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University of Perpetual Help System Dr. Jose G. Tamayo Medical University College of Nursing Filipino Christian Living 4 The Perpetualite: Man for Others N2AF Aguilar, Kristine Ama, Sharina Mae Aquino, Gladys Argame, Ma. Fatima Avenido, Jed Baquiran, Prince Lhuie Basco, Jessa 1

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University of Perpetual Help SystemDr. Jose G. Tamayo Medical University

College of Nursing

Filipino Christian Living 4The Perpetualite: Man for Others

N2AF

Aguilar, Kristine Ama, Sharina MaeAquino, GladysArgame, Ma. FatimaAvenido, JedBaquiran, Prince LhuieBasco, JessaFlores, VonFortuno, Erica Karen SoniaGabo, Ma. AngelicaJacobe, EzekielOrdunia, Yvonne

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Course description

Fcl 4 works on the premise that the perpetualite is basically a social being. He lives in a society of which he is very much a part. That society is basically here in this country. But this country is a part of greater whole, the community of nations. Thus, a perpetualite should love his country, yet he should also be concerned of the realities outside of it. Furthermore it highlights the natures of man’s relationship to God through his fellowmen. It discusses man’s role in the church especially in responding to the call of love and service for others. Includes social doctrine, solidarity, good governance, peace, good manners and right conduct.

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Table of Contents:

PagePart I Nature and order of society in general …………………………….. 4 - 6

Meaning of society The common good: aim and function Principle of solidarity Complementary function of society (subsidiary)

Part II The family, the state and the church …………………………… 7 - 10

Family Sate Church The Church and the State

Part III Solidarity preferential option for the poor ……………………. 11 - 12

Responsible use of authorities

Part IV The virtue of obedient ……………………………………... 13 -22

The virtue of obedient

Part V Good Governance ……………………………………………… 23 - 33

Instrument of global peace and solidarity Agents of good governance Characteristics of good governance Hindrances to good governance

Part VI the Philippine society on: peace, solidarity, good governance ……….. 34 - 58

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Part I

1. Nature and order of society in general

Meaning of Society

-  Is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations such as social status, roles and social networks.

- A large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory and is subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

The Common Good: aim and function

Common good - is a term that can refer to several different concepts. In the popular meaning, the common good describes a specific "good" that is shared and beneficial for all (or most) members of a given community. 

The Common Good:• Is a concern for the welfare of the whole.• Recognizes the human person is sacred and social• Is built upon the principle of human dignity and the equality of all people• Recognizes that human beings realize their dignity and achieve their destiny in particular communities, not isolation.• Requires a foundation of basic rights which are minimum standards for life in society• Is personal and communal• Must be active at every level of life• Is directed by a moral concern that each person must participate and share in the benefits of social advances• Is needed to avoid the harmful forces of coercion, domination or exploitation• Is needed for the overall just functioning of a society• Recognizes that governments and political institutions are necessary and have active responsibility for achieving the common good• Must be an increasingly transnational - or global- reality encompassing the entire human family• Is not utilitarian in nature: it’s not “the greatest good for the greatest number,” because this can allow for the exclusion of individuals or even segments of society

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Three Essential Elements of the Common Good:1. Respect for the human person - made in God’s image2. Social well-being of the group and the development of the group3. Peace, stability, and the security of a just order

Principle of solidarity

Solidarity - A union of interests or purposes or sympathies among members of a group

Principle Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue. It seeks to go beyond itself to

total gratuity, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It leads to a new vision of the unity of humankind, a reflection of God's triune intimate life...." It is a unity that binds members of a group together.

All the peoples of the world belong to one human family. We must be our brother's keeper, though we may be separated by distance, language or culture. Jesus teaches that we must each love our neighbors as ourselves and in the parable of the Good Samaritan we see that our compassion should extend to all people. Solidarity includes the Scriptural call to welcome the stranger among us—including immigrants seeking work, a safe home, education for their children, and a decent life for their families.

Solidarity at the international level primarily concerns the Global South. For example, the Church has habitually insisted that loans be forgiven on many occasions, particularly during Jubilee years. Charity to individuals or groups must be accompanied by transforming unjust structures.

Catholic social teaching proclaims that we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers, wherever they live. We are one human family.... Learning to practice the virtue of solidarity means learning that `loving our neighbor' has global dimensions in an interdependent world.

The principle of solidarity leads to choices that will promote and protect the common good.

Solidarity calls us to respond not simply to personal, individual misfortunes; there are societal issues that cry out for more just social structures.

For this reason the Church often calls us today not only to engage in charitable works but also to work towards social justice.

Complementary function of society (subsidiarity)

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Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the

smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. The Oxford English

Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have

a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed

effectively at a more immediate or local level. The concept is applicable in the

fields of government, political science, cybernetics, management, military

(Mission Command) and, metaphorically, in the distribution

ofsoftware module responsibilities in object-oriented programming (according

to the Information expert design guideline). Subsidiarity is, ideally or in

principle, one of the features of federalism, where it asserts the rights of the

parts over the whole.

The word subsidiarity is derived from the Latin word subsidiarius and was

first described formally in Catholic social teaching (see Subsidiarity

(Catholicism)).[1] The concept or principle is found in

several constitutions around the world (for example, the Tenth Amendment to

the United States Constitution which asserts States rights).

Part II: The family, the state, and the church

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1. Family –

Nature and Functions

Family- (from Latin: familiare) is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children. Extended from the human "family unit" by affinity, economy, culture, tradition, honor, and friendship are concepts of family that are metaphorical, or that grow increasingly inclusive extending to nationhood andhumanism. A family group consisting of a father, mother and their children is called a nuclear family. This term can be contrasted with an extended family.

Function of family

Socialization of children Economic cooperation & division of labor Care, supervision, monitoring, and interaction Legitimizing sexual relations Reproduction 6.         Provision of status:   Social - familial attributes (SES, location) Ascribed - birth order Achieved - based on individual's effort Affecction, emotional support & companionship

2. State

Nature and Meaning.

State commonly refers to either the present state of a system or entity, or to a governed entity or sub-entity, such as a nation or province.

State of nature is a term in political philosophy used in social contract theories to describe the hypothetical condition of humanity before thestate's foundation. In a broader sense, the state of nature is the condition before the rule of positive law comes into being, thus being a synonym of anarchy. The idea of the state of nature was a part of a classical republicanism theory as a hypothetical reason of entering astate of society by establishing a government.In some versions of social contract theory, there are no rights in the state of nature, only freedoms, and it is the contract that creates rights and obligations. In other versions the opposite occurs: the contract imposes restrictions upon individuals that curtail their natural rights.

Tasks and moral duties of the state

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Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of Ethics.People who have moral responsibility for an action are usually called moral agents. Agents are creatures that are capable of reflecting on their situation, forming intentions about how they will act, and then carrying out that action.Society generally holds people responsible for their actions, and will say that they deserve praise or blame for what they do. However, many believe that moral responsibility requires free will. Thus, another important issue in the debate on free will is whether individuals are ever morally responsible for their actions—and, if so, in what sense. Incompatibilists think that determinism is at odds with free will, whereas Compatibilists think the two both exist.Another concept important to the responsibility of an agent is the Fallacy of the single cause, which points out that a person can never be wholly responsible for an outcome. Moreover, moral responsibility is not necessarily the same as legal responsibility. A person is legally responsible for an event when it is that person who is liable to be penalised in the court system for an event. Although it may often be the case that when a person is morally responsible for some act, they are also legally responsible for it, the two systems do not always coincide.

Duties of citizen

1. defend our country from enemies and invaders2. Pay his or her taxes willingly or promptly3. Be loyal to our country4. take care and conserve our natural resources5. help our country for growth and development6. keep our surroundings clean7. study well and and become a productive individual8. obey the laws and maintain peace and order in the community9. preserve the Filipino culture and identity10. participate actively in various government program11. vote wisely and choose candidates who can serve the people and our

country12. respect of the rights of others

3. Church

Tasks of church authorities and duties of believers

Church Authority: Popes, Fathers, Bishops and Magisterium Infallibility And Authority Of The Pope  Church Authority On Doctrines And Understanding The Bible

General Body Responsibilities

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Responsibilities Concerning Damaged Relationships Responsibilities Concerning Confronting Sin Responsibilities Concerning Individual Liberties

4. The church and the state

The purpose of the church

To guard the proper teachings of the church, 2 Tim. 2:1-2, "You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2 And the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also."

To discipline believers, Matt. 18:15-17, “And if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 17 And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer."

To become more like Christ, Eph. 4:15-16, " but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ."

To be subject to pastoral leadership, 1 Pet. 5:1-3, "Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, 2 shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; 3 nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock."

To be unified in Christ, Gal. 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

The church as an organization of believers

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ORGANIZATION - Is the Church to be a loose conglomerate of believers or is it to be organized and structured?  Scripture clearly established "offices" and a "hierarchy" among Christians.  The offices of "bishop, priest (presbyter) and deacon" are mentioned in Scripture (1 Timothy 3:1,8; Titus 1:7 ).  What else is this but "organization?"  Or should we believe that any believer can "claim" to be a bishop, priest, deacon or even "apostle?"  The word "office" is specifically used in Scripture (1 Timothy 3:1) to describe these positions.  Webster defines "office" as "A special duty, trust, charge, or position, conferred by authority or God and for a public purpose; a position of trust or authority."  And the office of "apostle" is to be continued (Acts 1:20-26) to the present day.  Not all believers are "equal" nor have the same gifts (1 Corinthians 12:8-10; Ephesians 4:11).   Is the Church a "visible, earthly" entity?  Yes, for Christ would not direct us to the Church for disputes if it were not here on Earth (Matthew 18:17).   Nor would "fear" encompass the whole Church if it were a mystical, invisible and heavenly entity (Acts 5:11).  The Church is definitely here on earth for the actions described in Acts definitely take place on earth and the term used is "the whole Church" (Acts 15:22).

Part III

Solidarity preferential option for the poor

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* Responsible use of authorities

1. Authority in holy scripture The Bible is the Word of God. The Bible is infallible, inerrant and totally free from error. The Bible is sufficient for the Christian faith. The Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. The true Evangelical is missionary-minded

2. Reason for and function of authority

Function of a government:

a) To govern, that is, to see that the citizens are able to obtain these things for themselves. 

b) The practical principle of reason governing civil authority is this: The end is principle in practical matters. But what is the end of any society? It is the common good. Government is, above all, guardian of the common good.

c) Moreover, according to the principle of subsidiary, what can be done by the lower ought not to be done by the higher. In other words, if the people can perform some function, the government ought not do it.

3. Exercise of authority in a spirit of services

The battle for the spirit of a man is active in the world today in many arenas. The dichotomy of this battle is clear. The warfare takes place between the agents and representatives of God pitted against those of Satan.  The weapons used originate from and reflect  the character of the  spiritual natures of God or Satan. Demonic attacks can be clearly seen in the political realm as we see religious ideologies clash and lead to acts of terror and war. Just visit your local hospital and you will see the war clearly manifest in such diseases as cancer and heart conditions.  Look at the number of prescriptions for depression and anxiety disorders and you will see the battle for the mind and emotions of men.However, since this blog is directed towards the paranormal and supernatural, I will discuss spiritual warfare in terms of deliverance from the influence of spirits.  In the next few posts I want to be specific about what needs to be done during a deliverance session to ensure that the person is truly delivered from demonic influences.  Therefore, I will in this post describe “Crisis Deliverance” for adults while in a future post I will describe the kinds of deliverance services which are appropriate for children.  Please remember, however, that each case of deliverance is unique and a set ritual pattern should not be used in exactly the same way in every case. The following are recommendations for only the most basic approach to Crisis Deliverance.

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Crisis DeliveranceCrisis deliverance usually takes place when a person has become demonized. Demonization simply means that a Type D or HDS had taken over control of the individual in mind and body to such an extent that the individual’s personality is nearly extinct and what is manifest is the personality of the controlling demonic spirit.  We see this described in Scripture in the following verse:22 And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.”  Matthew 15:22   (ESV)In the Greek, the English word “oppressed” is actually “daimonizomai” which means that the oppressed girl wasexercised  by a demon.  This implies that the girl was totally controlled and her body and mind mercilessly used by the demon.  The word severely is most often translated as “tormented”.  Crisis deliverance takes place when the demon driven lifestyle of the oppressed or possessed person has become a torment and a cruel bondage.One of the main forms of healing in the ministry of Jesus was deliverance from this state of “daimonizomai”. In fact His overall ministry was described as one of spiritual warfare against  such powerful and corrupting spirit influences:18They came to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and those tormented by unclean spirits were made well.  Luke 6:18As Christians we can only follow in His footsteps and bring about deliverance for those cruelly used by any type of spirit, regardless of the type of spirit involved.  This, however, represents a crisis in the life of the person who needs to be delivered and so we must proceed with faith and caution, with strength but also compassion, and with power tempered by wisdom.  I have listed some of the conditions for crisis deliverance in the following table:

Part IV

The virtue of obedience

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Anyone who is serious about obtaining Everlasting Life in Heaven will do all he can to increase in the virtue of obedience. For without it, one will never please the Lord, Who is our benevolent Creator and compassionate Master. 

Yes, we are actually obliged to be obedient—it is our solemn duty. And in the future, God willing, we will see that it helped us to attain the crown of perfect beatitude—the unending face-to-face vision of the Most Blessed Trinity—in Paradise. 

What do we mean by the virtue of obedience? 

The eminent Jesuit theologian Father John Anthony Hardon, S.T.D. (1914-2000), in his helpful Pocket Catholic Dictionary (New York: Image Books, 1985), offered the following definition of obedience: “The moral virtue that inclines the will to comply with the will of another who has the right to command.” (Page 291) 

Therefore, a person who is rooted in obedience submits his will to the one who possesses legitimate authority over him. 

