Religious Diversity and Covenantal Pluralism in the Philippines

Abstract

In spite of the enduring dominance of Catholicism in Philippine society, religious diversity increasingly characterizes its social and political life. This diversity is predominantly Christian, given the rise of evangelical, independent, and even nontrinitarian churches around the country. Is covenantal pluralism possible? This article answers this question by focusing on what Filipino Christians believe about religion and pluralism. It draws on the 2018 ISSP Religion module to analyze the relationship between denominational affiliation and attitudes about religion and coexistence. Our argument is that Filipino Christians, as a whole, are divided on whether they can live amicably with one another. Two observations substantiate this point. First, Catholics believe that religion brings conflict and that religious people tend to be intolerant more than do members of other churches. Second, in comparison to Catholics, Protestants/Evangelicals and Nontrinitarians are more inclined to believe that practicing religion fosters friendships. Taken together, these dispositions present challenges and opportunities for covenantal pluralism in the country. This article ends by reflecting on covenantal pluralism as a relational call in a society where emerging religious minorities are increasingly influential and competitive.

Keywords:

• covenantal pluralism
• religious diversity
• pluralism
• Christianity
• Philippines

Acknowledgements

This article is part of this journal's Covenantal Pluralism Series, a project generously supported via a grant to the Institute for Global Engagement from the Templeton Religion Trust. The authors are also thankful to the Social Weather Stations (SWS) for giving them early access to the 2018 ISSP Religion dataset from the Philippines. They are also thankful to Dr. Leslie Lopez for her input on the statistical analyses. The authors are responsible for the interpretations in this article.

Notes

1 The figures total more than 100 percent each year because of double affiliations.

2 These identities could also be subsumed under the other Christian groups above.

3 See https://templetonreligiontrust.org/areas-of-focus/.

4 For van Buren (1990, 330) covenant is a starting point to trace theological commonalities: “the covenant as well as the faithfulness of Jesus [is] evidence of the plurality of ways in which God relates to the plurality of different peoples and cultures.” For Greenberg (1997), redemption is a shared narrative between Christianity and Judaism. In this view, covenantal pluralism, as it were, is a theological search for commonalities that could be a guiding principle in interreligious understanding (Idinopulos 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jayeel Cornelio

Jayeel Cornelio is Associate Professor and the Director of the Development Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University and an Honorary Research Associate at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has written extensively on religious change with respect to youth, politics, and development in the Philippines. He is the author of Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines: Young People Reinterpreting Religion (2016) and lead editor (with François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen, and Linda Woodhead) of the Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society (2020).

Prince Kennex Aldama

Prince Kennex Aldama is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He is the author of The Contemporary World (2018), a widely used textbook that includes religious diversity as a social reality that Filipinos need to recognize. His research focuses on disbelief and changing religious identities in the Philippines.