SECULARISING CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

Nancy Caluya-Nicolas

During Sunday school sessions, churchgoers divide themselves into groups - the elders, the young adults, the youth, the children - and learn about Christianity. It is a Sunday, the "spirit" day. It is a day like no other day of the week. It is the time to be free from all the "worldly" worries.

Sunday is the time to recharge the spirits by contemplating only on the "spiritual" concerns. The day-to-day concerns, whether personal or social in nature, are shunned and treated as if they are taboo in Sunday school discussions. People have all the rest of the week to worry about such problems. Hence, the topics are limited to the Christian ideals of love, faith, hope, justice, peace and equality. Eschatology or the topic of the end of the world, life after death, and the nature of God are the other familiar subjects.

This traditional, albeit popular, concept of Christian education has bred certain attitudes that could stunt the growth of Christians as believers and responsible citizens of a society. For example, such type of Christian education has developed a sort of exclusivity from, and even disdain of, secular subjects like ecology, economics, politics, sociology, health etc. These areas of learning are treated as things of the "outside world" that are irreconcilable with the Christian education since, for one, these are not "Bible-based".

The National Council of Churches of the Philippines has churned out numerous Bible studies regarding these so-called secular topics but the churches, specifically the leadership of the churches, which are in most cases dominated by elders, have refused to use these materials. The churches seems to be uncomfortable with the "new" subjects and are apparently unprepared to tackle them, perhaps, because they are too technical, incompatible with their long-held beliefs or merely because they are just too lazy to change their curricula.

Another danger that this "dichotomy of knowledge" may bring is that this way of thinking reinforces the "split-level Christianity" among the Filipinos. Split-level Christianity means that the believers have somehow distinguished the day-to-day things from the spiritual aspect of their lives. They treat the temporal as something that has nothing to do whatsoever with the spiritual dimension of one's life. They do not even try to reconcile these two. Here is a man, for example, who is involved in drug dealing. His illegal business does not bother his conscience because his religious education or upbringing has conditioned him to separate his daily business with the spiritual. Multiply this thousands of times and we have a people who are outwardly religious yet ungodly in their deeds because their

ethics had been overtaken by the developments of a dynamic civilisation. This is a society that is spiritually complacent and self-assured but without order because their kind of religiosity has outlived their usefulness. This type of Christian education has become incompatible with the realities of the present Philippine society, particularly the youth.

Our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, had said the youth are the hope of the land. But this could only be realised if and when the processes through which they undergo to form their mature personalities, one of which is Christian education, are bent toward equipping them with the necessary tools to cope with the changing society.

The Youth Ministry

The youth ministry is a challenge to develop the most important asset of the society - the youth who are the next generation of leaders. The youth are vocal and intellectually active. They can easily absorb and express ideas.

The youth movement in the Philippines has done much in alerting the ecumenical movement to the meaning of its critical witness in the face of the myriad issues that confront our society, in particular, and the world in general.

But a large percentage of the Filipino youth have not been exposed to a kind of Christian education that would mold them into critical and progressive members of the church and society. This is so because the kind of education they get from their churches are the worn-out concepts of ages ago.

Moreover the reactionary movement within the religious community is active. A case in point is the charismatic movement, which has been propagating a kind of religious attitude that encourages non-participation in the pursuit of solutions to societal problems. The zealous evangelisation of charismatic groups has netted for them thousands of converts, most of them youth. They are in the campuses, in the streets, even in public and private offices. In other words, they are everywhere. They claim to be non-denominational, meaning they accept anyone regardless of religious affiliation. They are ecumenistic, that is true, but they are anti-ecumenical.

Charismatic groups are anti-ecumenical movement because they disregard denominations and the union of different churches under which the doctrines and distinct religious beliefs are respected and preserved. They aim for an organic union of all believers "under the universal fold of Christianity". For example, they say Methodist conform to Methodism, not Christianity; Lutherans follow Luther, not Christ; and so on and so forth.

They claim to be non-political. But in the Philippines, as the proverbial political pot boils as next year's elections draw near, they try to lure the allegiance of politicians by bandying their membership, which they claim to have reached 12 million. Despite their intention to influence politics in the country, they have no avowed social agenda. Apparently, they want to have a share of power without any responsibility to the society at large.

Another roadblock of the youth ministry is the young people's psychological make-up spawned by years of exposure to colonial influences.

Three hundred years in the convent and 50 years in Hollywood. That is how the Filipino nation's colonial history is described. For more than 300 years under the Spanish rule, the Filipinos had been kept ignorant by the conquerors who thought being illiterate is synonymous with being subservient.

By the turn of the century, the Americans, who passed themselves off as comrades-in-arms of Filipino revolutionaries, claimed that they freed the Philippines from the clutches of the Spaniards and directly ruled the country for almost 50 years, and indirectly up to the present. Although the Americans popularised education, they taught us western ideas and ways of life. In fact, the American materialism is very much visible in the Philippine society.