In his Summa Theologica (II, II, Question 104, Articles 4 and 5), Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225?-1274) declared that God is to be obeyed in all things, while human authorities are to be obeyed in certain things. Father Hardon explained: “ . . . obedience to God is without limit, whereas obedience to human beings is limited by higher laws that must not be transgressed, and by the competency or authority of the one who gives the orders.” (ibid.) 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses the virtue of obedience, even calling it, as we did above, a duty. “The duty of obedience requires all to give due honor to authority and to treat those who are charged to exercise it with respect, and, insofar as it is deserved, with gratitude and good-will.” (1900) 

Several examples of the virtue of obedience in action spring to mind. 

+ Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, obeyed His Father by becoming man through the power of the Holy Spirit and was born of the Virgin Mary, later going to His obedience-inspired salvific Death on Calvary. 

+ Our Blessed Lady obeyed the Almighty by consenting to become the Virgin-Mother of the long-awaited Messiah. 

+ Saint Joseph heeded the Angel of the Lord and took Jesus and Mary to Egypt because King Herod wanted to kill the Baby. 

+ All baptized Christians are moved by the obedience of faith to listen and submit

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to the Word of God. 

+ Children obey, respect and pray for their parents, grateful that God has given their fathers and mothers to them. 

+ Priests obey their Bishops or Superiors, for example by accepting new assignments from them. 

+ Those who are consecrated to Christ by the profession of the Evangelical Counsels of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience obey their Religious Superiors regarding what apostolic work they are to do. 

+ Those who have spiritual directors listen to and obey them concerning how they should seek Christian perfection in particular matters. 

+ Catholics obey God and the Church by heeding the Commandments and the Precepts of the Church, for example by attending the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, following the Church’s laws concerning the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, etc. 

+ Citizens pay taxes to the rightful authority and defend their country from hostile foreign attack. 

Obedient in holy scripture

Obedience: Its place In Holy Scripture.

In undertaking the study of a Bible word, or of a truth of the Christian life, it is a great help to take a survey of the place it takes in Scripture. As we see where, and how often, and in what connections it is found, its relative importance may be apprehended as well as its bearing on the whole of revelation. Let me try in this first chapter to prepare the way for the study of what obedience is, by showing you where to go in God's Word to find the mind of God concerning it.

1. TAKE SCRIPTURE AS A WHOLE.We begin with Paradise. In Gen.2:16, we read: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying.' And later (3:11), Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?'Note how obedience to the command is the one virtue of Paradise, the one condition of man's abiding there, the one thing his Creator asks of him. Nothing is said of faith, or humility, or love: obedience includes all. As supreme as is the claim and authority of God is the demand for obedience as the one thing that is toDECIDE HIS DESTINY.In the life of man, to obey is the one thing needful.

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Turn now from the beginning to the close of the Bible. In its last chapter you read (Rev.22:14), Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have a right to the tree of life.' Or, if we accept the Revised Version, which gives another reading, we have the same thought in chapters 12 and 14, where we read of the seed of the woman (12:17), which keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus'; and of the patience of the saints (14:12), Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.'From beginning to end, from Paradise lost to Paradise regained, the law is unchangeable—it is only obedience that gives access to the tree of life and the favor of God.And if you ask how the change was effected out of the disobedience at the beginning that closed the way to the tree of life, to the obedience at the end that again gained entrance to it, turn toTHAT WHICH STANDS MIDWAYbetween the beginning and the end—the cross of Christ. Read a passage like Rom.5:19, Through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous'; or Phil.2:8, He became obedient unto death, therefore God hath highly exalted Him'; or Heb.5:8, 9, He learned obedience and became the Author of salvation to them that obey Him,' and you see how the whole redemption of Christ consists in restoring obedience to its place. The beauty of His salvation consists in this, that He brings us back to the life of obedience, through which alone the creature can give the Creator the glory due to Him, or receive the glory of which his Creator desires to make him partaker.Paradise, Calvary, Heaven, all proclaim with one voice:Child of God! the first and the last thing thy God asks of thee is simple, universal, unchanging obedience.'II. LET US TURN TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.Here let us specially notice how, with any new beginning in the history of God's kingdom, obedience always comes into special prominence.1. Take Noah, the new father of the human race, and you will find four times written (Gen.6:22; 7:5, 9, 16),According to all that God commanded Noah, so did he.'It is the man who does what God commands, to whom God can entrust His work, whom God can use to be a savior of men.2. Think of Abraham, the father of the chosen race. By faith Abraham obeyed' (Heb.11:7).When he had been forty years in this school of faith-obedience, God came to perfect his faith, and to crown it with His fullest blessing. Nothing could fit him for this but a crowning act of obedience. When he had bound his son on the altar, God came and said (Gen.22:12, 18),By Myself have I sworn, in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee; and in thy seed shall all nations be blessed, because thou hast obeyed My voice.'And to Isaac He spake (26:3, 5), I will perform the oath which I sware to Abraham, because that Abraham obeyed my voice.'

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Oh, when shall we learn how unspeakably pleasing obedience is in God's sight, and how unspeakable is the reward He bestows upon it! The way to be a blessing to the world is to be men of obedience; known by God and the world by thisONE MARK— a will utterly given up to God's will. Let all who profess to walk in Abraham's footsteps walk thus.3. Go on to Moses. At Sinai, God gave him the message to the people (Ex.19:4), If you will obey My voice indeed, ye shall be a peculiar treasure to Me above all people.'In the very nature of things it cannot be otherwise. God's holy will is His glory and perfection; it is only by an entrance into His will, by obedience, that it is possible to be His people.4. Take the building of the sanctuary in which God was to dwell. In the last three chapters of Exodus you have the expression nineteen times, According to all the Lord commanded Moses, so did he,' And then, The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.' Just so again in Lev.8 and 9, you have, with reference to the consecration of the priests and the tabernacle, the same expression twelve times. And then, The glory of the Lord appeared before all the people, and fire came out from before the Lord, and consumed the burnt-offering.'Words cannot make it plainer, that it is amid what the obedience of His people has wrought that God delights to dwell, that it is the obedient He crowns with His favor and presence.5. After the forty years wandering in the wilderness, and its terrible revelation of the fruit of disobedience, there was again a new beginning when the people were about to enter Canaan. Read Deuteronomy, with all Moses spoke in sight of the land, and you will find there is no book of the Bible which uses the word obey' so frequently, or speaks so much of the blessing obedience will assuredly bring. The whole is summed up in the words (11:27),I set before you a blessing if ye obey, a curse if ye will not obey.'Yes, a Blessing if ye Obey'! that is the key-note of the blessed life. Canaan, just like Paradise and Heaven, can be the place of blessing as it is the place of obedience. Would God we might take it in! Do beware only of praying only for a blessing. Let us care for the obedience, God will care for the blessing. Let my one thought as a Christian be, how I can obey and please my God perfectly.6. The next new beginning we have is in the appointment of kings in Israel. In the story of Saul we have the most solemn warning as to the need of exact and entire obedience in a man whom God is to trust as ruler of His people. Samuel had commanded Saul (1:Sam.10:8) to wait seven days for him to come and sacrifice, and to show him what to do. When Samuel delayed (13:8-14) Saul took it upon himself to sacrifice.When Samuel came he said: Thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which He commanded thee; thy kingdom shall not continue, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.'God will not honor the man who is not obedient.Saul has a second opportunity given him of showing what is in his heart. He is sent to execute God's judgment against Amelek. He obeys. He gathers an army of

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two hundred thousand men, undertakes the journey into the wilderness, and destroys Amelek. But while God had commanded him utterly to destroy all; and not to spare,' he spared the best of the cattle and Agag.God speaks to Samuel, It repenteth Me that I have set up Saul to be king, for he hath not performed My commandment.'When Samuel comes, Saul twice over says, I have performed the commandment of the Lord;' I have obeyed the voice of the Lord.'And so he had, as many would think, But his obedience had not been entire. God claims exact, full obedience. God had said, Utterly destroy all! spare not!' This he had not done. He had spared the best sheep for a sacrifice unto the Lord. And Samuel said.To obey is better than any sacrifice. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord hath rejected thee.'Sad type of so much obedience, which in part performs God's commandment, and yet is not the obedience God asks! God says of all sin and all disobedience: Utterly destroy all! spare not!' May God reveal to us whether we are indeed going all lengths with Him, seeking utterly to destroy all and spare nothing that is not in perfect harmony with His will. It is only a whole-hearted obedience, down to the minutest details, that can satisfy God. Let nothing less satisfy you; lest while we say, I have obeyed,' God says, Thou hast rejected the word of the Lord.'7. Just one word more from the Old Testament. Next to Deuteronomy Jeremiah is the book most full of the word obey,' though alas! mostly in connection with the complaint that the people had not obeyed. God sums up all His dealings with the fathers in the one word,I spake not with them concerning sacrifices, but this thing I commanded them, Obey My voice and I will be your God.'Would God that we could learn that all that God speaks of sacrifices, even of the sacrifice of His beloved Son, is subordinate to the one thing—to have His creature restored to full obedience. Into all the inconceivable meaning of the word, I will be your God,' there is no gateway but this, Obey My voice.'III. WE COME TO THE NEW TESTAMENT1. Here we think at once of our blessed Lord, and the prominence He gives to obedience as the one thing for which He was come into the world. He who entered it with His Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God,' ever confessed to men, I seek not My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.'Of all He did and of all He suffered, even to the death, He said, This commandment have I received of My Father.'If we turn to His teaching, we find everywhere, that the obedience He rendered is what He claims from everyone who would be His disciple.During His whole ministry, from beginning to end, obedience isTHE VERY ESSENCE OF SALVATION.In the Sermon on the Mount He began with it: No one could enter the kingdom, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.' And in the farewell discourse, how wonderfully He reveals the spiritual character of true obedience as it is born of love and inspired by it, and as it also opens the way into the love of God. Do take into your heart the wonderful words, (John 14:15, 16, 21, 23), If ye

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love Me, ye will keep my commandments. And the Father will send forth the Spirit. He hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself unto him. If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.'No words could express more simply or more powerfully the inconceivably glorious place Christ gives to obedience, with its twofold possibility, (1) as only possible to a loving heart, (2) as making possible all that God has to give of His Holy Spirit, of His wonderful love, of His indwelling in Christ Jesus. I know of no passage in Scripture that gives a higher revelation of the spiritual life, or the power of loving obedience as its one condition. Let us pray God very earnestly that by His Holy Spirit its light may transfigure our daily obedience with its heavenly glory.See how all this is confirmed in the next chapter. How well we know the parable of the vine! How often and how earnestly we have asked how to be able to abide continually in Christ We have thought of more study of the Word, more faith, more prayer, more communion with God, and we have overlooked the simple truth that Jesus teaches so clearly, If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love,' with its divine sanction, Even as I kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love.'For Him as for us, the only way under heaven to abide in divine love is to keep the commandments. Do let me ask, have you known it, have you heard it preached, have you believed it and proved it true in your experience: obedience on earth is the key to a place in God's love in heaven? Unless there be some correspondence between God's whole-hearted love in heaven, and our whole-hearted, loving obedience on earth, Christ cannot manifest Himself to us, God cannot abide in us, we cannot abide in His love.2. If we go on from our Lord Jesus to His apostles, we find in the Acts two words of Peter's which show how our Lord's teaching had entered into him. In the one, God hath given His Holy Spirit to them that obey Him,' —he proves how he knew what had been the preparation for Pentecost, the surrender to Christ. In the other, We must obey God rather than man' —we have the man-ward side: obedience is to be unto death; nothing on earth dare or can hinder it in the man who has given himself to God.3. In Paul's Epistle to the Romans, we have, in the opening and closing verses the expression, the obedience of faith among all nations' (1:5; 16:26), as that for which he was made an apostle. He speaks of what God had wrought to make the Gentiles obedient.' He teaches that, as the obedience of Christ makes us righteous, we become the servants of obedience unto righteousness. As disobedience in Adam and in us was the one thing that wrought death, so obedience, in Christ and in us, is the one thing that the gospel makes known as the way of restoration to God and His favor.4. We all know how James warns us not to be hearers of the Word only but doers, and expounds how Abraham was justified, and his faith perfected, by his works.5. In Peter's First Epistle we have only to look at the first chapter, to see the place obedience has in his system. In ver.2 he speaks to the Elect, in sanctification of

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the Spirit, unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ,' and so points us to obedience as the eternal purpose of the Father, as the great object of the work of the Spirit, and a chief part of the salvation of Christ. In ver.13 he writes, As children of obedience,' born of it, marked by it, subject to it, be ye holy in all manner of conversation.' Obedience isTHE VERY STARTING POINT OF TRUE HOLINESS.In ver.22 we read, Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth,' —the whole acceptance of the truth of God was not merely a matter of intellectual assent or strong emotion: it was a subjection of the life to the dominion of the truth of God: the Christian life was in the first place obedience.6. Of John we know how strong his statements are. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His Commandments, is a liar.

Need and value of obedient

Teaching the Value of Obedience

It may be tempting to require children to obey adults no matter what, however it is also important for children to be able to say "no." There are times when children could be taken advantage of by an adult authority figure in their lives. We need to give children permission to say "no" when it is necessary. 

Please use the following age level specific guidelines to help you teach this particular value.

3 - 4 YEAR-OLDS:

Three and four year-olds moral behavior is influenced by the authority figures in their lives. They do not yet understand the abstract concepts of right and wrong. They might obey if they anticipate a reward from someone they want to please. Research gives some evidence that physical punishment tends to result in obedience only if the child believes there is a danger of being caught disobeying. So, when adults explain the rules and children are allowed to experience the consequences of disobedience, then children will eventually come to accept parental values.

5 - 6 YEAR-OLDS:

Five to six year-olds will still disobey because their desires are stronger than their ability to follow through on resistance. They want and need to explore and experiment, and sometimes that will mean that they disobey adults. They are

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beginning to express their emotions, and sometimes that will mean that they will disobey out of frustration and anger. Scolding and lecturing are not very helpful for guiding this age group. Parents should demonstrate strong affection, give simple explanations, and explain the natural and logical consequences of disobedience. For example, a "natural" consequence of not putting toys away might be that toys get stopped on and broken. A "logical" consequence established by parents might be that children must complete one activity (such as putting toys away) before they may start another activity (such as playing outside).

