collection 2020
Bomb-defying Faith
Why Filipino Catholics Insist on Physical Devotion
Filipino devotees of a dark image of Christ are unfazed by terrorism. Unpacking their faith and psyche could decode their death-defying devotion.
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By Ayee Macaraig
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Millions of devotees jostle to touch a dark image of Jesus Christ in Manila, Philippines during the January 9, 2020 feast of the Black Nazarene. Contributed photo
Devotees parade replicas of the Black Nazarene in Manila, Philippines ahead of the annual January 9, 2020 feast. Contributed photo
Similarly, it is possible to conceive of the Nazarene devotion as lived religion. Like Mayans, most devotees are ordinary people: the urban poor. First, they pray for pragmatic daily concerns. This is demonstrated by their Nazarene petitions which Fr. Daniel Pilario, theology professor at Manila’s Adamson University, says are mostly for relationships and cures. Second, to practice this faith, devotees perform physical rituals. Examples are mounting the carriage, touching and kissing the Nazarene and wiping towels on it, as listed in former Quiapo parish priest Jose Ignacio’s pastoral message. These may then be viewed as devotees’ embodied faith leading them to form large crowds during the feast.
As with Mayans and lived religion, local culture matters. Physicality is important to Filipinos, evidenced by their use of objects to connect with the divine since pre-colonial times, wrote Fr. Jannel Abogado, University of Santo Tomas theology professor, in a 2006 article in the top-tiered Philippiniana Sacra journal. Touching sacred icons is linked to the indigenous belief in the amulet as a power source, said Zialcita.
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Sanding, the devotee, epitomizes lived religion. The village councilman said his faith began when the Nazarene healed him of typhoid fever when he was 12 and until now, prayers for his family’s sustenance are answered. When his friend Renato Guiron died of a heart ailment in the 2015 Traslacion, it inspired him to persist.
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“We won’t allow ourselves to be barred from the carriage. This is the source of our strength,” he said. “You cannot dictate on devotees not to touch the image. They will get mad. They are like zombies who can only be calmed upon touching the Nazarene.”
Asked about relating lived religion to Nazarene devotees’ insistence on physically participating in the feast, Mark Calano, Ateneo de Manila University philosophy associate professor, confirms the connection.
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“The devotion to the Black Nazarene is an example of appropriated practice,” said Calano, who researches on Philippine religion. “It is very much Filipino as it is foreign. Because devotees interpret their everyday lives in relation to this devotion, then you can say it is a lived religion,” he added in an interview.
As for devotees’ faith being embodied and influenced by local culture, University of the Philippines anthropology professor Nestor Castro supports the view. “It is traditionally believed that you cannot just possess an amulet without passing through tests to prove worthiness of this magic. The same is true with prohibitions imposed by police. These are but tests,” said Castro, author of journal articles on Philippine culture.
"It is very much
Filipino as it is foreign. Because devotees interpret their everyday lives in relation to this devotion, then you can say it is a lived religion"
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- Mark Calano, Ateneo de Manila University
Bathing in sweat, Adam Sanding alternates between hunger pangs, thirst and the tingle of holding in urine for 16 hours while struggling to breathe air reeking of garbage from canals of the Philippine capital but he feels blessed. After all, he is at the vortex of an undulating sea of humanity jostling to touch the image he holds on to for dear life.
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Clad in maroon and purple shirts and waving white towels, millions of barefoot devotees like Sanding clamber over heads and shoulders to reach a carriage to kiss and embrace a life-size statue of Jesus Christ in a cacophony of screams, whistles and chants of “Viva (long live)!” Like a scene from a zombie movie, there is no making out faces in the churning crowd, only limbs swarming to grasp the carriage or the thick ropes pulling it along Manila’s narrow streets.
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For Sanding, it is an honour to be squished in the 10-foot carriage with 39 others guarding the icon known as the Black Nazarene during the January 9 procession in the mainly Catholic Philippines, one of the world’s largest annual religious gatherings. No stranger to bruises and blisters in his 26-year devotion, he faced a different risk this year as authorities imposed unprecedented security measures following terror threats.
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But neither a possible bombing nor 13,000 policemen could stop the 38-year-old father of three from clinging to the image he calls king. Eyes shut, Sanding prayed, “Lord Jesus the Nazarene, you called me to this journey, take care of my family,” he recounted in an interview.
