Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Christian formation meets indigenous resurrection

S Lily Mendoza

doi:10.4102/hts.v73i3.4660

Abstract

Undoing all forms of domination – including, in particular, religious domination – remains a crucial imperative of our time, given that domination constitutes a spirit-killing dynamic that distorts, oppresses and throws living beings (both human and non-human alike) out of synch with themselves. One form of domination in colonial contexts is the totalising claim to a monopoly of ‘the’ truth that effectively delegitimises and demonises all other ways of seeing the world. This essay grapples with the question: What happens when the ‘One True Story’ encounters other faith stories? Riffing off my (coedited) anthology, Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory (dedicated to the memory of the Filipino indigenous women and men healers impaled on stakes by early Spanish missionaries and left on river banks for crocodiles to feast on), I narrate my personal journey growing up as a Filipina Methodist pastor’s kid, becoming a born-again believer and an aspiring Christian missionary trained by Philippine Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and the Navigators, and belatedly coming to grips with my relationship to my country’s colonial history and its consequences for me and my people’s struggle for wholeness and authenticity. What happens when my wholly formed Christian subjectivity becomes challenged by the resurrecting call of spirit to indigenous and earth well-being? Informed by a multilayered cultural memory, I trace my faith learnings from an encounter with deep ancestry in the ‘belly of the beast’ and its larger significance for today’s social movement struggles for sustainability and global coexistence.

Highlights

I approach the question of interreligious encounter through a mode of narration known as ethnoautobiography
In contrast to mere autobiography, ethnoautobiography seeks to bring about the healing of the ‘dissociative and objectifying construction of self and reality’ noted to define the colonised modern self (Kremer 2003:2)
The story that follows is an ethnoautobiographical narration of one Filipina born-again Christian’s decolonisation and indigenous reclamation journey, facilitated by her belated encounter with the repressed stories and histories of her people previously eclipsed by the all-powerful telling of a single universalising and universalised Story – that of Christianity

Summary

Original Research

Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Christian formation meets indigenous resurrection. Affiliations: 1Department of Communication and Journalism, Oakland University, United States. Description: This research is part of the research project, ‘Social Justice and Reconciliation’, which is directed by Dr Stephan de Beer, Director of the Centre for Contextual Ministry and member of the Department of Practical Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria. How to cite this article: Lily Mendoza, S., 2017, ‘Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Christian formation meets indigenous resurrection’, HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 73(3), a4660. This essay grapples with the question: What happens when the ‘One True Story’ encounters other faith stories? What happens when my wholly formed Christian subjectivity becomes challenged by the resurrecting call of spirit to indigenous and earth well-being? What happens when my wholly formed Christian subjectivity becomes challenged by the resurrecting call of spirit to indigenous and earth well-being? Informed by a multilayered cultural memory, I trace my faith learnings from an encounter with deep ancestry in the ‘belly of the beast’ and its larger significance for today’s social movement struggles for sustainability and global coexistence

Introduction

Christian formation and root disconnection

Open Access

Framing history

Findings

Beginning of unravelling