7 - 9 YEAR-OLDS:

Seven to nine year-olds are beginning to know right from wrong, but they still think in terms of concrete things. They still focus on what they want rather than the right way to obey. It might be helpful for parents to work with their children as they follow through on some tasks. You could clean up a bedroom together, so your child can learn the many steps involved in cleaning. The goal is to inform, guide, and teach the child. Children will be able to obey only if they clearly understand what is being asked of them and what steps to take to accomplish the task. 

Activities to Do to Learn About Obedience

1. Help your child make a list of ways to obey. It might include picking up toys, brushing teeth, eating dinner, folding clothes, or waiting to cross the street. Talk about how you know that those are things you should do. Discuss what would happen if you didn't obey. What would be the consequences or results?

2. Have a family meeting to decide what the chores will be for each family member. Develop the list based on each person's abilities and interests. For example, very young children can put flatware away, fold towels, water plants. Older children can carry out garbage bags, feed the pets, make their own beds, put their toys away on shelves. Create a chart to give stars or stickers each time the chore is completed. Talk about why each family member needs to do their part to help the family. 

Practice of obedient in a spirit of co-responsibility

How obedient are you?

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Obedience is an aspect of our faith that comes from our submission, surrender and compliance to His will. Each one of these “Disciplines” begets the other and is “synergistic” to the other (see our Discipline Chanel for more info and studies on this). This means each of these disciplines combines and cooperates for a greater total effect than if they stood alone. Thus all of these Disciplines spur our Obedience, and Obedience to our Lord spurs on our faith fueled from the Spirit and the practice of Submission and Surrender to communicate the elements of our faith. In all, they produce a vibrant, effectual, lasting, and impacting faith that is better than if we did not practice them.

Keep in mind obedience are not a form of “synergism,” a theological belief that our human will cooperates with the Holy Spirit in Christ’s work of regeneration. Many Christians feel that the obedience as well as the disciplines of the faith are some sort of “synergism,” but this is not the case. The correct biblical theological position is called “monergism” which means that the Holy Spirit acts independently by the will of the Father and work of the Son, who is our Redeemer, to bring us the work of regeneration. This grants us the right and ability to obey God and His precepts because of the covenant of grace we are given (John 1:13; 3:5-6, 6:37-39; Acts 2:39, 13:48; Rom. 9:16; 1 Pet. 1:3). Thus, obedience has nothing to do with our salvation or regeneration; rather, this is about our “sanctification,” our growth in our faith. And, in our growth, we do coordinate our efforts with His for His glory (Gal. 2:20-21; Eph. 2:1-10; Luke 24:26; John 15; 17:2; 2 Cor. 1:39; Phil. 3:10; 1 Thess. 4:3; 5:23-24; Heb. 2:10).

Obedience is not just a synonym to Surrender or Submission; it is more of a continual application of our faith. We are giving up our will; when we are willing to relinquish our plans, agendas, and desire for control, then Christ is in control. It is the ultimate application of our trust that leads to a life of real obedience. We abandon our self-centered life so it is Christ-centered; this requires continual striving on our part. Thus, it is a discipline as we have to always work at it. As more sin and the resulting choices come into our minds and lives, we have to realize His love, plan, and percepts; we must focus on Christ and surrender to His Lordship so we can be a person of faith and obedience.

When we submit, we place ourselves at Christ’s feet. When we surrender, we give Him our all. And, when we obey, we put it all into action and continue at it all because we believe and trust Him as LORD and are filled with reverence and gratefulness to the Lord, Creator, and Sustainer of the universe—and also of ME!

Why should we be obedient? Consider the cost and acts of our Lord Jesus Christ! What did He give and pay for us to have salvation and eternity in heaven? Consider that the only human made things in heaven are the scars of our Lord

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made by the hands of men—by you and me. Consider the fact that His birth was for His death, and His death was for our birth! The bottom line is that God is much more concerned with our spiritual growth than anything else. This growth comes through the synergistic work of the Spirit and our practice of our faith that develops our maturity and character and seasons our relationships that glorify and make Him known.

Obedience shows our worship and appreciation to Christ by our identifying with Christ as our Lord. Obedience is not just in words, but also in deeds that demonstrate our words through practice and action (James 1:22-25)! When we read and/or hear the Word of God, we will have the desire and heed the call to put it into action. There will be times we do not feel like it, but our obedience will override our feelings so that we remain steadfast and secure (1 Thess. 2:23). This helps us see what is important in life. It helps us become more established and grow us further and firmer in the faith as all the Disciplines do. But this one is the clincher; it is the application of all the Disciplines.

When we practice the obedience, it means we are not ashamed of the Gospel, as Paul proclaimed in Romans 1:16, so that our devotion becomes contagious to those around us. Obedience is not something we dread, or feel we have to do, nor is it bondage in a negative sense. It is the joy of knowing our Lord and staying with Him so we can partake in His love and grow in Him further, deeper, and stronger. The result is that we become more mature, become of more use to His glory, and become willing to express His love with eagerness to others.

Our human sinful nature leads us to do our own thing. Our society thrives on it. We tend to see life in terms of the power and possessions we have, but God sees the value of life in spiritual growth that leads to the character and relationships we form. There is no real profit in money and treasures—only in who we are in Christ. Jesus plays on the words to say, how can you play with your stuff if you are not alive (Psalm 49:7-9; 15). But, perhaps a better way is to sacrifice ourselves in devotion for God and not let other substitutions get in the way. The false devotions that get in the way (such as family, school, work, and career) are sometimes good, and even necessary; but, we cannot let their cause get in the way of our obedience to the Lord. Because, if this is all we have (these other devotions), we end up having nothing.

Part V

1. Good Governance

Instrument of global peace and solidarity

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Introduction

1. More and more the Good Governance concept constitutes a useful criteria and an operational instrument to appreciate the art of governing. As long as this approach serves the need to distinguish, during a given period, good and bad practices of one or many governments which succeeded each other in the same country, its feasibility could be considered as a useful instrument of measure in complement with other indicators often used in macro-economy, social or financial analysis. In this case, the Good Governance criteria will come up with new and powerful tools, which will facilitate the assessment of progress or regress obtained in the country. The Good Governance concept remains operational if it is implemented as a comparative instrument of performances improved in countries belonging to a homogenous, economic, social and cultural group.2. Is it sufficient to consider Good Governance as a universal criteria able to be implemented with success any time and everywhere? The question seems relevant especially because of the intensive use of this concept as significant criteria to justify the conditions of the aid given by countries and donors institutions to poor recipient countries. These last ones have to prove that they are well governed. So, it is important to reach a minimal consensus on the content of the criteria, its applicability and its equity when it is implemented in underdeveloped countries.3. It is a timely thought especially in the context of globalization with its visible economic achievement implemented in the Global Village where it is possible, due to different reasons, to discredit countries which have not acted in reprehensible manner and to encourage others which merit to be blamed.

ii) The content of the good governance concept

4. It seems easy to admit that the concept of Good Governance could be implemented differently depending on the economic and social context. Is it useful to open a sterile debate about it when reference is made to an obviously difference in the content of the Good Governance as implemented in the Antiquity, the Middle Age, the Contemporary History or the Present Time? Is it relevant to address the question if it is logical to give the same signification to the governance acts made in Washington, Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, Maseru, or Praia?5. It is possible to admit that the Good Governance concept find its legitimacy and its feasibility in the historical context of the "Unique and Predominant Thought", which gives its preference to the democratic state rule on the political practices level and to the Liberalism on the economical practice level. There is currently a certain specialization between partners in development (*1). Bilateral ones pay a particular attention to political imperatives (respect of the disposals of the Constitution, elaborated on a participatory principle and adopted on a regular and democratic process; existing and functioning political multiparty system and press freedom; fair electoral system, etc…). The multilateral partners focus their appreciation on economic and financial aspects but without forgetting certain political aspects like good

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allocation and utilization of public resources, transparency in public market procedures, systematic fight against corruption and public resources misappropriation, the quality of participation, or state rule respect (*2). A third good governance aspect is linked to the consequent appreciation of state acts on the progress or regress of the peace culture at the national or international level. Obviously, the development must be considered in a peaceful space and the Good Governance must be used to encourage governments to enhance their capacity to create the best conditions of dialogue, solidarity and concord. In doing so, it helps to reduce situations of misunderstanding and conflicts between citizens, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, profession or region. The Good Governance concept must be able to efficiently handle a decentralization process, an empowerment of populations and solidarity practices in neighboring countries.6. In the "Unique and Predominant Thought" context, there is a consensus on some good governance major aspects, those who underline the state system capacity to respect the following basis criteria: i) the transparency; ii) the responsibility/accountability; iii) the freedom of individual and collective expression; iv) the freedom of justice to make it able to efficiently control the effective application of rules and laws everywhere. Unfortunately each criteria could be appreciated differently in respect of national obvious conditions of its implementation. In addition, these criteria are interactive, interdependent and often applied to the same field of analysis application.

i. The transparency related to the state acts could be considered at a national and international level. At the national level, the populations regardless of where they live in the country, ethnicity, religion, professional statute, ideological or political preferences must be able to dispose of the same quality level of access to the understanding of rules and laws. This is of the highest priority to make it sure that all citizens have the same comprehension of the national motivations, which led to the adoption of rules and laws. It also seems important that everybody should have the same expectation, anticipation, legibility and with the same rapidity regarding the expected effects of the implementation by all of these rules and laws. Thanks to the transparency quality, the government could offer to its citizens the access to equal chances to benefit from the solidarity and to contribute usefully and collectively to the common progress. Doing so, the populations will be available to participate in the national effort when they are sure that they will benefit from its growth and development effects. In this case it appears evident that the transparency is a primordial condition to meet with a participatory and mobilizing process for the implementation of common objectives. At the international level, the transparency in the public management is useful and indispensable, in developed countries as well as in underdeveloped ones. In the industrialized countries, the lack of transparency led to the institution dysfunctionning with consequent internal and external effects concerning the state capacities to mobilize with efficiency resources for the development aid and for international cooperation. They could not justify the disparities in the aid allocation between the different recipient countries. In the poor countries which depend on the international

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solidarity for their surviving, the deficit in the public management transparency legitimize retention, suspension or suppression measures in the aid allocation volume and procedures, with all undesirable effects on the populations with imperative needs.

ii. The accountability is a criteria with an operating process directly depending on the transparency. Obviously, If this criteria is not present, there is no reason for the public management transparency arrangements to demonstrate its insufficiency and lacks. This fact must be considered regarding a good management without a productive accountability system able to impose an obligation for the state and its constituencies. Both of them must report their acts and accept consequent and codified sanctions. The public mismanagement must be corrected and victims compensated for the undesirable effects of the mismanagement. This means that the state is not infallible, its acts could be unfair, reprehensible and condemnable and give the right to victims for consequent compensations. To be useful, the accountability must function in a cultural and practical context of a normal exercise for the right of any injured citizen to interpose and to gain sanctions against unfair public acts. This could be possible only if the institutions, which are in charge of the judgement and the condemnation of the fallible state, are capable of playing such a role. The administrative judicial system has to dispose of all the human, technical and logistical means that it needs to implement efficiently its mandate. This is of the greatest importance due to the complexity and other multisectorial dimensions of the state activities, which intervene in many fields like political, administrative, or financial ones.

iii. The individual and collective freedom of expression constitutes a powerful instrument to assess Good Governance. It refers to the statutes of the press, information and communication organizations. The individual and collective freedom of expression is indispensable to meet with a transparency and accountability situation. As stated before, the public management acts directly or indirectly, giving positive or negative effects on populations. The appreciation of these acts depends on the quality of transparency which feed reactions freely expressed by populations. These populations benefit or suffer from these acts taken on behalf of the accountability rules and practices.

iv. The freedom of justice. There is no transparency, no accountability and no freedom of individual and collective expression without an effective freedom of a qualified justice independent of all contingencies, able to judge and sanction all punishable public acts. For political offence, the justice needs to be able to check the conformity of any public act with the Constitutional law and normally it is the mandate of the Constitutional Court. If the deficit is an electoral one, reference has to be made to the Electoral Code and in this case it is the mission of an independent accepted mechanism to appreciate the regularity of the case and to propose the necessary adaptations and corrections. If it is an administrative act to be assessed, an Administrative Court should be in charge with such a situation. In general, the judicial system has to respond to any relevant interrogation on the regularity of acts implemented in the army, police and in all central and decentralized administrations, even in judicial administration itself. Concerning

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financial irregularities, transparent and operational rules and laws must serve as reference for appreciation. Adequate competencies must been gathered in relevant structures to efficiently assess, follow up and if necessary punish planners of operations led by corruption, mismanagement, fraud and other condemnable practices. In any case, the administrative and judicial system has to dispose of competencies to control and stop any prejudice acts made by officials at the central and decentralized levels, with internal inspection structures or independent audits. Only in the case of autonomous justice able to efficiently handle all public management problems and if necessary give all citizens their right when they face the state organizations, that we can consider that there exists a real freedom of justice.