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The response baffled officials expecting lower attendance this year but saw it even doubling at 3.3 million. Instead of keeping distance, Nazarene followers scrambled for the statue. Some removed barriers climbed over barbed-wired bridges and pushed against police.
In the face of threats to life and limb, why do Nazarene devotees insist on physically participating in the feast? Observers often attribute this to a belief that the statue is miraculous, showing religious fervour, asking forgiveness or identifying with Christ’s suffering. To critics, it is pagan, fanatic, cultic worship. While some of these reasons are credible, one explanation hardly discussed unpacks devotees’ faith and psyche and could decode their death-defying practice.
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Sanding, who saw a friend die of a heart attack in the 2015 procession, grappled with a bigger threat for Good Friday rites this year. Will he join the crowd to touch the Nazarene and risk contracting coronavirus in the name of faith?
Scandalous practice?
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Described as a people who lived for 377 years in a Spanish convent and 43 years in Hollywood, Filipinos imbibed Catholicism during Spain’s colonization starting in 1521 but the religion persisted after US occupation ended in 1946.
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The Philippines is now the largest Catholic majority country in Asia and the third globally, according to the Pew Research Center. Named Asia’s bastion of Christianity, it is an exception in a continent where Buddhism and Islam took root, said liturgy scholar Fr. Anscar Chupungco in the widely cited book Oxford History of Christian Worship. In a nation of over 100 million, 80% are Catholic, official data show, and 85% of Filipinos value religion, a 2017 Social Weather Stations poll found.
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The Black Nazarene devotion is among the most enduring forms of Filipino religiosity. It is centered on a centuries-old wooden image of Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary. While there are many myths such as the statue turning black after surviving fire on a ship, Ateneo de Manila University anthropology professor Fernando Zialcita said in a 2013 journal article that Recollects brought the originally dark icon on a galleon from Mexico in the 1600s. The annual procession called Traslacion reenacts its transfer from Manila’s walled Intramuros city to the church in Quiapo district in the 1780s, he added.
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Columnist Rina David calls the Nazarene devotion “washbasin and wooden club spirituality” as most devotees are from the urban poor in a country where one out of five people cannot afford food, the World Bank said.
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The Traslacion has traditionally been peaceful but in 2017, the UK and US embassies and the interior ministry began warning of terror attacks from ISIS-inspired groups targeting the event. Citing this, police this year tightened security and cut it short from the usual 20-24 hours.
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Devotees’ insistence on physically participating in the feast is perplexing for two reasons. For authorities, it goes against their own safety, calling those hurt in clashes with police “stubborn” and the event a “security nightmare”. The Red Cross counted 331 injured, including from fractures. From a religious view, Quiapo assistant parish priest Fr. Douglas Badong said mounting the carriage is outside traditional dogma focusing on sacraments. “Sometimes to us religious people, it is scandalous that they hustle to touch the image. This is not taught in the seminary as proper worship,” he said in an interview.
Lived religion
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What evades religious teachings and police concerns is captured in the sociological concept called lived religion. Meredith McGuire, retired sociology professor at Trinity University in the US, uses this to explain religion as practiced and experienced by ordinary people in everyday lives. In her extensively cited and positively reviewed 2008 book Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life, McGuire says the term refers to people’s actual experience of faith which must make sense in daily life for practical concerns like healing, relationships and food.
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Arguing against dichotomies of official or unofficial religion and the sacred versus the profane, McGuire says these binaries are socially constructed and Western-centric whereas lived religion recognizes embodiment is important in spirituality and local culture blends with traditional church practices. Throngs gather in processions as this is how people believe they can tap divine power for their needs.
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One pilgrimage illustrating lived religion is the Mayan procession to Guatemala’s Black Christ. Anthropologist Jan Kapusta of the Czech Republic’s University of Hradec Králové did an ethnography of indigenous Mayans’ pilgrimage to the dark icon of Jesus on its annual January 15 feast. In his 2016 article in the top-ranked Anthropos journal, he found that for Mayans including ordinary farmers, the pilgrimage was a plea for daily concerns like rain, harvest or health.
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Mayans practice faith through embodied experiences like touching the Black Christ. While Christianity came to Guatemala through Spanish colonization, it was influenced by Mayan cosmology which holds that humans and deities need each other. Kapusta concluded that such worldview explains why the temple attracts over a million pilgrims annually.
