The Comity Agreement (1898–1941)

After the defeat of the Spanish in the Battle of Manila Bay by the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Squadron, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist leaders met in 1898 in New York to discuss how to bring Protestantism to the Philippines. The result was a comity agreement that divided the Philippines into missionary areas by denomination to avoid future conflicts among themselves and their converts.^[10] Only one Protestant denomination would be in each area.

The meeting was followed by another gathering in 1901 by the early missionaries in Manila to further discuss the comity agreement with three specific major agenda items:

• "to organize the Evangelical Union,"
• "choose a common name for Protestant churches," and
• "delineate the geographical work allotments for each church."^[11]

From 1898 to 1930 the different Protestant denominations that joined the comity agreement were:

• Methodists (1898) assigned most of lowland Luzon and north of Manila;
• Presbyterians (1899) assigned Bicol, Southern Tagalog area and some parts of Central and Western Visayas;
• Baptists (1900) Western Visayas;
• United Brethren (1901) Mountain Province and La Union;
• Disciples of Christ (1901) Ilocos, Abra, and Tagalog towns;
• Congregationalists (1902), Mindanao except for the western end; and
• Christian and Missionary Alliance (1902), Western Mindanao and Sulu Archipelago.
• Brethren (Kapatirang Kristiano) linked to Plymouth Brethren, was established in the 1930s in San Juan, Metro Manila by a missionary named Cyril H. Brooks. They planted numerous chapels in the Philippines with majority in Bulacan, Pampanga and Rizal Province.

Manila was open to all denominations and mission agencies.^[12] The Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Episcopal Church in the Philippines did not join because they wanted to go to all parts of the archipelago.^[13] American Protestant Missions (APM) emphasized institutional ministry and medical missions in their evangelistic and missions endeavors.

For a short time the comity agreement worked well, until the situation grew more intricate and splits occurred. The Methodists split in 1909 when Nicolas Zamora founded the Iglesia Evangelica Metodista en las Islas Filipinas (IEMELIF). This shattered the agreement. Thus, the IEMELIF became the first indigenous evangelical denomination, an all-Filipino-supported church at that time, with Methodist Ilocanos from Northern Luzon moved into the areas of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines in Mindanao.^{[citation needed]} Baptist Ilonggos migrated from Iloilo to Central Cotabato, traditionally Christian and Missionary Alliance territory. As this kind of movement increased, the sharp boundaries between the different comity areas became obscured.^[14]

Divisions came with growth and expansion, and personality clashes, racial tensions, the dynamics of nationalism, cultural differences, power struggles and other non-theological factors contributed to the schisms. In the 1920s the fundamentalist-modernist controversy in the United States affected the Philippines, causing further division. By 1921, some nineteen independent denominations were registered with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and important splits occurred among the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and Disciples of Christ. Several small denominations, some of them entirely under national leadership, emerged.^[15]

Unity of the churches was still a goal. In 1929, the United Brethren, Presbyterian and Congregational Churches formed the United Evangelical Church in the Philippines. In 1932, six of the smaller indigenous denominations of Presbyterian and Methodist backgrounds formed the Iglesia Evangelica Unida de Cristo, or now more commonly known as the Unida Christian Church. The assembly of these indigenous denominations was called by Don Toribio Teodoro, owner of the Ang Tibay shoes. The National Christian Council was founded in 1929 as a successor of the Evangelical Union. This was followed in 1938 by the organization of the Philippine Federation of Evangelical Churches. With the coming of World War II and the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, the United Evangelical Church underwent severe trying circumstances when the mission agencies were completely cut off from the United States. American missionaries were incarcerated and mission funds were unexpectedly discontinued.

World War II and independence

To deal with the diverse Protestant groups, the Japanese during their occupation of the Philippines during Second World War pressed for the formation of the Evangelical Church of the Philippines which combined thirteen denominations. However, most of the larger denominations such as Methodist, Episcopal, Unida and other independent churches refused to join. After the war, the Evangelical Church of the Philippines further fragmented, but the Disciples of Christ, the United Brethren, the Iglesia Evangelica Unida de Cristo, the Evangelica Nacional, some individual congregations of the IEMELIF, the Philippine Methodist and the Presbyterian Churches remained intact. Several churches united to form the United Church of Christ in the Philippines in 1948. In 1949 the United Evangelical Church, the Philippine Federation of Evangelical Churches, and the Iglesia Evangelica Unida de Cristo formed the Philippine Federation of Christian Churches, now called the National Council of Churches in the Philippines. Today, Protestant and evangelical churches and denominations are grouped into major councils of churches: The National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) for mainline Protestant churches and the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC) for evangelical churches, organized in 1964.

Several independent church organizations emerged in the 1970s and mid-1980s, such as the Jesus Is Lord Church Worldwide, the Greenhills Christian Fellowship founded in 1978 by the Conservative Baptists, the Bread of Life Ministries International founded in 1982, and the Christ's Commission Fellowship and Victory Christian Fellowship both established in 1984. These churches used mass media to spread evangelical Christianity in the country and to establish more non-denominational, Pentecostal, and charismatic churches. These churches^[which?] grew up rapidly and are considered one of the major Protestant megachurches in the Philippines.^[16]

A major factor in the development of Philippine Protestantism is the explicit expression of religious freedom found in Section 5, Article III ("Bill of Rights) of the 1987 Constitution, separating church and state. The concept and its English phrasing has been present in every national charter since the 1935 Constitution promulgated by the Commonwealth government.^[17] The Philippine Youth Movement founded in 1926 boosted the move to develop the indigenous Protestant church nationwide.^[18]

A theme in the development of Protestantism in the Philippines is the tension between the religion and nationalism. After an initial period of resentment toward American missionaries, Filipinos gradually accepted Protestantism.^[19] During the 1920s and '30s, American Methodist missionaries openly supported Filipino independence from the United States.^[20]