[excerpt from “A Lot on My Mind”]

There was one instance where my previous boss, who is a born-again Christian, was talking about going to the Philippines for missionary work. There was something I found offensive about it. It wasn’t just because I didn’t like organized religion, more specifically the condemning fundamentalistic religious sects of Christianity that many of the politicians in America are currently spouting off about. At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt offended. It wasn’t until later that I found it in print within the pages of a book.

Freire’s critical look at the role of religion in fostering the culture of silence led me to question my Christianity, which was, in essense, my whole life. As a devout evangelical Christian, it was with great fear that I hesitatingly began to obey the inner voice that prompted me to question what western Christian theology has taught me. What is the relationship between imperialism and missionary work? Didn’t missionaries bring their own western cultural baggage to people they “ministered” to? How did I feel about being an “evangelistic project”? How did my complicity with missionary efforts contribute to the negation of my cultural self as a Filipino?

A crisis in my evangelical Christian faith was reflected in my journal entries in late 1992. In one of these dialogues with God, I wrote:

I have been angry with the white missionaries and white people who robbed me of the opportunity to know You on my own terms. I have felt this fakery I have lived by, this cultural Christianity; and part of that cultural Christianity includes the oppression of people, their being judged as inferior people. All my life I’ve lived feeling inferior to white people, beholden to them for their intelligence, affluence, productivity, and cultural creations. After I became a Christian, I wanted even more to become like them, for to be like them is to be like You.

Although, I’m sure that their intentions were good, the road to hell is paved with them. It was that deep inside me, I felt that he and his church had the notion that the people in the Philippines were somehow inferior and that they were so much “better” that they went there because they believed that they could save their souls. I mean, I’m sure that they would be helpful in the services they would provide–providing medical attention, providing food and clothing, etc, but yet at the same time, subliminally showing them how superior they and their God was.