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Social identification
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While sociology accounts for devotees’ embodied faith, crowd psychology may explain their attitude toward safety threats. Psychology professor John Drury and Hani Alnabulsi of the UK’s University of Sussex explain that people identifying with a crowd expect others to help them in times of danger. Using social identification theory, they surveyed participants of the 2012 Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest religious gatherings of over three million people.
In their frequently cited 2014 journal article, Drury and Alnabulsi found that Hajj pilgrims identified with crowd members as fellow Muslims perceived that others would aid them in case of trouble and even felt safer as crowd density increased. The study concluded that social identification moderates the negative effect of crowd density on safety. This explains why pilgrims still performed physical rituals such as kissing the Black Stone despite safety threats.
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Social identification may also explain Nazarene devotees’ insistence on physically participating in the feast in spite of risks. They identify with each other through solidarity and call each other brothers and sisters. Then Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle said in a 2016 homily that devotees regard each other as siblings while followers belong to groups called Hijos del Nazareno (Sons of the Nazarene). In a 2018 column on the Rappler website, Ateneo de Manila University development studies associate professor Jayeel Cornelio said devotees find belongingness in one another. These may be manifestations of social identification, illustrating that like Hajj pilgrims, Nazarene devotees expect fellow followers’ help in times of danger and feel safe to insist on performing the Traslacion’s physical rituals.
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Historian Xiao Chua of Manila’s De La Salle University backs social identification as an explanation. “While the procession looks frenzied, if someone faints or raises their hand, that’s the sign they will be carried to the side like those crowd surfing in a rock concert so medics can take them to the hospital. There’s safety in numbers as they think of themselves as Sons of the Nazarene,” Chua said in an interview.
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Jose Maximiano, award-winning author of books on the Catholic church, also affirms the theory’s applicability. “Devotees believe in the goodwill of fellow devotees. Women are safeguarded. If you notice, there is no stampede whatsoever considering the millions who attend the procession,” he said.
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"We are ready to give our final breath for the Lord Nazarene"
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- Adam Sanding, Hijos del Nazareno group secretary
How much then do Nazarene devotees trust each other with their safety? Sanding, secretary of one of the Hijos del Nazareno groups, said “100%”. “We know the meaning of brotherhood.”
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Sanding recounts a meeting the Hijos had with Manila’s police chief who asked them if they were afraid of bombings. “Our answer was simple: If a bomb goes off, we will secure the Nazarene. We hold on to him literally. This is who we cling to in our weak moments. We are ready to give our final breath for the Lord Nazarene.”
Painful Holy Week
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Sanding had contemplated plans for Good Friday, the only other time in the year the Nazarene is taken on a procession but smaller than in January. The church cancelled the event due to the government lockdown prompted by the coronavirus.
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“It is so painful and it brings me to tears that I wasn’t able to see the king. This is the first time I experienced this,” Sanding said. “Despite the church being closed, I still went there and evaded guards to pray outside. I am afraid of the virus but the Nazarene protects me.”
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As church and state devise ways to keep devotees safe from terrorism or pandemics, experts say the most effective measures are those done with respect of and consultation with devotees. This year’s Traslacion sparked claims of police brutality and complaints from some followers of being “denied access to God”.
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“Church and government authorities should understand people’s worldviews before developing plans. People will reject impositions if they do not understand where these policies are coming from,” said Castro, the anthropologist.
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For the coronavirus, Chua said officials can use social identification to persuade devotees to stay home. “If you frame this as brotherhood, that we are not supposed to let the virus spread as sacrifice for others, I think they will understand.”
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Braving bombs and maladies, Sanding vows to keep his devotion alive, passing it on to his 19-year-old son who also joined the Hijos del Nazareno. Viewing faith as relevant to his daily concerns as explained by lived religion and finding safety in fellow devotees as captured by social identification, he asks for understanding, not judgment.
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“We are not a cult. We are worshipping a living image.”
About the Author
Ayee Macaraig, Philippines
Ayee is a Filipino multimedia journalist with 11 years of experience in newswire, television and digital media. She was a correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and worked for Philippine media outlets Rappler and ANC. As of this writing, she is doing an internship with the Copenhagen Post in Denmark.