1. The debate should be based on the choice pertinence of one of these four Good Governance criteria. It is true that there are a lot of definitions of the Good Governance and the following are two of them :

The UNDP recalls in its Annual Human Development Reports being published since 1990 that there cannot be development without Good Governance. However, the Human Development itself is based on five components: accountability, cooperation, equity, sustainability, and security. The Good Governance concept itself depends on nine criteria which are: the participation, the priority to laws and rules, the transparency, the adjustment capacity, the orientation for the consensus, the equity, the efficiency, the accountability, and the strategic vision (*3). The Second Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD) adopted on October 21, 1998 a Strategic Framework for the African Development towards the next Century. In this framework, the Good Governance is addressed as the required base for the development as well as for peace. The Good Governance concept is considered by six points: i) the reinforcement of the constitutional and democratic legitimacy in accordance with the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers; ii) the reinforcement of Good Governance and democratic essential institutions; iii) the promotion of the Human Rights and the state rule ; iv) the consolidation of accountability, transparency and public management efficiency functions; v) the promotion of tolerant culture and a larger implementation of women and civil society representative as Decision Makers ; vi) finally, the promotion of social justice as result of an equitable development benefiting to all citizens, regardless of social, tribal, ethnic or professional groups they belong(*4).

ii) The feasibility of the Good Governance concept

1. The Good Governance feasibility faces two types of interrogations: to which objective context and for which aim is the practice of the Good Governance related?

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Objective context of the practice of the Good Governance

1. The objective assessment of the State acts transparency quality cannot ignore the development level of the assessed country. In general, the Developed Countries have a hundred per cent literacy rate. It means that their citizens basically mastered the writing, reading and accounting functions. Their competencies regarding these functions give them the capacity to efficiently handle the good comprehension of laws and rules and to dispose with means to defend their rights and interest.2. In the Developed Countries the press and electronic media reach all citizens widely and in practiced languages. This is done always and everywhere, regardless of where they live or work, even on their holidays resorts. Laws and rules which concern citizens' rights and duties are well sprayed, vulgarized and explained by adapted sensitizing missions with an easy and open access to everybody, everywhere. In Developed Countries, efforts are undertaken by the States to make it sure that efforts made to give more transparency to their acts in respect of their citizens are as visible, understandable and readable as possible by the national and the international populations. In magazines, news papers, radio broadcasting and television shows, everything is made to demonstrate that Developed Countries' practices are and must be considered as the best reference to be followed by underdeveloped countries. Half a dozen of rich countries dispose of the quasi monopoly of the communication infrastructures and equipment and are in position to show to the world what are the references of the Good Governance concept.3. On the contrary, in many Underdeveloped Countries the adult literacy rate is lower that fifty per cent with a great difference between rural and urban, males and females, rich and poor populations. In these countries, most of citizens have no access to national communication means. The only possibility they have is to be informed on national situation through the international media. Laws and rules which organize the national life are seldom available both in rural and urban areas. For a traditional farmer who lives in the rural area the state act is as extraordinary as a divine act. States in Underdeveloped Countries have no resources and means to build and to spray at the national and international level their own image. When they suffer from a bad image sprayed by international media they do not have the capacity to protest and to correct the deformed situation. When they could do it (which is often with delay), the negative effects of the bad image are already absorbed and it is very difficult to correct the damage.4. Finally, in general, in the Underdeveloped Countries, civil, military, administrative or financial justice face the same difficulties linked to the lack of human, material and logistical resources. The same insufficiency of means is present in other so called sovereignty sectors as diplomatic, security or defense ones. In the poor countries, the justice is venal sometimes by habit, normal practice, sometimes by necessity for corrupters and corrupted survival. The justice is aleatory because of objective conditions of its functioning and due to the social and economic environmental context. The justice is complex, heavy and opaque

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because it is plural and has to find adequate solutions to irreconcilable situations (application of different justice in antagonistic situations with reference to modern, traditional, religious and ethnic relevant practices).5. In such underdeveloped situations, transparency, accountability, freedom of individual and collective expression, freedom of justice have the only significant given by objective conditions of their functioning institutions. From time to time, because of the lack of success of economic reform plans and programmes proposed or imposed by the partners in development, needs of institutional reforms are taken into account. But systematically, other priorities and preoccupations came up to change these priorities and to call for the promotion of new imperatives of reducing state means and capacities on behalf of accelerated privatization actions. Doing so, the vicious circle grows and policy makers loose their marks.

Good Governance practices but for which goals?

1. Is it sufficient to link a Good Governance practice concerning the State implemented acts in respect of a high level of transparency, accountability, freedom of individual and collective expression and freedom of justice with the efficiency of the State management capacity? Even if it is given to the democratic representation and to the justice structures all rights and all means to implement their missions in the best manner.2. The Good Governance as defined related to its four principal basis is not an end to itself, "une fin en soi". Is it a modern concept created by the United Nations Organization which product so many concepts as if doing so it tries to destabilize Governments and populations who have not the sufficient time to understand and to have the ownership on them? These multiple concepts which fellow each other with great rapidity are always so complicated, using uneasy procedures and formats. (For example the replacement of the development projects by the programme approach; the cycle of upstream/downstream; the succession of prospective - National Long Term Prospective Studies NLTPS -, Strategic planning -five years plans -, Macro-economic management - Rolling three years programmes of stabilization and adjustment; National Capacity Assessment Programme - NaTCAP or Empowerment at the grassroots level; quasi annual successive debt arrangements; etc…). Is the Good Governance an instrument to get a better type of development ? In this case which type of development regarding the great number of references, or is the Good Governance an instrument to correct some development difficulties like mismanagement, abuse or corruption?3. Who is in charge of controlling the pertinence of the assessed Good Governance? Are they the National Institutions in a political system where there is an effective functioning separation between executive, legislative and judicial powers, in a democratic and republican context? Which role is taken by the civil society as the relevant factor of follow up, assessment and denunciation of any dysfunctioning of the system? Are there partners in development who have the right to assess the nature and the relevance of Good Governance implemented in

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supported countries which are in an imperative need of aid? How to deal with situations of assessment error or contesting? What are the effects of the aid stopping due to the so-called governmental Bad Governance on the populations in need? Who is in charge to assess the Bad Governance in Developed Countries?4. Even if the debate is situated in the case of an acceptable consensus on the relevance of the Good Governance as an instrument facilitating the efficient measure of development, this instrument remains with a difficult application, regarding its four principal basis (transparency, accountability, freedom of expression and freedom of justice). The Good Governance is a multidimensional concept and its four principal basis respond to a technical approach of management. This approach is useful in respect to economic and financial aspects of the "Unique and Predominant Thought". The Good Governance as defined before is an excellent tool to check if public acts are in accordance with the need of the private sector promotion, market rules and free competition, productivity and competitiveness. But, even if the Good Governance is reduced to its technical approach of management, the tool is not an easy and practical one, because it is the result of the combination of other criteria, which serve as its basis. These criteria themselves depend on other constituencies with qualitative and quantitative elements of appreciation. In conclusion, it seems difficult to make reference to a universal Good Governance mechanism which can assess every time and anywhere the deficit in the public management. Complementary research must be undertaken to promote an operation approach as in the case of the UNDP Sustainable Development Index to make the Good Governance useful to measure the lack and insufficiency in public management (6).5. In addition, the Good Governance technical approach of public management suppose the fundamentals of the Liberal State shared and accepted while the remaining real differences in which relevant ideological and political criteria have to be used to assess the adequate level right of democratic state. This level depends on a minimum capacity and competency of the social society representatives to enhance the practices of democratic control and to identify and correct any deviation and deficit with regards to the safeguard of human rights and the respect of democratic principles.6. Then, how do we can deal with a Good Governance based on a public technical management approach which ignores ethic aspects, especially the poverty and inequity alleviation (*7), in a performing social and economical context but with insufficiencies in others fields?7. So, The Good Governance is more than a simple instrument to assess and measure public economical and financial performance practices. It should be helpful to promote consensual appreciation in respect with explicit or implicit political, ideological and ethic objectives.

ii) Plea for a flexible implementation of the good governance concept in the African context

 

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8. To find a solution to the specific African situation without rejecting the triumphal "Unique and Global Thought" consequent efforts are urgently needed to adapt criteria of the Good Governance to the respective development level reached by different countries in general and by African ones in particular. It seems possible to give to Africa, during a limited time a special statute, which permit it to benefit from derogation to a universal application of the Good Governance. This special statute will end as soon as the Continent will be considered strong enough to compete in equity with developed countries. In the interval a special mechanism must be promoted to convene with normative objectives to be reached in an adequate horizon (ten, twenty or thirty years, depending on means mobilized to support efforts for the coming up with developed countries). The principal challenge is to promote a mechanism able to assess and encourage progress made progressively by countries where the public mismanagement is related to the objective economic and social conditions.

Agent of good governance (leader and follower)

Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of management or leadershipprocesses. These processes and systems are typically administered by a government.In the case of a business or of a non-profit organisation, governance relates to consistent management, cohesive policies, guidance, processes and decision-rights for a given area of responsibility. For example, managing at a corporate level might involve evolving policies onprivacy, on internal investment, and on the use of data.To distinguish the term governance from government; "governance" is what a "government" does. It might be a geo-political government (nation-state), a corporate government (business entity), a socio-political government (tribe, family etc.), or any number of different kinds of government, but governance is the physical exercise of management power and policy, while government is the instrument (usually collective) that does it. The term government is also used more abstractly as a synonym for governance, as in the Canadian motto, "Peace, Order and Good Government".Types of governanceGlobal governancesee the main article at Global governance for a more detailed explanation.In contrast to the traditional meaning of "governance", some authors like James Rosenau have used the term "global governance" to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority.[6] The best example of this in the international system or relationships between independent states. The term can however apply wherever a group of free equals need to form a regular relationship.Corporate governanceSee the main article at corporate governance.

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Corporate governance consists of the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way people direct, administer or control a corporation. Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many players involved (the stakeholders) and the corporate goals. The principal players include the shareholders, management, and the board of directors. Other stakeholders include employees, suppliers, customers, banks and other lenders, regulators, the environment and the community at large.The first documented use of the word "corporate governance" is by Richard Eells (1960, pg. 108) to denote "the structure and functioning of the corporate polity". The "corporate government" concept itself is older and was already used in finance textbooks at the beginning of the 20th century (Becht, Bolton, Röell 2004). These origins support a multiple constituency (stakeholder) definition of corporate governance.Project governanceSee Main article Project governance.The term governance as used in industry (especially in the information technology (IT) sector) describes the processes that need to exist for a successful project.Information technology governanceSee Main article Information technology governance.IT Governance primarily deals with connections between business focus and IT management. The goal of clear governance is to assure the investment in IT generate business value and mitigate the risks that are associated with IT projects.[7]

Participatory GovernanceParticipatory Governance focuses on deepening democratic engagement through the participation of citizens in the processes of governance with the state. The idea is that citizens should play a more direct roles in public decision-making or at least engage more deeply with political issues. Government officials should also be responsive to this kind of engagement. In practice, Participatory Governance can supplement the roles of citizens as voters or as watchdogs through more direct forms of involvement.[8]

Non-Profit GovernanceNon-profit governance focuses primarily on the fiduciary responsibility that a board of trustees (sometimes called directors -- the terms are interchangeable) has with respect to the exercise of authority over the explicit public trust that is understood to exist between the mission of an organization and those whom the organization serves.[9]

Islamic GovernanceIslamic Governance is submission to the will of Allah in both private and public life. Submission to the will of Allah is attained by governing according to the Quran and the Sunnah (the actions and sayings of the prophet Muhammad).

Characteristics of good governance (cultural,structural,social)

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Participation All men and women should have a voice in decision-making, either directly or through legitimate intermediate institutions that represent their interests. Such broad participation is built on freedom of association and speech, as well as capacities to participate constructively. Rule of lawLegal frameworks should be fair and enforced impartially, particularly the laws on human rights. TransparencyTransparency is built on the free flow of information. Processes, institutions and information are directly accessible to those concerned with them, and enough information is provided to understand and monitor them. ResponsivenessInstitutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders. Consensus orientationGood governance mediates differing interests to reach a broad consensus on what is in the best interests of the group and,. where possible, on policies and procedures. EquityAll men and women have opportunities to improve or maintain their well-being. Effectiveness and efficiencyProcesses and institutions produce results that meet needs while making the best use of resources. AccountabilityDecision-makers in government, the private sector and civil society organisations are accountable to the public, as well as to institutional stakeholders. This accountability differs depending on the organisations and whether the decision is internal or external to an organisation. Strategic visionLeaders and the public have a broad and long-term perspective on good governance and human development, along with a sense of what is needed for such development. There is also an understanding of the historical, cultural and social complexities in which that perspective is grounded.

2. Hindrances to good governance

MAJOR COMMUNICATION BARRIERS INCLUDE:

1) Distance: The physical distance between the supervisor and his subordinate

results in less face to face communication leading to misunderstanding or lack of

understanding of the message

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2) Distortion: This occurs when individual fails to distinguish factual data from his

own views, feelings emotion etc and the tendency to make value judgements on the

statement of others.

3) Semantics: this deals with language aspect of communication. Grady states that

the structure of our language to misrepresentation of the nature of events.

4) Lack of leveling: There is a difference on the level of knowledge and expertise

of supervisor and subordinate. If the supervisor communicates with his subordinate

at his own level then communication breaks down.

5) Time pressures: managers are often subject to time pressure because decisions

must be made within specified deadlines. Formal channels get short-circuited in the

process of expediting matters which leaves the transmitted communication

incomplete rendering communication ineffective.

6) Personal incompatibility: Often the personalities of supervisor and subordinate

clash creating communication blocks and issues becoming personalized.7) Selective perception: In case the receiver resort to selective perception i.e. selectively hearing based on his needs and desires, backgrounds and other person characteristics, it may lead to perpetual distortion when distressing barrier to effective communication

Part VI

The Philippine Society on: Peace, Solidarity, Good Governance

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THE PHILIPPINES CONTINUED to be primarily a rural society in 1990, despite increasing signs of urbanization. The family remained the prime unit of social awareness, and ritual kin relations and associations of a patron-client nature still were the basis for social groupings beyond the nuclear family, rather than horizontal ties forged among members of economically based social classes. Because of a common religious tradition and the spread of Pilipino as a widely used, if not thoroughly accepted, national language, Filipinos were a relatively homogeneous population, with the important exceptions of the Muslim minority on Mindanao and in Sulu and southern Palawan provinces, and the upland tribal minorities sprinkled throughout the islands. Filipinos shared a common set of values emphasizing social acceptance as a primary virtue and a common world view in which education served as the principal avenue for upward social mobility. Cleavages in the society were based primarily on religious (in the case of Muslims versus Christians), sociocultural (in the case of upland tribes versus lowland coastal Filipinos), and urban-rural differences, rather than ethnic or racial considerations.

