Society South Korea Korea's Filipino Missionary Mania | Korea's Filipino Missionary Mania |
| Written by Michael Gibb | |
| Tuesday, 23 December 2008 | |
|
Page 1 of 2
Part 1 of 2 "Why are there so many different Korean churches here?" Sumbad asked as the evening rain beat against the wooden door. "Even if there are only five houses in the mountains, the Koreans will build a church there. Sometimes they put up a church in a small village where a church already exists. Why can't they join together and form one church?" Korea’s indefatigable missionaries, an estimated 17,000 of which have fanned out across the world to spread Christianity, have found Mindoro. Now they are leaving a trail of angry and increasingly frustrated indigenous people, known collectively as the Mangyan, in the wake of their fervent missionary activities. They have engaged in a feverish orgy of church-building, sometimes even in places where the churches sit empty. Secular and spiritual tribal leaders across the island, the seventh largest in the Philippines, accuse the multitude of Korean organizations here of causing tension and division. Inadvertently or not, they subvert traditional customs and laws and waste money building churches in remote corners of the island, the leaders say. In their defense, Korean missionary groups say they are only trying to help the Mangyan people by teaching the Bible, but many NGOs, academics and even some officials in Philippine government are calling on the missionaries to pay more respect to the indigenous culture. Sumbad was addressing community leaders in November in Batangan, a village of around 60 households that he founded decades ago in the central municipality of Bongabong. He is haunted by the fear that his Buhid legacy and the entire Mangyan culture will be swamped by the Korean missionary activity. Mangyan communities are highly remote, located deep in the forests and mountain regions. Batangan is one of the more accessible ones, but you still need to hike at least an hour from the nearest highway although the mud track connecting it to the rest of Mindoro floods during the rainy season and the village can be cut off for days. Yet, as you approach Batangan, you are met by what some might think an incongruous sight. Rising high above the mud-brown bamboo huts in which the villagers live stands the newly built Jesus is the Christ Church, built in 2003 by a Korean missionary group called the All for Christ Theological Seminary. Money for the project came from the Hae Dot Nun Presbyterian Church in Gwangju, South Jeolla, part of what ACTS called an "evangelistic crusade." Within months, dozens of people from Batangan had been baptized into the Korean church. Now, according to Julius Inocencio, 25, the Filipino pastor who was trained by the seminary, 100 villagers regularly attend the church. With only 60 families in Batangan, this is a significant portion of the population.
But NGO workers in Bantagan say a church already existed in the area before the Koreans arrived and that many in the community were already Christians. Following what Lagtum Pasag, 38, a former local commissioner for the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples called "aggressive PR" by the Koreans, which included the provision of rice to new members, many villagers left their previous church and joined the Koreans. Comments
(1)
|
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
Alice Poon
| Anti-Anti-Speculation ActionTuesday, 24 August 2010 | Alice Poon (潘慧嫻)
It seems that the SAR government finally decided to choose
the lesser of two evils: taking decisive, albeit belated, anti-speculation
measures in the hope of stabilizing prices, rather than... Full Story |
| Previous posts: |
John Elliott: Riding the Elephant
| From vultures in Delhi, to coups in Pakistan, a journalist's un-edited take on current events |
|
Donate to Asia Sentinel
if you send me the list of them, we Koreans can prevent it at home.