RELIGION is among humanity’s greatest civilizational achievements. It has inspired compassion, charity, justice, education, healing and the defense of human dignity. It has produced saints, reformers, martyrs and ordinary believers whose lives have transformed communities for the better.
Yet history teaches us another, more uncomfortable truth. Religion has also been one of the most effective instruments of political power ever devised.
The problem has never been faith itself. The problem arises when faith is weaponized by political partisans, when religious authority is used not to guide conscience but to command political loyalty; not to speak truth to power but to protect those who wield it.
This phenomenon is hardly new. It is woven into both sacred and secular history.
The Bible records how King Jeroboam feared that allowing his subjects to continue worshiping in Jerusalem would eventually restore their political loyalty to the House of David. His solution was religious engineering. He established rival sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, erected golden calves, and declared them legitimate centers of worship. What appeared to be religious reform was actually political strategy. Faith became an instrument of statecraft.
Even during the ministry of Jesus, religion and politics became dangerously intertwined. Religious authorities feared that his growing influence would provoke Roman intervention and threaten their privileged political arrangement. The defense of institutional power was cloaked in religious language.
History multiplied these examples.
Perhaps no episode illustrates this better than the birth of the Church of England. When King Henry VIII sought an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, Rome refused. Rather than submit to papal authority, Henry severed England’s ties with Rome and declared himself supreme head of the Church of England. A kingdom’s religion changed because a king’s political ambitions demanded it.
The history of Christianity also bears the scars of the Inquisition. Religious tribunals often employed imprisonment, confiscation of property, coercive interrogation, and, at times, torture to preserve doctrinal conformity. Orthodoxy was defended not only by persuasion but by the machinery of the state.
Europe’s religious wars likewise remind us that political ambition frequently marched beneath religious banners. Catholics fought Protestants. Protestants fought Catholics. Millions perished in conflicts driven by theology, dynastic rivalry and political supremacy.
Nor was the institutional Church immune from the temptations of wealth and power. Renaissance popes became deeply involved in politics. Nepotism flourished. The controversy over the sale of indulgences helped ignite the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther. Centuries later, financial controversies involving the Vatican Bank exposed weaknesses in governance that prompted institutional reforms.
None of these episodes invalidate Christianity or the sincere faith of billions of believers. They simply demonstrate that religious institutions, like all human institutions, remain vulnerable to the seductions of power.
The same pattern extends beyond Christianity. Across civilizations, rulers have invoked divine authority to legitimize conquest, suppress dissent and sanctify political rule. Whenever the altar and throne become too closely intertwined, faith risks becoming an accessory to power rather than its conscience.
The Philippines is not exempt from this historical pattern.
Our Constitution protects both freedom of religion and the separation of Church and State. Religious communities have every right, even a moral duty, to speak on questions of justice, corruption, human dignity and the common good. The difficulty begins when religious institutions move beyond moral witness and become organized political machines.
This is why recent reports of the mobilization of members of the Iglesia Ni Cristo in support of Sen. Rodante Marcoleta deserve careful reflection. Citizens, including members of any religious organization, unquestionably possess the constitutional right to assemble peacefully and express political views. That is not the issue.
The deeper question is whether religious solidarity is being transformed into political shielding.
Marcoleta has publicly associated himself with these mobilizations, and reports indicate that plunder and bribery complaints have been initiated against him over allegations relating to funds he has described as campaign donations. Those allegations remain to be tested through the proper legal process, and, like every public official, he is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Precisely because of that presumption, the determination of guilt or innocence belongs in investigative bodies and courts, not in the streets.
When thousands of disciplined believers are mobilized around a politician confronting serious legal allegations, the public perception inevitably changes. What should be an impartial legal process risks becoming a contest between evidence and organized political pressure. The spectacle creates the appearance that religious authority is being deployed as political armor.
This observation is not directed solely at one religious organization. Catholic institutions have endorsed candidates. Protestant churches have mobilized voters. Evangelical groups have aligned themselves with administrations. Various religious communities have, at different moments, exercised political influence. The names differ. The pattern remains remarkably constant.
History repeatedly teaches that religion reaches its highest calling when it confronts power, not when it protects it. The Hebrew prophets challenged kings. Jesus confronted both religious hypocrisy and political oppression. The greatest moral figures in every religious tradition spoke uncomfortable truths to rulers rather than becoming their political partners.
The separation of Church and State exists not because the government is hostile to religion, but because both institutions deserve protection from each other. Government should not dictate beliefs. Neither should religious authority become a substitute for democratic accountability or the rule of law.
The true test of any religious institution is not its ability to mobilize followers but its willingness to demand accountability, even from its own members. A faith that shields wrongdoing because the accused belongs to the fold ceases to be a moral compass and becomes a partisan instrument. When loyalty to an institution eclipses loyalty to truth and justice, religion begins serving politics instead of transforming it.
Whenever faith is transformed into partisan machinery, both politics and religion suffer. Politics acquires an undeserved aura of divine legitimacy, while religion risks sacrificing its moral authority for temporary political influence.
It is a road stained with blood, betrayal and corrupted institutions.
We should not travel it again.
The author is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and vice chairman of the board of the state-run PTV Network Inc.