Religiosity among Indigenous Peoples: A Study of Cordilleran Youth in the Philippines

Abstract

Religions are a set of beliefs, attitudes, and practices about transcendence. They are formed by complex social and cultural rituals and customs. Given that religion is also vital to the Indigenous Peoples, this study employed the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) to measure and understand the nuances of the religiosity of the Indigenous youth of Cordillera, also known as Igorots, in the Philippines. The Cordilleran youth’s religiosity is particularly interesting to the researchers because their autochthonous religion is marked by a cosmology that includes hundreds of deities and elaborate rituals accompanying personal and social events. Data collected from 151 university students showed that Cordilleran youth are highly religious, and those living in rural areas are more religious than the younger participants. The Cordilleran youth strongly prefer private practice and scored high in the ideology dimension of CRS. They tend to devote themselves to transcendence in their personal space through individualized activities and rituals. This study also found that the religiosity of the select Cordilleran youth was ambivalent, defined as the coexistence of different ideas or feelings in the mind or a single context. It shows the inter-religiosity of the Indigenous youth as expressed in the engagement of religious practices. This paper discussed these significant results and explored their implications for the Indigenous Peoples and the Cordilleran youth.