A most prayerful nation

In a 2000 study of cross-cultural values, Tanzania, the Philippines and Puerto Rico led all 48 surveyed societies in the number of people praying more than once a week outside of religious service. In these three countries, from 86 percent to 87 percent of the population attest to this level of prayerfulness. Four more countries (Uganda, Turkey, Bangladesh and Malta) join this pious group where at least 80 percent of the citizenry call on their God or gods with clockwork regularity. One must emphasize that these prayers are in addition to those that people make while attending religious service.

At the other end of the scale, with less than 20percent of the public praying at least once a week, are Vietnam (9 percent), the Czech Republic (15 percent), Estonia (15 percent), France (15 percent), Denmark (17 percent) and Montenegro (19 percent).

In the same surveys, Japan (20 percent), Singapore (45 percent) and South Korea (40 percent) score significantly lower in prayerfulness than the Philippines.

What can Filipinos be praying for? Why should so many more of them turn their eyes heavenward than people in other societies? Why should their prayers in regular institutional settings need to be fortified by backup entreaties and follow-up supplications elsewhere? Why, really, would Filipinos have to be so prayerful?

Perhaps, in 2000 when they were surveyed, Filipinos were already thinking their leaders could no longer hack the jobs the latter festively contested for and got elected to do. After two years of an initially enormously popular administration, they would no longer romanticize their worsening national or personal conditions. Bringing about national unity, forging peace, neutralizing criminality, balancing the national budget, capping the public debt, reviving the economy, creating jobs, stabilizing prices, curbing corruption, promoting social justice and restoring the people’s faith in their institutions and authorities – these had been the battle cries of those who successfully ran for public office in 1998. By 2000, none of these dramatic campaign and inaugural pledges had been redeemed by the feckless authorities..

When surveyed, millions of ordinary Filipinos actually also personally worried about getting sick, being unable to finish basic education, not getting a job – any kind of job – not having enough to eat and, most galling, having to suffer a raw deal in anything that government does or fails to do in relation to their daily lives.

By late 2000, these national and personal concerns appeared to be more the proper domain of a benevolent God and His winged, incorruptible archangels. Politicking authorities and their heinous minions had already proven themselves unwilling or unable in confronting the growing difficulties of individual Filipinos or the nation as a whole.

So, egregiously failed by their earthly authorities, Filipinos probably chose to storm the heavens with their prayers in 2000. They prayed in their churches, homes and jobs when relatively lucky, or, when less fortunate, in makeshift housing, in crowded employment agencies, in the congested streets, in jeepneys, buses and tricyles and wherever they might be as they for help in making ends meet and snatching whatever existence is possible.

In early 2001, Filipinos thought their prayers had been answered. A strong republic appeared to be aborning. The glorious lady and her men in black seriously vowed national unity, enduring peace, lawfulness, a balanced national budget, a manageable public debt, the revival of the economy, more jobs, stable prices, the retreat of corruption, social justice and the restoration of the people’s much-eroded faith in their institutions and authorities.

However, three years later, even more ordinary Filipinos worried about getting sick, being unable to finish basic education, not getting a job – any kind of job – not having enough to eat and, as in the past, having to suffer a raw deal in anything that government does or fails to do in relation to their daily lives.

Between 2001 and 2004, nothing happened to make Filipinos feel that divine intervention is less urgent. On the contrary, as the nation’s enduring problems continued to worsen, people must have grown even more prayerful. In this country, serious historical reflection leads most naturally to increasingly pious genuflection.

In June, 2004, at the Luneta and elsewhere in Cebu City, Malacañang’s much-favored mantra was again shamelessly recited: national unity, enduring peace, lawfulness, a balanced national budget, a manageable public debt, the revival of the economy, more jobs, stable prices, the retreat of corruption, social justice and the restoration of the people’s faith in their institutions and authorities. In just six years, says the administration, the promised land will be its "legacy" to this long-suffering, ever hopeful and inveterately prayerful nation.

Filipinos will probably patiently suffer the authorities’ political incantations over and over again and – just as patiently – continue reciting their own increasingly feckless prayers, unmindful of the truth that God – or the gods – will help only those that truly help themselves first. Not so much with hopeful prayers, but with decisive political action.

A note to the reader: Most of the survey findings cited here come from the World Values Surveys project, an ambitious attempt to "examine standardized cross-cultural measures of human values and goals concerning politics, economics, religion, sexual behavior, gender roles, family values, communal identities, civic engagement and ethical concerns, and such issues as environmental protection, scientific progress and technological development and human happiness." The project involved the world’s most senior social scientists and covered over 80 national societies where over 85percent of the global population live. Taking well over a decade to complete and now acknowledged as "the largest social science collection effort undertaken to date," the World Values Surveys project has recently become accessible to the public; its encyclopedic findings and scholarly analyses have been collected in a single volume, Human Beliefs and Values: A cross-cultural sourcebook based on the 1999-2002 [world] values surveys, edited by Ronald Inglehart, Miguel Basañez, Jaime Diez-Medrano, et al. and published in 2004 by Siglo XXI Editores in Mexico.

Every decent university library and every household that can afford five orders of family-sized pizza a year ought to buy a copy of this highly educational volume. It combines startling discovery, edifying reflection and soothing entertainment that few publications worldwide can match.