ABSTRACT
The genre of anthropological scholarship on religion, and especially Christianity, is well known for its engagement with and self-awareness regarding such complex collaborations with religious believers and practitioners. The term ‘Rice Christian’, a common, pejorative and somewhat derogatory term for people who convert, or affiliate to a particular church for financial and material benefits, rather than on the basis of belief, is widely used in Mindoro. Interestingly, the main national Christian organizations, including the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, have all come out against the policies of the government regarding extrajudicial killings as well as recent attempts to reintroduce capital punishment. The majority of other Christian denominations, which are increasingly present in Mindoro, focus much of their missionary work on so-called ‘lapsed Catholics’.
