Religious inclusiveness

ON August 25-29, as tempers in Manila flared because thousands of members of the Iglesia ni Cristo disrupted traffic on EDSA to protest alleged violations of the separation of church and state, student and faculty sections of the Association of Southeast and East Asian Catholic Colleges and Universities (ASEACCU) met serenely in the Soegiyapranata Catholic University in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia to discuss the topic of religious inclusiveness. As we listened to religious leaders and scholars speak on the importance and the challenge of religious inclusiveness to 72 member universities from Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand, I was not aware of the demonstration that brought traffic to a halt in EDSA.

But the topic of the ASEACCU Annual Conference and the issue of the EDSA demonstrators were not unrelated. For separation of church and state is ultimately about a state that is not under the control of religion and so permits religious inclusiveness. In the Philippines, because of the separation of church and state, the state is not under the control of the Catholic Church. It is not under the control of the INC, or even of Islam. That is why religious inclusiveness is possible in the Philippines. The state tolerates and protects the lawful functioning of various religious groups. Part of this toleration includes non-interference by the state in the affairs of religion. A perceived breach in this non-interference was what brought the INC demonstrators to EDSA.