To the Filipino taipans, the Iglesia Ni Cristo: What is patriotism?

Jarius Bondoc excoriated in this paper this week the “traitor” Filipinos who are raping the land and selling for a pittance those precious minerals to the Chinese with whom they have connived. He is absolutely on track, particularly at this very moment when the emergent world power that is China is openly grabbing the fringes of our country. These anti-Filipinos will say self-righteously that it is all business. Aren’t others doing it?

I will now confirm Jarius’s apodictic conclusion, and add to it a far larger truth which all of us know but do nothing about — the billions of Filipino dollars sent to China in the last three decades that have transformed that country into what it is today — rich and powerful enough to threaten its neighbors and roil the peace in our part of the world.

This huge sum which should have been invested in this country was made by these Chinese who came to the Philippines in penury. Though some were born here, their loyalty is not to this country which was most hospitable to them but to the land wherefrom their ancestors came.

Where is their patriotism? Why didn’t they invest all that money here? Look at their investments now: shopping malls, fancy condos or casinos — not productive industries, not in agriculture for this is our greatest need today: food security.

If this country is well developed such as Japan or the United States, then they can afford to invest abroad.

How did the Koreans develop? Or even much, much earlier, how did a laid-back post-war Japan develop? This is how: they did not allow their currency to leave.

It is all so basic and simple: economic development starts with capital formation but that formation was not made because our very rich sent their money abroad — the Chinese Filipinos to China as already stated, the Spanish mestizos to Spain and elsewhere, and the Indios like Marcos, to Singapore, and to Switzerland. This indicates their lack of trust and confidence in the Filipinos, and their explicit disloyalty and ingratitude to the land that made them rich.

In the 1950s, the Escolta was the country’s premier shopping area; it was also the paseo of Manila. On any afternoon, a middle-aged man in a white suit, straw hat and dark visage would be seen strolling along the street from end to end. That was Felix Manalo, the fabled founder of the Iglesia Ni Cristo.

I was then with the Sunday magazine of the Manila Times — the largest magazine in the country. I interviewed him at the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) church in San Juan for a couple of days. When the article was finally published, two of his leaders came to the Times to complain. I thought I had been very kind to the INC founder, but it seemed that he objected to some portions of the interview.

I am sorry I cannot reproduce that interview now, but I remember very well what he told me, the reason why he founded the Iglesia — its chiliastic doctrine, which it abandoned in the 1980s, that the end of the 20th century would also be world’s end and only INC members would be saved. I appreciated several things Felix Manalo told me. First, that the Iglesia is a Filipino church, that all the centavos it collected from members would be used to build churches everywhere, that no centavo would be sent to Rome. What impressed me most was his vision — that the Iglesia Ni Cristo would be a haven for the poor, that he would build a church to give the oppressed not only faith but a sense of community; that the Iglesia would care for its flock in a manner that the Catholic Church does not.

Above all else, Felix Manalo said he did not want to be hungry anymore, that he would banish hunger from the land. It is a wish so many still share today.

Membership in the Iglesia may be exclusive but its goals, particularly now that it has grown gigantically, should be inclusive, and should include a program that will fructify its founder’s dream.

This requires the Iglesia to be actively political to the extent that it should even build a party similar to Komeito of the Buddhist Sokka Gakai in Japan. This party will then usher in power leaders who have genuine compassion for the poor.

When Raul Manglapus started building his Christian Social Democratic Party in the ‘60s, I told him to study the dynamics of the Iglesia Ni Cristo and win massive support from the lower classes. They didn’t have pesos then — only centavos. Unfortunately, Raul didn’t follow my advice. Recently, at the annual convention of the Centrist Democratic Party as envisioned by the political scientist, Jose V. Abueva in Cagayan de Oro, I repeated what I told Raul, that the party should be a party of the poor, and take to heart the Iglesia Ni Cristo experience.

Through the years, the Iglesia Ni Cristo built up a political clout that none of the churches in this country — not even the Catholic Church — has. It has also spread to United States, to Europe. It must now have a social ideology similar to what Pope Francis is giving to a lethargic Catholicism.

All through history, a nation or a civilization’s enduring glory is articulated by its mega constructions — the pyramids, the lofty cathedrals of the Christian world. That brilliant travel writer Jan Morris rhapsodized about America’s sweeping highways being that nation’s cathedrals. What are ours? The shopping malls, the ritzy gambling casinos — and now, the colossal arenas which illustrate only too well the circuses that we worship, the consumerist baubles, the shallowness of our faith.

Perhaps, we can justify these constructions if their foundation is rock hard and solid — but it is not. Their foundation is the rot and decay — the accretion of years of corruption and immorality and the horrible absence of simple affection for this land and its people.

In a matter of months, the Iglesia will inaugurate its huge amphitheater in Bulacan, touted to be the biggest in the world. It may be rightly regarded as its pinnacle achievement. That amphitheater is not the kind that epitomizes Felix Manalo’s core thinking. How wonderful if it was made instead into the most modern hospital in the country, coupled with a medical school or a new Science University. The Iglesia Ni Cristo can help build this country into a nation, not only God-fearing but imbued with justice. This is not an abstraction. Its simplest definition: people who eat three meals a day instead of one.