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Christianity Not Only Brought To The Philippines Culture – Also Agriculture!

Negative. The Rappler essay by Nicolas Faller Jr (NFJ), published 16 March 2021, “No, We Shouldn’t Celebrate 500 Years Of Christianity In Our Country[1]” is only contrarian, not convincing. All claim, no corroboration. Clearly, NFJ neither amasses his content nor argues his contention.

So now I will argue to the contrary: “Yes, We Should Celebrate 500 Years Of Christianity In Our Country!” I do not know which school NFJ graduated from, but I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños and, for God’s sake, I got a perfect grade of 1 (Excellent) from our  UP Diliman professor in Western Thought, Mr Bituin. Now, NFJ gets from me a grade of 5 (Failed) on his essay. To justify the 5, since I am an agriculturist, I will concentrate on what the Spaniards did for PH Agriculture.

In the “History Of The Philippines[2],” Wikipedia says:

Outside the tertiary institutions, the efforts of missionaries were in no way limited to religious instruction but also geared towards promoting social and economic advancement of the islands… They also introduced advances in rice agriculture, brought from America maize and cocoa and developed the farming of indigo, coffee and sugar cane.

Now then, where would NFJ get his cup after cup of coffee if we Filipinos did not welcome Christianity brought by the Spaniards to this country?!

One of Spain's objectives in (colonizing) the Philippines was the conversion of the local population to Roman Catholicism. The work of conversion was facilitated by the disunity and insignificance of other organized religions, except for Islam, which was still predominant in the southwest. The pageantry of the church had a wide appeal, reinforced by the incorporation of indigenous social customs into religious observances.

Before the Spaniards came to the Philippines, our peoples were disunited (a polite term). There were religions, plural – and nationally insignificant because of their quantity and quality. Roman Catholicism unified the warring tribes and civilized them, while using indigenous customs.

What I dislike was this:

Among the most significant changes under Spanish rule was that the indigenous idea of communal use and ownership of land was replaced with the concept of private ownership and the conferring of titles on members of the principalía.

Objecting to communal ownership of lands, the Spanish conquerors introduced private ownership. With private land ownership came titles of the upper class (principalía). I must say here I prefer the communal ownership of lands, because with modern technologies and systems, such ownership is necessary to bring about economic & social efficiencies.

Of course, the family of our National Hero Jose Rizal suffered from heavy taxes exacted by the Spanish clergy who owned or controlled lands in Calamba and Los Baños, but this was not the dictate of Christianity but rather the dictate of greed, despite the admonition of God in his Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.”

Isn’t it amazing that Secretary of Agriculture William Dar has been advocating farm clustering or consolidation as a methodological solution to individual and inefficient operations of farmlands?!@517


[1]https://www.rappler.com/voices/imho/opinion-no-we-should-not-celebrate-500-years-christianity-our-country?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR16lzlOO2zJJj3RPd5quwcAZs1UYxSwcn6QaQTmi9y_HaVwl8IIDpM6WOU#Echobox=1615877113

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Philippines

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