Improvements in the national transportation system and in mass communications in most parts of the archipelago in the 1970s and 1980s tended to reduce ethnolinguistic and regional divisions among lowland Filipinos, who made up more than 90 percent of the population. Some resistance to this cultural homogeneity remained, however, and continued regional identification was manifested in loyalty to regional languages and in opposition to the imposition of a national language based largely on Tagalog, the language of the Manila area.

Large numbers of rural migrants continued to flow into the huge metropolitan areas, especially Metro Manila. Filipinos also migrated in substantial numbers to the United States and other countries. Many of these migrants, especially those to the Middle East, migrated only to find temporary employment and retained their Philippine domiciles.

There has been a significant shift in the composition of the elite as a result of political and economic policies following the end of the administration of President Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986. Some of the elite families displaced by the Marcos regime regained wealth and influence, and many of the families enjoying power, privilege, and prestige in the early l990s were not the same as those enjoying similar status a decade earlier. The abolition of monopolistic marketing boards, along with some progress in privatization, has eliminated the economic base of some of Marcos's powerful associates.

As a result of economic policies that permitted fruit and logging companies to expand their landholdings, previously formed by tribal people, and to push farther and farther into the mountains to exploit timber resources, upland tribal people have been threatened and dislocated, and the country's rich rain forests have suffered. Despite government efforts to instill respect for cultural diversity, it remained to be seen whether minorities and the ecosystem they shared would survive the onslaught of powerful economic forces that include the migration of thousands of lowland

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Filipinos to the frontier areas on Mindanao, as well as the intrusion of corporate extractive industries. Even if these influences were held in check, the attraction of lowland society might wean the tribal people from their customary way of life.

Although it would seem that the continued high rate of population growth aggravated the state of the Philippine economy and health care, population growth did not seem to be a major concern of the government. Roman Catholic clergy withdrew cooperation from the Population Control Commission (Popcom) and sought its elimination. The commission was retained, and government efforts to reduce population growth continued but hardly on a scale likely to produce major results.

Philippines - ETHNICITY, REGIONALISM, AND LANGUAGE

Historical Development of Ethnic Identities

Philippine society was relatively homogeneous in 1990, especially considering its distribution over some 1,000 inhabited islands. Muslims and upland tribal peoples were obvious exceptions, but approximately 90 percent of the society remained united by a common cultural and religious background. Among the lowland Christian Filipinos, language was the main point of internal differentiation, but the majority interacted and intermarried regularly across linguistic lines. Because of political centralization, urbanization, and extensive internal migration, linguistic barriers were eroding, and government emphasis on Pilipino and English (at the expense of local dialects) also reduced these divisions. Nevertheless, national integration remained incomplete.

Through centuries of intermarriage, Filipinos had become a unique blend of Malay, Chinese, Spanish, Negrito, and American. Among the earliest inhabitants were Negritos, followed by Malays, who deserve most of the credit for developing lowland Philippine agricultural life as it is known in the modern period. As the Malays spread throughout the archipelago, two things happened. First, they absorbed, through intermarriage, most of the Negrito population, although a minority of Negritos remained distinct by retreating to the mountains. Second, they dispersed into separate groups, some of which became relatively isolated in pockets on Mindanao, northern Luzon, and some of the other large islands. Comparative linguistic analysis suggests that most groups may once have spoken a form of "proto-Manobo," but that each group developed a distinct vernacular that can be traced to its contact over the centuries with certain groups and its isolation from others.

With the advent of Islam in the southern Philippines during the fifteenth century, separate sultanates developed on Mindanao and in the Sulu Archipelago. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Islamic influence had spread as far north as Manila Bay.

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Spain colonized the Philippines in the sixteenth century and succeeded in providing the necessary environment for the development of a Philippine national identity; however, Spain never completely vitiated Muslim autonomy on Mindanao and in the Sulu Archipelago, where the separate Muslim sultanates of Sulu, Maguindanao, and Maranao remained impervious to Christian conversion. Likewise, the Spanish never succeeded in converting upland tribal groups, particularly on Luzon and Mindanao. The Spanish influence was strongest among lowland groups and emanated from Manila. Even among these lowland peoples, however, linguistic differences continued to outweigh unifying factors until a nationalist movement emerged to question Spanish rule in the nineteenth century.

Philippine national identity emerged as a blend of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups, when lowland Christians, called indios by the Spaniards, began referring to themselves as "Filipinos," excluding Muslims, upland tribal groups, and ethnic Chinese who had not been assimilated by intermarriage and did not fit the category. In the very process of defining a national identity, the majority was also drawing attention to a basic societal cleavage among the groups. In revolting against Spanish rule and, later, fighting United States troops, the indigenous people became increasingly conscious of a national unity transcending local and regional identities. A public school system that brought at least elementary-level education to all but the most remote barrios and sitios (small clusters of homes) during the early twentieth century also served to dilute religious, ethnic, and linguistic or regional differences, as did improvements in transportation and communication systems and the spread of English as a lingua franca.

Philippines - Language Diversity and Uniformity

Some eleven languages and eighty-seven dialects were spoken in the Philippines in the late 1980s. Eight of these--Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicolano, Waray-Waray, Pampangan, and Pangasinan--were native tongues for about 90 percent of the population. All eight belong to the Malay-Polynesian language family and are related to Indonesian and Malay, but no two are mutually comprehensible. Each has a number of dialects and all have impressive literary traditions, especially Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilocano. Some of the languages have closer affinity than others. It is easier for Ilocanos and Pangasinans to learn each other's language than to learn any of the other six. Likewise, speakers of major Visayan Island languages--Cebuano, Ilongo, and Waray-Waray--find it easier to communicate with each other than with Tagalogs, Ilocanos, or others.

Language divisions were nowhere more apparent than in the continuing public debate over national language. The government in 1974 initiated a policy of gradually phasing out English in schools, business, and government, and replacing it with Pilipino, based on the Tagalog language of central and southern Luzon. Pilipino had spread throughout the nation, the mass media, and the school system. In 1990 President Corazon Aquino ordered that all government offices use Pilipino as a medium of communication, and 200 college executives asked that Pilipino be

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the main medium of college instruction rather than English. Government and educational leaders hoped that Pilipino would be in general use throughout the archipelago by the end of the century. By that time, it might have enough grass-roots support in non-Tagalog-speaking regions to become a national language. In the early l990s, however, Filipinos had not accepted a national language at the expense of their regional languages. Nor was there complete agreement that regional languages should be subordinated to a national language based on Tagalog.

The role of English was also debated. Some argued that English was essential to economic progress because it opened the Philippines to communication with the rest of the world, facilitated foreign commerce, and made Filipinos desirable employees for international firms both in the Philippines and abroad. Despite census reports that nearly 65 percent of the populace claimed some understanding of English, as of the early 1990s competence in English appeared to have deteriorated. Groups also debated whether "Filipinization" and the resulting shifting of the language toward "Taglish" (a mixture of Tagalog and English) had made the language less useful as a medium of international communication. Major newspapers in the early 1990s, however, were in English, English language movies were popular, and English was often used in advertisements.

Successful Filipinos were likely to continue to be competent in Pilipino and English. Speakers of another regional language would most likely continue to use that language at home, Pilipino in ordinary conversation in the cities, and English for commerce, government, and international relations. Both Pilipino, gaining use in the media, and English continued in the 1990s to be the languages of education.

Philippines - The Lowland Christian Population

Although lowland Christians maintained stylistic differences in dress until the twentieth century and had always taken pride in their unique culinary specialties, they continued to be a remarkably homogeneous core population of the Philippines. In 1990 lowland Christians, also known as Christian Malays, made up 91.5 percent of the population and were divided into several regional groups. Because of their regional base in Metro Manila and adjacent provinces to the north, east, and south, Tagalogs tended to be more visible than other groups. Cebuanos, whose language was the principal one in the Visayan Island area, inhabited Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, Negros Oriental, Leyte, and Southern Leyte provinces, and parts of Mindanao. Ilocanos had a reputation for being ready migrants, leaving their rocky northern Luzon homeland not just for more fertile parts of the archipelago but for the United States as well. The home region of the Ilongos (speakers of Hiligaynon) included most of Panay, Negros Occidental Province, and the southern end of Mindoro. Their migration in large numbers to the Cotabato and Lanao areas of Mindanao led to intense friction between them and the local Muslim inhabitants and the outbreak of fighting between the two groups in the 1970s. The homeland of the Bicolanos, or "Bicolandia" was the southeastern portion of Luzon together with the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and adjacent parts of Masbate. The Waray-Warays

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lived mostly in eastern Leyte and Samar in the Eastern Visayas. The Pampangan homeland was the Central Luzon Plain and especially Pampanga Province. Speakers of Pangasinan were especially numerous in the Lingayen Gulf region of Luzon, but they also had spread to the Central Luzon Plain where they were interspersed with Tagalogs, Ilocanos, and Pampangans.

As migrants to the city, these lowland Christians clustered together in neighborhoods made up primarily of people from their own regions. Multilingualism generally characterized these neighborhoods; the language of the local area was used, as a rule, for communicating with those native to the area, and English or Pilipino was used as a supplement. Migrants to cities and to agricultural frontiers were remarkably ready and willing to learn the language of their new location while retaining use of their mother tongue within the home.

Philippines - Muslim Filipinos

Muslims, about 5 percent of the total population, were the most significant minority in the Philippines. Although undifferentiated racially from other Filipinos, in the 1990s they remained outside the mainstream of national life, set apart by their religion and way of life. In the 1970s, in reaction to consolidation of central government power under martial law, which began in 1972, the Muslim Filipino, or Moro population increasingly identified with the worldwide Islamic community, particularly in Malaysia, Indonesia, Libya, and Middle Eastern countries. Longstanding economic grievances stemming from years of governmental neglect and from resentment of popular prejudice against them contributed to the roots of Muslim insurgency.

Moros were confined almost entirely to the southern part of the country--southern and western Mindanao, southern Palawan, and the Sulu Archipelago. Ten subgroups could be identified on the basis of language. Three of these groups made up the great majority of Moros. They were the Maguindanaos of North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and Maguindanao provinces; the Maranaos of the two Lanao provinces; and the Tausugs, principally from Jolo Island. Smaller groups were the Samals and Bajaus, principally of the Sulu Archipelago; the Yakans of Zamboanga del Sur Province; the Ilanons and Sangirs of Southern Mindanao Region; the Melabugnans of southern Palawan; and the Jama Mapuns of the tiny Cagayan Islands.

Muslim Filipinos traditionally have not been a closely knit or even allied group. They were fiercely proud of their separate identities, and conflict between them was endemic for centuries. In addition to being divided by different languages and political structures, the separate groups also differed in their degree of Islamic orthodoxy. For example, the Tausugs, the first group to adopt Islam, criticized the more recently Islamicized Yakan and Bajau peoples for being less zealous in observing Islamic tenets and practices. Internal differences among Moros in the

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1980s, however, were outweighed by commonalities of historical experience vis-à-vis non-Muslims and by shared cultural, social, and legal traditions.

The traditional structure of Moro society focused on a sultan who was both a secular and a religious leader and whose authority was sanctioned by the Quran. The datuwere communal leaders who measured power not by their holdings in landed wealth but by the numbers of their followers. In return for tribute and labor, the datuprovided aid in emergencies and advocacy in disputes with followers of another chief. Thus, through his agama (court--actually an informal dispute-settling session), adatu became basic to the smooth function of Moro society. He was a powerful authority figure who might have as many as four wives and who might enslave other Muslims in raids on their villages or in debt bondage. He might also demand revenge (maratabat) for the death of a follower or upon injury to his pride or honor.

The datu continued to play a central role in Moro society in the 1980s. In many parts of Muslim Mindanao, they still administered the sharia (sacred Islamic law) through the agama. They could no longer expand their circle of followers by raiding other villages, but they achieved the same end by accumulating wealth and then using it to provide aid, employment, and protection for less fortunate neighbors. Datu support was essential for government programs in a Muslim barangay. Although adatu in modern times rarely had more than one wife, polygamy was permitted so long as his wealth was sufficient to provide for more than one. Moro society was still basically hierarchical and familial, at least in rural areas.

The national government policies instituted immediately after independence in 1946 abolished the Bureau for Non-Christian Tribes used by the United States to deal with minorities and encouraged migration of Filipinos from densely settled areas such as Central Luzon to the "open" frontier of Mindanao. By the l950s, hundreds of thousands of Ilongos, Ilocanos, Tagalogs, and others were settling in North Cotabato and South Cotabato and Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur provinces, where their influx inflamed Moro hostility. The crux of the problem lay in land disputes. Christian migrants to the Cotabatos, for example, complained that they bought land from one Muslim only to have his relatives refuse to recognize the sale and demand more money. Muslims claimed that Christians would title land through government agencies unknown to Muslim residents, for whom land titling was a new institution. Distrust and resentment spread to the public school system, regarded by most Muslims as an agency for the propagation of Christian teachings. By 1970, a terrorist organization of Christians called the Ilagas (Rats) began operating in the Cotabatos, and Muslim armed bands, called Blackshirts, appeared in response. The same thing happened in the Lanaos, where the Muslim Barracudas began fighting the Ilagas. Philippine army troops sent in to restore peace and order were accused by Muslims of siding with the Christians. When martial law was declared in 1972, Muslim Mindanao was in turmoil.

