My Filipina reader writes back

Thank you for publishing my prayer request, and for your prayers as well. National politics has never been much fun for me, and now it’s quite painful.

I think what’s frustrating for me is the avoidance of difficult but important historical details. Instead we have politicians adjusting the independence day to June 12, 1898 because centennial celebrations are Teh Cool. Apparently we’re supposed to forget that, while the revolutionaries were imagining an independent government, the old and new foreign govenrments were haggling over the country’s bargain price. And of course, before gaining actual independence, we were colonized again in World War II.

Thank you once again for your kindness and your prayers. I will praying for you and your country as well.

Thank you, dear.  God bless your country.  Cut her some slack for needing a Founding Myth.  Nations are wont to do that, including the US, whose history is also messy (but more public due to her status as a superpower).  Every nation has Founding Myths. And when they feel their oats as Great Powers, they tend to want  (if they have a Christian background) to identify themselves as Chosen by God.  England did it

Russia did it with its conviction that it was the “Christ of Nations”.

Germany did it:

France was Eldest Daughter of the Church.

And, of course, Chesterton once remarked that the US is “a nation with the soul of a Church”, full  of Protestant missionary zeal to convert the heathen to… something, even after it loses its faith in Christ (currently our gospel is hedonist militarist democratic capitalism).

Only 20 years ago, American conservative Christians were still buying this myth:

It’s how it goes as a people asserts their We-ness.

But, of course, that myth is falling on hard times as people who really saw America as Christianity in political form and believed our secular messianic narrative that stretches back to the Pilgrims have had to deal with enormous repudiations of synthesis by most of their countrymen. We will continue to adapt the secular messianic narrative, of course. It’s as American as apple pie. How the Philippines will work out their national myths is, of course, up to Filipinos. As Catholic-hating as Duterte is, he will not be able to dislodge the Christian element. Even a far more brutal thug like Stalin could not do that. Myth is vital to holding nations together, especially in crises.

Just random thoughts. Sorry for meandering.