The Sacred Experiences of Filipino Youth

Abstract

This chapter presents qualitative data of a study regarding the conceptualisations of the sacred of young people in Mindanao and Manila in the Philippines. The young people involved in the authors’ study produced essays and conceptual maps to represent their views of the sacred. Drawing on the conceptual taxonomy of the sacred in the Philippines, the authors developed an analytic schema from the data arising from this project. A lecture by Jose de Mesa (delivered on 15 January 2013 at De La Salle University, Philippines, 2013), a prominent Filipino theologian, on a new way to approach God helped the researchers develop their conceptual taxonomy of the sacred in the Philippines, as his work speaks to the Filipino context. This allowed them to frame the Filipino youth’s conceptualisations of the sacred in terms of three concepts: banal (holy), maganda (beautiful), and ritwal (ritual). Young people’s responses in this study indicate that young people in the Philippines might be inclined towards negotiating spaces and contexts within a community-building framework that draws from their conceptualisations of the sacred as they relate to peace in their own multicultural contexts.