Re-Baptizing Spirit in Land and Ancestry: An Approach for Un-Doing Christian Colonialism

This chapter works toward developing a Christian spirituality of land, tutored by involvement in Filipino indigenous struggle to halt land dispossession and recover ancestral tradition, authored by a white settler colonial educator/poet, partnered with a diasporan Filipina activist/scholar. Rooted in recent experience of having challenged development interests in Luzon to face Filipino “Doctrine of Discovery” decimation of the indigenous Ayta homeland there, the chapter recounts lessons learned and questions raised before then turning to the biblical tradition to reread with an eye to being schooled by agencies wild and living (like Moses with a bush, Elijah with ravens, John with a camel). Indigenous Filipino innovations of a “re-baptism” rite, considered alongside an eco-sensitive re-reading of gospel traditions of Jesus’ baptism opens toward Asian theologian Aloysius Pieris’ insistence that the first task (and true test) of any “missionary” enterprise is not teaching, preaching, or conversion, but immersion, in the most profound sense and widest scope of the term. The first task of Christian vocation is to be baptized—into both land wisdom and indigenous practice of such—for the sake of an anti-colonial vision of a future that is actually viable and worthy of the planet.