Stewardship Towards God’s Creation Among Early Filipinos: Implications to Inculturated Faith

Abstract

An integral inculturated faith is anchored to the Filipino cultural heritage and identity. Primal cosmic beliefs and practices carried the holistic customs of stewardships towards God’s creation where it embodied the union and mutuality of the natives to nature rather than control and subordination. The research utilized primary materials written by Spanish ethnographers in the 16th-17th century. Although their observations were from the colonizers’ perspectives, it still revealed beliefs and practices at that time common among early Filipinos. One needs to filter and decipher those accounts to unearth early Filipinos experiences of oikenomous. Although the study was limited to the Tagalogs, still the dynamics of power-relations between the inhabitants and nature were demonstrated using the lenses of Foucault’s discourse on power. 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