But what is more dangerous is that such hedonism or love of sensual pleasures and external beauty is very much a part of the Filipino youth. They love fun and parties. They are bored with attending church services and Bible studies. They love cars and long for financially rewarding careers. They consider spiritual pursuits as "corny".

The Society

About 33 percent of the 61 million Filipinos or 20.48 million are aged 15-34. Thus, they belong to the youth sector. Last year, 16 million of them were supposed to be in schools but only 10 million got enrolled. The rest are somewhere scavenging for food amid mountains of trash, or working in factories or farms, or on the streets begging for some coins, or stealing food and money, or wasting away their lives by using drugs out of frustration and hopelessness. They failed to enrol because their families could not afford to pay the high fees that the schools demand.

Sixty percent of the Philippine population live below the poverty line. This means 36.6 million of the 61 million Filipinos belong to a household that has a monthly income of P3.500 or less. This poverty was spawned by many factors, historical, sociological, etc. But one obvious contributor of the miseries and wretchedness of our people is the government and the manner it handles the Philippine economy through its policies. Let me cite an example. Out of this year's budget of 280 billion pesos, 127.4 billion pesos will automatically be appropriated to the Philippines $28-billion debt. The result of course is that very little funds are left for social services like education, health, infrastructures, etc.

Joblessness, child exploitation, malnutrition, drugs, low wages, are some of the nagging problems of the youth and the society as a whole. Malnutrition, for example, affects 3.5 million pre-schoolers or children below 6 years old. Out of this 3.5 million, 1.16 million are suffering from third degree malnutrition.

The grave poverty many Filipino families find themselves in has resulted in many children going to the streets to sell candies, cigarettes and even their fragile bodies to western tourists who are exploiting the poor children and youth just to satisfy their sexual perversity. It is estimated that there are about 20,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines, with ages ranging from 7 to 15 years old.

This is the context where most Filipino youth find themselves in, not to mention the numerous natural and man-made calamities that have been plaguing the country for the last two years.

Two years ago in December 1989, the administration of President Corazon Aquino fought off at the brink of defeat the sixth coup attempt of the military rebels.

This was followed by the July 16, 1990 earthquake that left northern Luzon ruined, the eight-month drought that devastated crops in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, the super-typhoons, the disastrous Mt. Pinatubo eruption that changed the landscape of Central Luzon, and the latest being the flash floods in Leyte province that claimed

8,000 lives and rendered tens of thousands homeless. The Leyte tragedy was blamed on the denudation of forests around the area because of illegal logging. To say that these developments are of a dimension that is apart from the spiritual is difficult, to say the least. The Filipinos, who are one of the most religious people in this part of the globe, are aching for answers to their questions: "Why is God allowing all these tragedies to happen to us"? "What have we done to deserve such a fate"? "Are these God's punishments for our sins"? These are just some of the questions constantly aired in the face of tragedies that seemingly require extra-human powers to overcome.

Secularising Christian Education

The pressure to adjust to the traditional Christian education and go deeply into the spiritual questions about the concrete situation of the people is obviously present.

Secularising Christian education does not mean we will abandon the Christian ideals of love, faith, hope, justice, peace and equality. It simply means we should adapt these to the real predicaments of the faithfuls and the would-be faithfuls.

We should teach love of our people, especially the poor - the least, the last, and the lost - whose warm bodies have for so long been aching for respite from grinding poverty and wretchedness. We should teach love for the creation of God - the land, the sea, the sky and all the creatures that live in them - so that the Leyte tragedy will not be repeated.

We should teach faith and hope so that we all will have the courage to face up to the challenges of tomorrow and walk with other persons without fear.

We should teach justice and equality so that the rich few will no more grow fat on the poverty of the starving poor majority and the powerful will no more stump over those who are powerless.

We should teach peace so that our history of barbarism will end at last. No more will those who have the guns rule those who prefer non-violent ways to settle disputes.

For so long we have depended on how western books, western religious thoughts, western interpretations, western everything. It is time to do those things ourselves because we are the experts of our own cultures and our distinct political, economic and socio-logical situations.

Not to secularise Christian education is to allow ourselves to be prisoners of foreign ideas and alien practices that undermine our own rich religiosity. That would be a sign of weakness on our part.

To effect a "marriage" of the secular and Christian educations are not easy. But the assurance that this can be done lies on our faith. We believe that the Bible is the living word of God. It is not in a state of suspended animation.

If the Christians in the western countries were able to formulate their concepts and systems of Christian education, the Third World countries could definitely do the same. God does not reside in the First World countries alone and God's truth is everywhere.

Secularising Christian education is a challenge to us. The decisions whether or not to face up to this challenge is ours.