Religious Plurality in Present-Day Buguias

Religious Conflict

While Pagans and Christians debate fervently in Buguias, disputes seldom escalate into open confrontations. At present, leaders of both groups stress mutual respect and seek slow, deliberate change. Relations were more strained in earlier years, with tensions peaking in the 1960s after a Catholic priest hurled to the ground a sacred

Pagan marker, decrying it as the devil's sign. The incensed Pagan community responded with threats, both physical and legal. Later priests acted with more tact, and by the 1970s the two groups had reached an unsteady rapprochement. It is primarily the Jehovah's Witnesses who still occasionally infuriate Pagans, for they alone doggedly try to convert uninterested persons.

The most intense religious struggles occur upon the death of an individual survived by both Pagan and Christian offspring. Unless the deceased leaves explicit funeral instructions—and sometimes even if she or he does—the children may quarrel over the ceremony's religious content. The entire community can become involved in the ensuing arguments and intrigue. According to the resident Catholic priest, Pagan survivors have attempted on several occasions to hide death shrouds in Christian coffins.

Pagans generally respect Christian beliefs, but they nevertheless heavily pressure some converts to return to the fold, willing to accept them as fellow Pagans even if they wish to remain "part-time Christians." Elite family descendants form a particular target, since Pagans believe that even powerful ancestors may falter if denied full homage. The errant cousin or sibling may be reminded time and again of a parent's wish to be honored in the afterlife, of their family's pride and position, and of the need to follow precedent. If such entreaties are unsuccessful, relatives may threaten to deny the recalcitrant couple future business loans. As a result, even confessed Christians occasionally, if grudgingly, celebrate prestige feasts.

Recent Change and Compromise

The leaders of Buguias Paganism by no means espouse an orthodoxy. As elsewhere in the Cordillera, they not uncommonly borrow new observances from neighboring peoples and they often accept innovations in practice. Most elders do argue, however, that change should be gradual and that honoring the ancestors should remain central.

Paganism's postwar history reflects the period's economic and social transformations. A simplified prestige feast ladder now allows young couples to establish themselves more easily. Before the war, a distinct ceremony occurred before the birth of the first child;

this has now been melded with the first pedit. In earlier days, only local sacrificial hogs would do; now, lowland and "mestizo" swine are acceptable, provided they are black. Children now return to school after the first few days of their families' celebrations, whereas before they were kept home for the full duration. The Pagan funeral is also being transformed as the death chair gradually loses favor. Many Pagans now choose to be displayed in an open coffin.

Most Buguias Pagans have also changed their views on the diagnosis and treatment of disease. For a number of years a dual theory has prevailed, holding that illness may result either from natural pathogens (requiring Western medicine) or supernatural agents (calling for ritual and prayers). As late as the 1960s, most Pagans opted first for the spiritual remedy. By the 1980s, however, most had reversed the procedure, consulting the medium only if not cured first by medicine. The Pagan religious leaders see little significance here, since curing-rituals have long occupied a peripheral place in their larger ideological scheme.

A few influential Pagans now seek to establish a deeper understanding with local Christians, particularly Catholics. One Pagan elder moderates the disputes between the two groups, and he counts among his advisees several Christian leaders. He has proposed a compromise through which Pagans would more fully respect Christians while Christians would compensate by holding their own feasts (whether as secular "blow-outs" or to consecrate their own religious occasions). Conciliatory Pagans also ask their Catholic neighbors to honor Buguias's ancestors on All Soul's Day. Indeed, many Pagans acknowledge the efficacy of Christian prayer, especially as demonstrated in the "EDSA Revolution" that overthrew Marcos in February 1986.

The Catholic community, not surprisingly, is divided over the issue of socioreligious compromise. While many Catholics have recently increased their own outlays for feasts, others argue that this would only sustain an unjust economic order and penalize those who cannot afford both schooling and ceremonies.

Catholics face a greater challenge, however, from a new group of charismatic Protestant sects that are aggressively proselytizing in the Cordillera. Foremost in the Buguias region is the "Jesus Is Alive" (JIA) organization, sometimes disparagingly called tumba

tumba , or "falling falling," in reference to its ecstatic prayers. Although much more successful in the eastern frontier zone, JIA missionaries have converted a few Buguias Catholics, a trend worrisome to church leaders. According to one concerned man, the young are more attracted to "jolly religions," like JIA, than to the more contemplative traditional Christian churches.

Trends

One predicts the future of Paganism only at great risk. Most Christians believe that the old religion is in irreversible decline, for both spiritual and economic reasons. Many Pagan leaders are also worried; not only competing religions but also secular education and bachelor cynicism threaten Paganism. One manbunung foresees calamity for the community unless at least one member of each family line continues to mollify the ancestors.

For the moment, the two faiths and a variety of syncretic offshoots uneasily coexist. Despite the reiterated predictions of its demise over the last hundred years, Paganism remains the majority faith in Buguias and in many other parts of the Cordillera as well. Neither education nor economic change consistently undermines its appeal; it is an adaptable faith, which may yet convert or reconvert adherents of other religions. Indeed, a few Ilocanos, Tagalogs, and Chinese, including some wealthy and powerful individuals, have recently called on Benguet's ritual specialists to seek heavenly favor. Clearly it is too soon to say what will become of Buguias's pluralistic religious heritage when the present generation of elders passes away.