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The Philippine government discovered shortly after independence that there was a need for some kind of specialized agency to deal with the Muslim minority and so set up the Commission for National Integration in 1957, which was later replaced by the Office of Muslim Affairs and Cultural Communities. Filipino nationalists envisioned a united country in which Christians and Muslims would be offered economic advantages and the Muslims would be assimilated into the dominant culture. They would simply be Filipinos who had their own mode of worship and who refused to eat pork. This vision, less than ideal to many Christians, was generally rejected by Muslims who feared that it was a euphemistic equivalent of assimilation. Concessions were made to Muslim religion and customs. Muslims were exempted from Philippine laws prohibiting polygamy and divorce, and in 1977 the government attempted to codify Muslim law on personal relationships and to harmonize Muslim customary law with Philippine law. A significant break from past practice was the 1990 establishment of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which gave Muslims in the region control over some aspects of government, but not over national security and foreign affairs.

There were social factors in the early 1990s that militated against the cultural autonomy sought by Muslim leaders. Industrial development and increased migration outside the region brought new educational demands and new roles for women. These changes in turn led to greater assimilation and, in some cases, even intermarriage. Nevertheless, Muslims and Christians generally remained distinct societies often at odds with one another.

Philippines - Upland Tribal Groups

Another minority, the more than 100 upland tribal groups, in 1990 constituted approximately 3 percent of the population. As lowland Filipinos, both Muslim and Christian, grew in numbers and expanded into the interiors of Luzon, Mindoro, Mindanao, and other islands, they isolated upland tribal communities in pockets. Over the centuries, these isolated tribes developed their own special identities. The folk art of these groups was, in a sense, the last remnant of an indigenous tradition that flourished everywhere before Islamic and Spanish contact.

Technically, the upland tribal groups were a blend in ethnic origin like other Filipinos, although they did not, as a rule, have as much contact with the outside world. They displayed great variety in social organization, cultural expression, and artistic skills that showed a high degree of creativity, usually employed to embellish utilitarian objects, such as bowls, baskets, clothing, weapons, and even spoons. Technologically, these groups ranged from the highly sophisticated Bontocs and Ifugaos, who engineered the extraordinary rice terraces, to more primitive groups. They also covered a wide spectrum in terms of their integration and acculturation with lowland Christian Filipinos. Some, like the Bukidnons of Mindanao, had intermarried with lowlanders for almost a century, whereas others, like the Kalingas on Luzon, remained more isolated from lowland influences.

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There were ten principal cultural groups living in the Cordillera Central of Luzon in 1990. The name Igorot, the Tagalog word for mountaineer, was often used with reference to all groups. At one time it was employed by lowland Filipinos in a pejorative sense, but in recent years it came to be used with pride by youths in the mountains as a positive expression of their separate ethnic identity vis-à-vis lowlanders. Of the ten groups, the Ifugaos of Ifugao Province, the Bontocs of Mountain and Kalinga-Apayao provinces, and the Kankanays and Ibalois of Benguet Province were all wet-rice farmers who worked the elaborate rice terraces they had constructed over the centuries. The Kankanays and Ibalois were the most influenced by Spanish and American colonialism and lowland Filipino culture because of the extensive gold mines in Benguet, the proximity of Baguio, good roads and schools, and a consumer industry in search of folk art. Other mountain peoples of Luzon were the Kalingas of KalingaApayao Province and the Tinguians of Abra Province, who employed both wet-rice and dry-rice growing techniques. The Isnegs of northern Kalinga-Apayao Province, the Gaddangs of the border between Kalinga-Apayao and Isabela provinces, and the Ilongots of Nueva Vizcaya Province all practiced shifting cultivation. Negritos completed the picture for Luzon. Although Negritos formerly dominated the highlands, by the early 1980s they were reduced to small groups living in widely scattered locations, primarily along the eastern ranges of the mountains.

South of Luzon, upland tribal groups were concentrated on Mindanao, although there was an important population of mountain peoples with the generic name Mangyan living on Mindoro. Among the most important groups on Mindanao were the Manobos (a general name for many tribal groups in southern Bukidnon and Agusan del Sur provinces); the Bukidnons of Bukidnon Province; the Bagobos, Mandayas, Atas, and Mansakas, who inhabited mountains bordering the Davao Gulf; the Subanuns of upland areas in the Zamboanga provinces; the Mamanuas of the Agusan-Surigao border region; and the Bila-ans, Tirurays, and T-Bolis of the area of the Cotabato provinces. Tribal groups on Luzon were widely known for their carved wooden figures, baskets, and weaving; Mindanao tribes were renowned for their elaborate embroidery, appliqué, and bead work.

The Office of Muslim Affairs and Cultural Communities succeeded in establishing a number of protected reservations for tribal groups. Residents were expected to speak their tribal language, dress in their traditional tribal clothing, live in houses constructed of natural materials using traditional architectural designs, and celebrate their traditional ceremonies of propitiation of spirits believed to be inhabiting their environment. They also were encouraged to reestablish their traditional authority structure in which, as in Moro society, tribal datu were the key figures. These men, chosen on the basis of their bravery and their ability to settle disputes, were usually, but not always, the sons of former datu. Often they were also the ones who remembered the ancient oral epics of their people. The datu sang these epics to reawaken in tribal youth an appreciation for the unique and semisacred history of the tribal group.

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Contact between primitive and modern groups usually resulted in weakening or destroying tribal culture without assimilating the tribal groups into modern society. It seemed doubtful that the shift of government policy from assimilation to cultural pluralism could reverse the process. James Eder, an anthropologist who has studied several Filipino tribes, maintains that even the protection of tribal land rights tends to lead to the abandonment of traditional culture because land security makes it easier for tribal members to adopt the economic practices of the larger society and facilitates marriage with outsiders. Government bureaus could not preserve tribes as social museum exhibits, but with the aid of various private organizations, they hoped to be able to help the tribes adapt to modern society without completely losing their ethnic identity.

Philippines - The Chinese

In 1990 the approximately 600,000 ethnic Chinese made up less than 1 percent of the population. Because Manila is close to Taiwan and the mainland of China, the Philippines has for centuries attracted both Chinese traders and semipermanent residents. The Chinese have been viewed as a source of cheap labor and of capital and business enterprise. Government policy toward the Chinese has been inconsistent. Spanish, American, and Filipino regimes alternately welcomed and restricted the entry and activities of the Chinese. Most early Chinese migrants were male, resulting in a sex ratio, at one time, as high as 113 to 1, although in the 1990s it was more nearly equal, reflecting a population based more on natural increase than on immigration.

There has been a good deal of intermarriage between the Chinese and lowland Christians, although the exact amount is impossible to determine. Although many prominent Filipinos, including José Rizal, President Corazon Aquino, and Cardinal Jaime Sin have mixed Chinese ancestry, intermarriage has not necessarily led to ethnic understanding. Mestizos, over a period of years, tended to deprecate their Chinese ancestry and to identify as Filipino. The Chinese tended to regard their culture as superior and sought to maintain it by establishing a separate school system in which about half the curriculum consisted of Chinese literature, history, and language.

Intermarriage and changing governmental policies made it difficult to define who was Chinese. The popular usage of "Chinese" included Chinese aliens, both legal and illegal, as well as those of Chinese ancestry who had become citizens. "Ethnic Chinese" was another term often used but hard to define. Mestizos could be considered either Chinese or Filipino, depending on the group with which they associated to the greatest extent.

Research indicates that Chinese were one of the least accepted ethnic groups. The common Filipino perception of the Chinese was of rich businessmen backed by Chinese cartels who stamped out competition from other groups. There was,

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however, a sizable Chinese working class in the Philippines, and there was a sharp gap between rich and poor Chinese.

Philippines - SOCIAL VALUES AND ORGANIZATION

The great majority of the Philippine population is bound together by common values and a common religion. Philippine society is characterized by many positive traits. Among these are strong religious faith, respect for authority, and high regard for amor proprio (self-esteem) and smooth interpersonal relationships. Philippine respect for authority is based on the special honor paid to elder members of the family and, by extension, to anyone in a position of power. This characteristic is generally conducive to the smooth running of society, although, when taken to extreme, it can develop into an authoritarianism that discourages independent judgment and individual responsibility and initiative. Filipinos are sensitive to attacks on their own self-esteem and cultivate a sensitivity to the self-esteem of others as well. Anything that might hurt another's self-esteem is to be avoided or else one risks terminating the relationship. One who is insensitive to others is said to lack a sense of shame and embarrassment, the principal sanction against improper behavior. This great concern for self- esteem helps to maintain harmony in society and within one's particular circle, but it also can give rise to clannishness and a willingness to sacrifice personal integrity to remain in the good graces of the group. Strong personal faith enables Filipinos to face great difficulties and unpredictable risks in the assurance that "God will take care of things." But, if allowed to deteriorate into fatalism, even this admirable characteristic can hinder initiative and stand in the way of progress.

Social organization generally follows a single pattern, although variations do occur, reflecting the influence of local traditions. Among lowland Christian Filipinos, social organization continues to be marked primarily by personal alliance systems, that is, groupings composed of kin (real and ritual), grantors and recipients of favors, friends, and partners in commercial exchanges.

Philippine personal alliance systems are anchored by kinship, beginning with the nuclear family. A Filipino's loyalty goes first to the immediate family; identity is deeply embedded in the web of kinship. It is normative that one owes support, loyalty, and trust to one's close kin and, because kinship is structured bilaterally with affinal as well as consanguineal relatives, one's kin can include quite a large number of people. Still, beyond the nuclear family, Filipinos do not assume the same degree of support, loyalty, and trust that they assume for immediate family members for whom loyalty is nothing less than a social imperative. With respect to kin beyond this nuclear family, closeness in relationship depends very much on physical proximity.

Bonds of ritual kinship, sealed on any of three ceremonial occasions--baptism, confirmation, and marriage--intensify and extend personal alliances. This mutual kinship system, known as compadrazgo, meaning godparenthood or sponsorship,

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dates back at least to the introduction of Christianity and perhaps earlier. It is a primary method of extending the group from which one can expect help in the way of favors, such as jobs, loans, or just simple gifts on special occasions. But in asking a friend to become godparent to a child, a Filipino is also asking that person to become a closer friend. Thus it is common to ask acquaintances who are of higher economic or social status than oneself to be sponsors. Such ritual kinship cannot be depended on in moments of crisis to the same extent as real kinship, but it still functions for small and regular acts of support such as gift giving.

A dyadic bond--between two individuals--may be formed based on the concept of utang na loob. Although it is expected that the debtor will attempt repayment, it is widely recognized that the debt (as in one's obligation to a parent) can never be fully repaid and the obligation can last for generations. Saving another's life, providing employment, or making it possible for another to become educated are "gifts" that incur utang na loob. Moreover, such gifts initiate a long-term reciprocal interdependency in which the grantor of the favor can expect help from the debtor whenever the need arises and the debtor can, in turn, ask other favors. Such reciprocal personal alliances have had obvious implications for the society in general and the political system in particular. In 1990 educated Filipinos were less likely to feel obligated to extend help (thereby not initiating an utang na loob relationship) than were rural dwellers among whom traditional values remained strong. Some observers believed that as Philippine society became more modernized and urban in orientation, utang na loob would become less important in the political and social systems.

In the commercial context, suki relationships (market- exchange partnerships) may develop between two people who agree to become regular customer and supplier. In the marketplace, Filipinos will regularly buy from certain specific suppliers who will give them, in return, reduced prices, good quality, and, often, credit. Sukirelationships often apply in other contexts as well. For example, regular patrons of restaurants and small neighborhood retail shops and tailoring shops often receive special treatment in return for their patronage. Suki does more than help develop economic exchange relationships. Because trust is such a vital aspect, it creates a platform for personal relationships that can blossom into genuine friendship between individuals.

Patron-client bonds also are very much a part of prescribed patterns of appropriate behavior. These may be formed between tenant farmers and their landlords or between any patron who provides resources and influence in return for the client's personal services and general support. The reciprocal arrangement typically involves the patron giving a means of earning a living or of help, protection, and influence and the client giving labor and personal favors, ranging from household tasks to political support. These relationships often evolve into ritual kinship ties, as the tenant or worker may ask the landlord to be a child's godparent. Similarly, when favors are extended, they tend to bind patron and client together in a network of mutual obligation or a long-term interdependency.

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Filipinos also extend the circle of social alliances with friendship. Friendship often is placed on a par with kinship as the most central of Filipino relationships. Certainly ties among those within one's group of friends are an important factor in the development of personal alliance systems. Here, as in other categories, a willingness to help one another provides the prime rationale for the relationship.

These categories--real kinship, ritual kinship, utang na loob relationships, suki relationships, patron-client bonds, and friendship--are not exclusive. They are interrelated components of the Filipino's personal alliance system. Thus two individuals may be cousins, become friends, and then cement their friendship through godparenthood. Each of their social networks will typically include kin (near and far, affinal and consanguineal), ritual kin, one or two patron-client relationships, one or more other close friends (and a larger number of social friends), and a dozen or more market-exchange partners. Utang na loob may infuse any or all of these relationships. One's network of social allies may include some eighty or more people, integrated and interwoven into a personal alliance system.

In 1990 personal alliance systems extended far beyond the local arena, becoming pyramidal structures going all the way to Manila, where members of the national political elite represented the tops of numerous personal alliance pyramids. The Philippine elite was composed of weathly landlords, financiers, businesspeople, high military officers, and national political figures. Made up of a few families often descended from the ilustrados, or enlightened ones, of the Spanish colonial period, the elite controlled a high percentage of the nations's wealth. The lavish life-styles of this group usually included owning at least two homes (one in Manila and one in the province where the family originated), patronizing expensive shops and restaurants, belonging to exclusive clubs, and having a retinue of servants. Many counted among their social acquaintances a number of rich and influential foreigners, especially Americans, Spaniards, and other Europeans. Their children attended exclusive private schools in Manila and were often sent abroad, usually to the United States, for higher education. In addition, by 1990 a new elite of businesspeople, many from Hong Kong and Taiwan, had developed.

