the islands into spheres of Protestant influence.
• Missionaries quickly learned local languages and began translating
texts, and local converts took on leadership roles and established
the foundations of an indigenous Protestant clergy, though F
• Missions provided an alternative community to what American
Protestants perceived as a corrupt Catholic society—highlighting in
particular activities such as gambling and drinking—through sports,
American cultural groups, the Young Men’s Christian Association
(YMCA) and other venues. ilipinos were frustrated by the racist
attitudes among some missionaries.
• A number of seminaries sprang up facilitating the growth
of local clergy, and Protestants strongly supported the
creation of a public school system. In 1963, the National
Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) was
formed to represent the voice of Protestant Filipinos, and
was the first religious body to officially condemn
the Marcos regime in 1973.
• Pentecostal Protestantism began to appear in the 1970s,
paralleling a rise in charismatic Catholicism. Some of these
charismatic groups were modelled after prominent
American Protestant organizations
• for example, El Shaddai — which has nearly 10 million
followers in the Philippines and abroad—was influenced by
American evangelical Christian Pat Robertson.
• However, the relationship between Catholicism and
Protestantism has been fraught with tension throughout
the century. Among the largest Philippine Protestant
movements is the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ),
which is resolutely anti-Catholic and claims nearly two
million members.
• American Protestant beliefs at the turn of the century
expressed the American worldly mission based on nationalism,
a sense of patriotism and what was described as benevolent
imperialism.
• The politics of Protestantism in the American Philippines were
closely linked to the idea that the enemy was not only Spain
but also the Catholic Church, which had corrupted local
peoples through a misguided sense of dogma and superstition.
• Thus, the conviction was that Protestantism would bring forth
the best of Christianity combined with another type of
civilizing process, one linked to Euro-American liberalism and
democracy.
• In the early stages of American missionary activity in the Philippines, the feeling was
that, although the Filipino was already a Christian, the form of Christianity as
expressed in Catholicism was a corruption from a decadent context (i.e. Spain) so
that, in theory, the whole conversion process to Christianity might have to be
redone. Furthermore, American attitudes at the beginning of the twentieth
century were probably more anti-Catholic as well as being anti-Spanish.
• Thus, many Protestant Churches argued that baptism, as expressed in terms of
what the various American Protestant Churches had to offer, was the start of
“true” Christianity.Yet, after forty years of work, the impact was quite limited.
Conversion of Catholics to Protestantism occurred, but the scale and intensity
were minuscule in comparison to what had happened under Spanish rule.
• In some cases local élites did convert with the inducement that they would be
educated in Church-run colleges in the United States, since most higher education
in the Philippines was under the auspices of the Catholic Church.
Furthermore, the American Board of Missions
continuously pressured the American colonial government
through the Governor General’s office, as well as the home
government in Washington, to place restrictive measures on
Catholic Church landholdings, to alter taxation policy
towards the Church, and to create other limitations which
would curtail the role of the Catholic Church.
Although some restrictions were implemented, in most
cases they failed to pass due to Catholic pressure in the
United States.
• By the 1910s a fair segment of Protestant missionary activity shifted from the
Catholic lowlands to the non-Christian, “pagan” groups who inhabited the
mountainous areas of northern Luzon as well as the interiors of Mindanao and
some of the islands in the Bisayas.
• Non-Christian minorities had the virtue of not being contaminated by Spanish
culture and Catholic belief; thus, they could be incorporated into Protestantism
with less trouble, and they could also be acculturated into the American mould
of democracy and liberalism.
• the prestigious Brent school was established in Baguio, where the colonial
summer capital was located, and missionary activity moved north towards the
Kalinga, Igorot, and Ifugao. Uplanders were brought to the United States as
show pieces in the great international exhibitions (St Louis, Seattle, San
Francisco, etc.) between 1900 and the 1920s.
• It was the American experience which would provide the guiding and divine
hand to these people as they moved from loincloth to democracy.
• Where conversion among the uplanders did occur, however, a number of
forces worked against missionary efforts. Partly due to limited resources from
the United States as well as a dire need for Church personnel and ordained
ministers, the various Protestant denominations devoted their efforts to
medical benefits through the creation of hospitals and medical staff who could
minister to the health needs of the uplanders.
• To this day, most of these small field hospitals and infirmaries still operate,
though the personnel are now primarily Filipino.
• Thus, the legacy of American Protestantism in the Philippines is essentially not
religious, but lies in the establishment of medical facilities and schools through
which Protestantism and Americanism combined to offer the fruits and
benefits of Western civilization.
• Yet, the conversion of the Philippines was not really the ultimate goal
of the American Mission Board. Although the Philippines had to be
secured for Protestantism, this was only the initial phase in the
process by which American Protestantism moved on to the Asian
scene.
• Laubach’s (1925) invocation that “…unless the Philippines are saved
we shall lose Asia” meant not only to save it from the Catholic
Church, but also to use it as a springboard for practices and methods
to be perfected in order to move towards India and China.
• A vast number of missionaries in these countries received their first
taste of the Orient in the Philippines, yet the real gems for Christian
conversion were the high civilizations of the Asian mainland.
• In a broader perspective, Protestantism’s major impact was
through its role in the transmission of American values and
institutions to a society which had just fought for its
independence from Spanish rule, only to lose it again
through American intervention.
• If the American military conquest of the Philippines was in
part brutal and even uncalled for, it was Protestantism
which restored the dignity of American humanitarian
efforts through a benevolent form of imperialism which
focused on mass education as the vehicle of cultural
progress.
THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING!
