These activist undertakings evolved from just being separately Catholic and Protestant projects to becoming ecumenical and inter-faith. The presence of committed people who gave their lives to the cause of justice and peace avowedly without a God – atheists – gave birth to basic human communities. This has become a new locus of encounter between faith-based traditions and ideological perspectives: the problem is not about God or belief in God, but the poverty, oppression and injustice experienced by the people. The people with their dreams and projects for a better life are the new historical points of convergence between those who work for salvation and those who work for liberation. In fact in this dialogue of life, the primacy of the poor and their projects is upheld and promoted. The poor and their project for liberation take precedence over any church project and any political ideological plan.
Among the clergy and men religious involved in this surging activism in the Church were the MSC, the Redemptorists, the Franciscans, the Maryknoll, the Columbans, the O’Carm, the Jesuits, the SVD, the CICM. Many church people, mostly lay, priests, sisters, religious, seminarians and Junior Sisters, baylan, imam, pastors and a few bishops were either intimidated and threatened, or jailed and tortured. A few were caused to disappear, or killed, either by execution or in action. We remember Frs. Favali, Romano, Kangleon, Aquino, Sator and Valerio.
After Martial Law, with the euphoria of EDSA, this activism in the church, in particular the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines, has slowly waned. Many a Church people frown and distance themselves from this type of activism. They don’t want to be disturbed from their comfortable way of helping the people. They want to serve the poor without pain and suffering. In fact, some of them have ganged up on the few persistent activists, red-tag them and call them communists, if not terrorists. Some of them would rather let the people die helpless in poverty and oppression than survive and live with the help of those they have red-tagged as communists. For them, activism has a negative meaning and connotation. It is shallow, more words, demonstrations and rallies without real proposal and action for change. Activism is just a nuisance and a distraction.
Why did these Church people follow the path of activism in their Christian life and ministry? Why did they have to punctuate the traditional serene secure life of the institutional church with this messy, disturbing, uncomfortable and dangerous way of living the ministry? Was this God’s call?
Christian Prophetic Tradition:
Postcolonial Criticism and Intercultural Biblical Interpretation.
The Christian Prophetic Tradition is rooted in Sacred Scripture. It is important for us to go deeply into the prophetic tradition of our Christian life, this time through the lens of Postcolonial Criticism and Interpretation of the Text of Sacred Scripture. Postcolonial reading of Sacred Scripture does not mean a linear and chronological reading of the Bible, that Christianity and Catholicism of the Roman and Iberian variety came to our shores in 1521 and we were freed from Spain in 1898, and therefore we are free. Rather, it means, with liberation theology, the starting point and prime site for doing theology is the reality of the poor and their struggle for liberation. Postcolonial mind recognizes the plurality of oppression (Sugirthaharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, 2002, 43-71). Postcolonial reading is at war against sin: “colonialism, neocolonialism, dictatorship, corruption and social injustices in every aspect of society, regardless of their agent…it is a committed search and struggle for decolonization and liberation of the oppressed”. (Rukundwa, Postcolonialism and Biblical Criticism, in Cope Langh Khan Kam, June 30, 2017).
Old Testament Prophetic Tradition
The Old Testament prophetic tradition is generally divided into the non-writing prophets and the writing prophets.
Moses
We begin our investigation with Moses, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets (Deut 34,10). He discovered his own identity. He saw the oppression of his people. In his vein ran the desire to defend his fellow Hebrew from any Egyptian oppression. When he saw one being maltreated, “he looked this way and that, and finding no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Ex 2,12). This was premeditated murder in defense of the oppressed. Then he became a fugitive of Egyptian law. Escaping from Egyptian law into the mountain of Horeb, he met God who had heard the cry of the people from oppression and bonded labor, the same God who remembered his Covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And God gave him a mission (Ex 3,7-10), thus:
“I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Per′izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb′usites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”
Here we have a classic biblical formula of the liberation process: (1) to see the affliction of the people, (2) to hear their cry, (3) to know the cause of their affliction and their cry: oppression and injustice by the taskmasters, (4) to come down in solidarity, (5) to deliver them out in freedom, and (6) to bring them up to a good land: a radical alternative most attractive than any other alternative.
Moses, the intentional murderer in defense of the oppressed poor, the fugitive of the Egyptian law, has now become the spokesperson of God, the prophet of God to let His/Her people go!
The exodus experience was central to the faith-life of the people Israel. The spirit of liberation was a prophetic legacy of those whom Yahweh loves. It would be borne by future generations.