In the cities, there existed a considerable middle-class group consisting of small entrepreneurs, civil servants, teachers, merchants, small property owners, and clerks whose employment was relatively secure. In many middle-class families, both spouses worked. They tended to place great value on higher education, and most had a college degree. They also shared a sense of common identity derived from similar educational experiences, facility in using English, common participation in service clubs such as the Rotary, and similar economic standing.

Different income groups lived in different neighborhoods in the cities and lacked the personal contact essential to the patron-client relationship. Probably the major social division was between those who had a regular source of income and those who made up the informal sector of the economy. The latter subsisted by salvaging material from garbage dumps, begging, occasional paid labor, and peddling.

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Although their income was sometimes as high as those in regular jobs, they lacked the protection of labor legislation and had no claim to any type of social insurance.

Philippines - RURAL SOCIAL PATTERNS

In 1990, nearly six out of every ten Filipinos lived in villages or barangays. Each barangay consisted of a number of sitios (neighborhoods), clusters of households that were the basic building blocks of society above the family. Each sitio comprised 15 to 30 households, and most barangays numbered from 150 to 200 households. As a rule, barangays also contained an elementary school, one or two small retail stores, and a small Roman Catholic chapel. They were combined administratively into municipalities.

In the larger center, one could find a much more substantial church and rectory for the resident priest, other non-Roman Catholic churches, a number of retail stores and the weekly marketplace, a full six-year elementary school and probably a high school, a rice and corn mill, a pit for cockfights, and the homes of most landowners and middle-class teachers and professionals living in the municipality. This urban concentration was not only the administrative center but also the social, economic, educational, and recreational locus. This was particularly so where the center was itself a full-scale town, complete with restaurants, cinemas, banks, specialty stores, gas stations, repair shops, bowling alleys, a rural health clinic, and perhaps a hospital and hotel or two. Television sets were found in most homes in such towns, whereas some barangays in remote areas did not even have electricity.

In the rural Philippines, traditional values remained the rule. The family was central to a Filipino's identity, and many sitios were composed mainly of kin. Kin ties formed the basis for most friendships and supranuclear family relationships. Filipinos continued to feel a strong obligation to help their neighbors-- whether in granting a small loan or providing jobs for neighborhood children, or expecting to be included in neighborhood work projects, such as rebuilding or reroofing a house and clearing new land. The recipient of the help was expected to provide tools and food. Membership in the cooperative work group sometimes continued even after a member left the neighborhood. Likewise, the recipient's siblings joined the group even if they lived outside the sitio. In this way, familial and residential ties were intermixed.

Before World War II, when landlords and tenants normally lived in close proximity, patron-client relationships, often infused with mutual affection, frequently grew out of close residential contact. In the early 1990s, patron-client reciprocal ties continued to characterize relations between tenants and those landlords who remained inbarangays. Beginning with World War II, however, landlords left the countryside and moved into the larger towns and cities or even to one of the huge metropolitan centers. By the mid-1980s, most large landowners had moved to the larger cities, although, as a rule, they also maintained a residence in their provincial center. Landowners who remained in the municipality itself were usually school

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teachers, lawyers, and small entrepreneurs who were neither longstanding large landowners (hacenderos) nor owners of more than a few hectares of farmland.

In the urban areas, the landowners had the advantages of better education facilities and more convenient access to banking and business opportunities. This elite exodus from the barangays, however, brought erosion of landlord-tenant and patron-client ties. The exodus of the wealthiest families also caused patronage of local programs and charities to suffer.

The strength of dyadic patterns in Philippine life probably caused farmers to continue to seek new patron-client relationships within their barangays or municipalities. Their personal alliance systems continued to stress the vertical dimension more than the horizontal. Likewise, they sought noninstitutional means for settling disputes, rarely going to court except as a last resort. Just as the local landlord used to be the arbiter of serious disputes, so the barangay head could be called on to perform this function.

The traditional rural village was an isolated settlement, influenced by a set of values that discouraged change. It relied, to a great extent, on subsistence farming. By the 1980s, land reform and leaseholding arrangements had somewhat limited the role of the landlords so that farmers could turn to government credit agencies and merchants as sources of credit. Even the categories of landlord and tenant changed, because one who owned land might also rent additional land and thus become both a landlord and a tenant.

In many barangays, the once peaceful atmosphere of the community was gone, and community cohesion was further complicated by the effects of the New People's Army (NPA) insurgency. If residents aided the NPA, they faced punishment from government troops. Government troops could not be everywhere at all times, however, and when they left, those who aided the government faced vengeance from the NPA. One approach that the government took was to organize the villagers into armed vigilante groups. Such groups, however, have often been accused of extortion, intimidation, and even torture.

Economic organization of Philippine farmers has been largely ineffective. This fact has worked to the disadvantage of all of the farmers, especially the landless farm workers who were neither owners nor tenants. These landless farmers remained in abject poverty with little opportunity to better their lot or benefit from land reform or welfare programs.

Even in the 1990s, the pace of life was slower in rural than in urban areas. Increased communication and education had brought rural and urban culture closer to a common outlook, however, and the trend toward scientific agriculture and a market economy had brought major changes in the agricultural base. Scientific farming on a commercialized basis, land reform programs, and increased access to education and to mass media were all bringing change. In spite of migration to cities, the rural

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areas continued to grow in population, from about 33 million in 1980 to nearly 38 million in 1985. Rural living conditions also improved significantly, so that by the early 1990s most houses, except in the most remote areas, were built of strong material and equipped with electricity and indoor plumbing.

Philippines - URBAN SOCIAL PATTERNS

The Philippines, like most other Southeast Asian nations, has one dominant city that is in a category all by itself as a "primate city." In the mid-1980s, Metro <"http://worldfacts.us/Philippines-Manila.htm"> Manila produced roughly half of the gross national product (GNP) of the Philippines and contained two-thirds of the nation's vehicles. Its plethora of wholesale and retail business establishments, insurance companies, advertising companies, and banks of every description made the region the unchallenged hub of business and finance.

Because of its fine colleges and universities, including the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and De La Salle University, some of the best in Southeast Asia, the Manila area was a magnet for the best minds of the nation. In addition to being the political and judicial capital, Manila was the entertainment and arts capital, with all the glamour of first-class international hotels and restaurants. Because Manila dominated the communications and media industry, Filipinos everywhere were constantly made aware of economic, cultural, and political events in Manila. Large numbers of rural Filipinos moved to Manila in search of economic and other opportunities. More than one-half of the residents of Metro Manila were born elsewhere.

In the early 1990s, Manila, especially the Makati section, had a modern superstructure of hotels and banks, supermarkets, malls, art galleries, and museums. Beneath this structure, however, was a substructure of traditional small neighborhoods and a wide spectrum of life-styles ranging from traditional to modern, from those of the inordinately wealthy to those of the abjectly poor. Metro Manila offered greater economic extremes than other urban areas: poverty was visible in thousands of squatters' flimsy shacks and wealth was evident in the elegant, guarded suburbs with expensive homes and private clubs. But in Manila, unlike urban centers in other countries, these economic divisions were not paralleled by racial or linguistic residential patterns. Manila and other Philippine cities were truly melting pots, in which wealth was the only determinant for residence.

Whether in poor squatter and slum communities or in middleclass sections of cities, values associated primarily with rural barangays continued to be important in determining expectations, if not always actions. Even when it was clearly impossible to create a warm and personal community in a city neighborhood, Filipinos nevertheless felt that traditional patterns of behavior conducive to such a community should be followed. Hospitality, interdependence, patron-client bonds, and real kinship all continued to be of importance for urban Filipinos.

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Still another indication that traditional Philippine values remained functional for city dwellers was that average household size in the 1980s was greater in urban than in rural areas. Observers speculated that, as Filipinos moved to the city, they had fewer children but more extended family members and nonrelatives in their households. This situation might have been caused by factors such as the availability of more work opportunities in the city, the tendency of urban Filipinos to marry later so that there were more singles, the housing industry's inability to keep pace with urbanization, and the high urban unemployment rates that caused families to supplement their incomes by taking in boarders. Whatever the reason, it seemed clear that kinship and possibly other personal alliance system ties were no weaker for most urban Filipinos than for their rural kin.

Urban squatters have been a perennial problem or, perhaps, a sign of a problem. Large numbers of people living in makeshift housing, often without water or sewage, indicated that cities had grown in population faster than in the facilities required. In fact, the growth in population even exceeded the demand for labor so that many squatters found their living by salvaging material from garbage dumps, peddling, and performing irregular day work.

Most squatters were long-time residents, who found in the absence of rent a way of coping with economic problems. The efforts of the government in the late 1980s to beautify and modernize the Manila area led inevitably to conflict with the squatters who had settled most of the land that might be utilized in such projects. The forced eviction of squatters and the destruction of their shacks were frequent occurrences.

Two types of organizations have intervened in support of squatters: nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and syndicates. The NGOs had a variety of programs, each one representing only a small minority of the actual squatters, but they sustained pressure on the government and demanded land titles and an end to forced evictions as well as help in housing construction. The syndicates were extra-legal entities that provided an informal type of government in the late 1980s, levying fees of as much as 3 billion pesos a year, or about US$120 million. The syndicates allocated land for lots, built roads and sidewalks of sorts, maintained order, and occasionally even provided water and light. In other words, they acted like private developers, although their only claim to the land was forcible seizure. Both the authoritarian Marcos government and the democratic Aquino government found it hard to handle the squatter problem. All proposed solutions contained difficulties, and probably only a major economic recovery in both rural and urban areas would provide a setting in which a degree of success would be possible.

The growth of other urban centers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, could signal a slowdown in the expansion of Metro Manila. This situation has been caused, at least in part, by the policies of both the Marcos and the Aquino administrations. The Marcos administration encouraged industrial decentralization and prohibited the erection of new factories within fifty kilometers of Manila. In an effort to relieve unemployment, the Aquino administration spent billions of pesos on rural

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infrastructure, which helped to expand business in the nearby cities. Cities such as Iligan, Cagayan de Oro, and General Santos on Mindanao, and especially Cebu on Cebu Island experienced economic growth in the 1980s far exceeding that of Manila.

Philippines - RELIGION

Religion holds a central place in the life of most Filipinos, including Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Protestants, and animists. It is central not as an abstract belief system, but rather as a host of experiences, rituals, ceremonies, and adjurations that provide continuity in life, cohesion in the community, and moral purpose for existence. Religious associations are part of the system of kinship ties, patronclient bonds, and other linkages outside the nuclear family.

Christianity and Islam have been superimposed on ancient traditions and acculturated. The unique religious blends that have resulted, when combined with the strong personal faith of Filipinos, have given rise to numerous and diverse revivalist movements. Generally characterized by millenarian goals, antimodern bias, supernaturalism, and authoritarianism in the person of a charismatic messiah figure, these movements have attracted thousands of Filipinos, especially in areas like Mindanao, which have been subjected to extreme pressure of change over a short period of time. Many have been swept up in these movements, out of a renewed sense of fraternity and community. Like the highly visible examples of flagellation and reenacted crucifixion in the Philippines, these movements may seem to have little in common with organized Christianity or Islam. But in the intensely personalistic Philippine religious context, they have not been aberrations so much as extreme examples of how religion retains its central role in society.

The religious composition of the Philippines remained predominantly Catholic in the late 1980s. In 1989 approximately 82 percent of the population was Roman Catholic; Muslims accounted for only 5 percent. The remaining population was mostly affiliated with other Christian churches, although there were also a small number of Buddhists, Daoists (or Taoists), and tribal animists. Christians were to be found throughout the archipelago. Muslims remained largely in the south and were less integrated than other religious minorities into the mainstream of Philippine culture. Although most Chinese were members of Christian churches, a minority of Chinese worshipped in Daoist or in Buddhist temples, the most spectacular of which was an elaborate Daoist temple on the outskirts of Cebu.

Philippines - RELIGION - Historical Background

Spanish colonialism had, from its formal inception in 1565 with the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi, as its principal raison d'être the conversion of the inhabitants to Christianity. When Legazpi embarked on his conversion efforts, most Filipinos were still practicing a form of polytheism, although some as far north as Manila had converted to Islam. For the majority, religion still consisted of sacrifices

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and incantations to spirits believed to be inhabiting field and sky, home and garden, and other dwelling places both human and natural. Malevolent spirits could bring harm in the form of illness or accident, whereas benevolent spirits, such as those of one's ancestors, could bring prosperity in the form of good weather and bountiful crops. Shamans were called upon to communicate with these spirits on behalf of village and family, and propitiation ceremonies were a common part of village life and ritual. Such beliefs continued to influence the religious practices of many upland tribal groups in the modern period.

The religious system that conquistadors and priests imported in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was superimposed on this polytheistic base. Filipinos who converted to Catholicism did not shed their earlier beliefs but superimposed the new on the old. Saints took primacy over spirits, the Mass over propitiation ceremonies, and priests over shamans. This mixing of different religious beliefs and practices marked Philippine Catholicism from the start.

From its inception, Catholicism was deeply influenced by the prejudices, strategies, and policies of the Catholic religious orders. Known collectively as friars, the orders of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and others, and the Jesuits turned out to be just about the only Caucasians willing to dedicate their lives to converting and ministering to Spain's subject population in the Philippines. They divided the archipelago into distinct territories, learned the vernaculars appropriate to each region, and put down roots in the rural Philippines where they quickly became founts of wisdom for uneducated and unsophisticated local inhabitants. Because most secular colonial officials had no intention of living so far from home any longer than it took to turn a handsome profit, friars took on the roles of the crown's representatives and interpreters of government policies in the countryside.

The close relationship between church and state proved to be a liability when the Philippines was swept by nationalistic revolt in the late nineteenth century and Filipino priests seized churches and proclaimed the Independent Philippine Church (Iglesia Filipina Independiente). After the American occupation, Protestant missionaries came and established churches and helped to spread American culture.

Philippines - Roman Catholicism

The Catholic Church made a remarkable comeback in the Philippines in the twentieth century, primarily because the Vatican agreed to divest itself of massive church estates and to encourage Filipinos to join in the clergy. This resurgence was so successful that Protestant mission efforts, led by large numbers of American missionaries during the period of American colonial rule, made little headway. In the early 1990s, the clergy were predominantly Filipino, all of the diocesan hierarchy were Filipino, and the church was supported by an extensive network of parochial schools.

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Catholicism, as practiced in the Philippines in the 1990s, blended official doctrine with folk observance. In an intensely personal way, God the Father was worshiped as a father figure and Jesus as the loving son who died for the sins of each individual, and the Virgin was venerated as a compassionate mother. In the words of scholar David J. Steinberg, "This framework established a cosmic compadrazgo, and an utang na loob to Christ, for his sacrifice transcended any possible repayment . . . . To the devout Filipino, Christ died to save him; there could be no limit to an individual's thanksgiving." As in other Catholic countries, Filipinos attended official church services (men usually not as regularly as women) such as Masses, novenas, baptisms, weddings, and funerals. They supplemented these official services with a number of folk-religious ceremonies basic to the community's social and religious calendar and involving just about everyone in the community.

Perhaps the single event most conducive to community solidarity each year is the fiesta. Celebrated on the special day of the patron saint of a town or barangay, the fiesta is a time for general feasting. Houses are opened to guests, and food is served in abundance. The fiesta always includes a Mass, but its purpose is unabashedly social. The biggest events include a parade, dance, basketball tournament, cockfights, and other contests, and perhaps a carnival, in addition to much visiting and feasting.

Christmas is celebrated in a manner that blends Catholic, Chinese, Philippine, and American customs. For nine days, people attend misas de gallo (early morning Christmas Mass). They hang elaborate lanterns (originally patterned after the Chinese lanterns) and other decorations in their homes and join with friends in caroling. On Christmas Eve, everyone attends midnight Mass, the climax of the misas de gallo and the year's high point of church attendance. After the service, it is traditional to return home for a grand family meal. The remaining days of the Christmas season are spent visiting kin, especially on New Year's Day and Epiphany, January 6. The Christmas season is a time of visiting and receiving guests. It is also a time for reunion with all types of kin--blood, affinal, and ceremonial. Children especially are urged to visit godparents.

During the Lenten season, most communities do a reading of the Passion narrative and a performance of a popular Passion play. The custom of reading or chanting of the Passion could be an adaptation of a pre-Spanish practice of chanting lengthy epics, but its continuing importance in Philippine life probably reflects the popular conception of personal indebtedness to Christ for His supreme sacrifice. At least one observer has suggested that Filipinos have, through the Passion, experienced a feeling of redemption that has been the basis for both millennial dreams and historical revolutionary movements for independence.

Philippines - Indigenous Christian Churches

Iglesia Filipina Independiente

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The Iglesia Filipina Independiente (Independent Philippine Church), founded by Gregorio Aglipay (1860-1940), received the support of revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo during the revolt against Spain and subsequent conflicts with American forces. It rode the tide of antifriar nationalism in absorbing Filipino Roman Catholic clergy and forcibly seizing church property at the beginning of the twentieth century. One out of every sixteen diocesan priests and one out of four Philippine Catholics followed Aglipay into the Iglesia Filipina Independiente in those years of violent national and religious catharsis. The Iglesia Filipina Independiente, formally organized in 1902, thus enjoyed approximately five years of rapid growth, before a temporary decline in Philippine nationalism sent its fortunes into precipitous decline.

Many followers returned to Catholicism, especially after Americans and then Filipinos replaced Spanish priests. Among those who remained in the new church, a crippling schism emerged over doctrinal interpretation, especially after 1919 when members were suddenly instructed to discard earlier church statements concerning the divinity of Christ. To some extent, the schism was caused by Aglipay himself, who shifted his theological views between 1902 and 1919. At first, he deemphasized doctrinal differences between his church and Roman Catholicism, and most of the independent church's priests followed Roman Catholic ritual-- saying Mass, hearing confession, and presiding over folk religious-Catholic ceremonies just as always. Later, Aglipay moved closer to Unitarianism.

In 1938 the church formally split. The faction opposing Aglipay later won a court decision giving it the right to both the name and property of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente. Followers of Aglipay, however, continued to argue that they represented true Aglipayanism. In the early l990s, those Aglipayans who rejected the Unitarian stance and adhered to the concept of the Trinity were associated with the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States.

Iglesia ni Kristo

In the 1990s, all over Luzon, the Visayan Islands, and even northern Mindanao, unmistakable Iglesia ni Kristo (Church of Christ) places of worship, all similar in design and architecture, were being constructed for a rapidly growing membership. Founded by Felix Manalo Ysagun in 1914, the Iglesia ni Kristo did not attract much notice until after World War II, when its highly authoritarian organization and evangelical style began to fill a need for urban and rural families displaced by rapid changes in Philippine society. The church, led by clergy with little formal education, requires attendance at twice-weekly services conducted in local Philippine languages, where guards take attendance and forbid entrance to nonmembers. Membership dues, based on ability to pay, are mandatory. Members are expected to be "disciplined, clean, and God-fearing." Gamblers and drunks face the possibility of being expelled. The church forbids (on penalty of expulsion) marriage to someone of another faith and membership in a labor union. The Iglesia

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ni Kristo also tells its members how to vote and is even respected for its ability to get out the vote for candidates of its choice.

There are a number of reasons why so many Filipinos have joined such an authoritarian church, not the least of which is the institution's ability to stay the decline of traditional Philippine vertical patron-client relationships, especially in urban areas. The church also has been successful in attracting potential converts through its use of mass rallies similar to Protestant revival meetings. The message is always simple and straightforward--listeners are told that the Iglesia ni Kristo is the mystical body of Christ, outside of which there can be no salvation. Roman Catholicism and Protestant churches are denounced--only through membership in the Iglesia ni Kristo can there be hope for redemption.

Although the original appeal of the Iglesia ni Kristo was to members of the lower socioeconomic class, its puritanical precepts encouraged social mobility; and many of its members were climbing the economic ladder. Whether the church would be able to maintain its puritanical, authoritarian stance when more of its members reached middle-class status was difficult to predict. The church gave neither a count nor an estimate of its membership, but the rapid construction of elaborate buildings, including a campus for an Iglesia ni Kristo college adjacent to the University of the Philippines, would indicate that it was expanding.

Philippines - Protestantism

From the start, Protestant churches in the Philippines were plagued by disunity and schisms. At one point after World War II, there were more than 200 denominations representing less than 3 percent of the populace. Successful mergers of some denominations into the United Church of Christ in the Philippines and the formation of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) brought a degree of order. In the 1990s, there remained a deep gulf and considerable antagonism, however, between middleclass -oriented NCCP churches and the scores of more evangelical denominations sprinkled throughout the islands.

Protestantism has always been associated with United States influence in the Philippines. All major denominations in the United States, and some minor ones, sent missions to the Philippines, where they found the most fertile ground for conversions among some of the upland tribes not yet reached by Catholic priests and among the urban middle class. Most American school teachers who pioneered in the new Philippine public school system also were Protestants, and they laid the groundwork for Protestant churches in many lowland barrios. Filipinos who converted to Protestantism often experienced significant upward social mobility in the American colonial period. Most were middle-level bureaucrats, servants, lawyers, or small entrepreneurs, and some became nationally prominent despite their minority religious adherence.

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Protestant missionaries made major contributions in the fields of education and medicine. Throughout the islands, Protestant churches set up clinics and hospitals. They also constructed private schools, including such outstanding institutions of higher education as Central Philippine University, Silliman University, Philippine Christian College, and Dansalan Junior College in Marawi.

The denominations planted by the early missionaries numbered among their adherents about 2 percent of the population in the late 1980s. Their influence was supplemented, if not overshadowed, by a number of evangelical and charismatic churches and para-religious groups, such as New Tribes Mission, World Vision, and Campus Crusade for Christ, which became active after World War II. Increased activity by these religious groups did not mean that the country had ceased to be primarily Catholic or that the older Protestant churches had lost their influence. It did indicate that nominal Catholics might be less involved in parish activities than ever, that the older Protestant churches had new rivals, and that, in general, religious competition had increased.

An indication of this trend is seen in the change in the affiliation of missionaries coming to the Philippines. In 1986 there were 1,931 non-Roman Catholic missionaries, not counting those identified with the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints. Of these, only sixty-three were from the denominations that sent missionaries in the early 1900s. The rest were from fundamentalist churches or para-church groups (the terms are not necessarily exclusive).

Philippines - Islam

In the early 1990s, Filipino Muslims were firmly rooted in their Islamic faith. Every year many went on the hajj (pilgrimage) to the holy city of Mecca; on return men would be addressed by the honoritic "hajj" and women the honorific "hajji". In most Muslim communities, there was at least one mosque from which the muezzin called the faithful to prayer five times a day. Those who responded to the call to public prayer removed their shoes before entering the mosque, aligned themselves in straight rows before the minrab (niche), and offered prayers in the direction of Mecca. An imam, or prayer leader, led the recitation in Arabic verses from the Quran, following the practices of the Sunni sect of Islam common to most of the Muslim world. It was sometimes said that the Moros often neglected to perform the ritual prayer and did not strictly abide by the fast (no food or drink in daylight hours) during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, or perform the duty of almsgiving. They did, however, scrupulously observe other rituals and practices and celebrate great festivals of Islam such as the end of Ramadan; Muhammad's birthday; the night of his ascension to heaven; and the start of the Muslim New Year, the first day of the month of Muharram.

Islam in the Philippines has absorbed indigenous elements, much as has Catholicism. Moros thus make offerings to spirits (diwatas), malevolent or benign, believing that such spirits can and will have an effect on one's health, family, and

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crops. They also include pre-Islamic customs in ceremonies marking rites of passage--birth, marriage, and death. Moros share the essentials of Islam, but specific practices vary from one Moro group to another. Although Muslim Filipino women are required to stay at the back of the mosque for prayers (out of the sight of men), they are much freer in daily life than are women in many other Islamic societies.

Because of the world resurgence of Islam since World War II, Muslims in the Philippines have a stronger sense of their unity as a religious community than they had in the past. Since the early 1970s, more Muslim teachers have visited the nation and more Philippine Muslims have gone abroad--either on the hajj or on scholarships--to Islamic centers than ever before. They have returned revitalized in their faith and determined to strengthen the ties of their fellow Moros with the international Islamic community. As a result, Muslims have built many new mosques and religious schools, where students (male and female) learn the basic rituals and principles of Islam and learn to read the Quran in Arabic. A number of Muslim institutions of higher learning, such as the Jamiatul Philippine al-Islamia in Marawi, also offer advanced courses in Islamic studies.

Divisions along generational lines have emerged among Moros since the 1960s. Many young Muslims, dissatisfied with the old leaders, asserted that datu and sultans were unnecessary in modern Islamic society. Among themselves, these young reformers were divided between moderates, working within the system for their political goals, and militants, engaging in guerrilla-style warfare. To some degree, the government managed to isolate the militants, but Muslim reformers, whether moderates or militants, were united in their strong religious adherence. This bond was significant, because the Moros felt threatened by the continued expansion of Christians into southern Mindanao and by the prolonged presence of Philippine army troops in their homeland.

Philippines - Ecumenical Developments

The coming of Protestant missionaries was not welcomed by Catholic clergy, and, for several years, representatives of Catholic and Protestant churches engaged in mutual recrimination. Catholics were warned against involvement in Protestant activities, even in groups like the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association. Since the 1970s, hostility between Catholics and many Protestant churches had lessened; churches emphasized the virtues rather than the alleged defects of other churches; and priests and pastors occasionally cooperated. Although the ecumenical emphasis did not eliminate competition and gained far more hold among older Protestant churches than among groups that had entered the Philippines more recently, the trend had significantly moderated religious tensions.

Some tentative efforts toward ecumenical understanding also were made in relations between Christians and Muslims, delineating common ground in the

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mutual acceptance of much of the Old Testament and New Testament of the Bible. Occasional conferences were held in an attempt to expand understanding. Their success by the early 1990s was limited but might indicate that, even in this tense area, improvement was possible.

Philippines - Church and State

Church and state were officially separate in the 1990s, but religious instruction could, at the option of parents, be provided in public schools. The Catholic Church's influence on the government was quite evident in the lack of resources devoted to family planning and the prohibition of divorce.

The Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, the Protestant churches engaged in a variety of community welfare efforts. These efforts went beyond giving relief and involved attempts to alter the economic position of the poor. Increasingly in the 1970s, these attempts led the armed forces of President Marcos to suspect that church agencies were aiding the communist guerrillas. In spite of reconciliation efforts, the estrangement between the churches and Marcos grew; it culminated in the call by Cardinal Jaime Sin for the people to go to the streets to block efforts of Marcos to remain in office after the questionable election of 1986. The resulting nonviolent uprising was known variously as People's Power and as the EDSA Revolution.

The good feeling that initially existed between the church and the government of President Aquino lasted only a short time after her inauguration. Deep-seated divisions over the need for revolutionary changes again led to tension between the government and some elements in the churches.

Catholics fell into three general groups: conservatives who were suspicious of social action and held that Christian love could best be expressed through existing structures; moderates, probably the largest group, in favor of social action but inclined to cooperate with government programs; and progressives, who did not trust the government programs, were critical both of Philippine business and of American influence, and felt that drastic change was needed. Progressives were especially disturbed at atrocities accompanying the use of vigilantes. They denied that they were communists, but some of their leaders supported communist fronts, and a few priests actually joined armed guerrilla bands. There appeared to be more progressives among religious-order priests than among diocesan priests.

The major Protestant churches reflected the same three-way division as the Catholics. The majority of clergy and missionaries probably were moderates. A significant number, however, sided with the Catholic progressives in deploring the use of vigilante groups against the guerrillas, asking for drastic land reform, and opposing American retention of military bases. They tended to doubt that a rising economy would lessen social ills and often opposed the type of deflationary reform urged by the IMF (International Monetary Fund).

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