A Filipino villager has been nailed to a wooden cross for the 35th time to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a brutal Good Friday tradition he said he would devote to pray for peace in Ukraine, Gaza and the disputed South China Sea.
On Friday, over a hundred people watched on as 10 devotees were nailed to wooden crosses, among them Ruben Enaje, a 63-year-old carpenter and sign painter. The real-life crucifixions have become an annual religious spectacle that draws tourists in three rural communities in Pampanga province, north of Manila.
The gory ritual resumed last year after a three-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic. It has turned Enaje into a village celebrity for his role as the “Christ” in the Lenten reenactment of the Way of the Cross.
Ahead of the crucifixions, Enaje told The Associated Press by telephone Thursday night that he has considered ending his annual religious penitence due to his age, but said he could not turn down requests from villagers for him to pray for sick relatives and all other kinds of maladies.
fuck these spiteful and useless comments.
disturbing and violent self flagellating protest has been a tradition throughout most of recorded history. name calling and holier than thou attitudes are blatant ignorance of both history and ongoing attrocity and violence.
there’s also almost certainly a racial element at play, given the language being used. like the words “freaks” “whackos” “backwards” just happen to show up when it’s not a white guy doing the protest. i truly hope this comment can help with some self reflection on why our knee jerk reaction is the way it is here.
edit:
CW: very edgy meme showcasing the racist undertones going on here.
35 times and so much peace accomplishment
Also nothing to do with race, what he did was pointless as well.
It’s protest. What protest accomplishes is messaging. Communication of violence, in protest of atrocity.
I swear just the other day we were deeply moved by the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell in protest of genocide. But when brown people do it it suddenly becomes “yikes this backwards culture,” “get a load of these whackos.” Really revealing our Western-centrism and implicit racial bias here.
To be clear, I also find it disturbing. That is the fucking point. But if your first instinct upon seeing this, like many of the comments here, is to speak derogatorily of this individual? You are the fucking problem.
Aaron bushel joked on reddit about his fellow coworkers being killed. Also was never moved by him lighting himself on fire.
https://archive.li/cp3Kg
If he is u/acebush1 I’m not really seeing what you are referring to as a joke.
Post title is literally them trying to be an edge lord.
As for the account
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aaron-bushnell-antisemitic-posts/
re: your edit
don’t worry not accusing you of bigotry yet; it’s the other comments which are the problem.
I agree with your sentiment, but I felt compelled to comment on one crucial element here: what he has been doing isn’t a protest, but some form of a religious pledge. It just so happened that this year, he’s praying for world peace. This is akin to some traditions in India and other parts where self-flagellation is part of religious ritual, but only for those who pledge themselves to it. It’s touched upon in the article, but he’s been doing it since the 1980’s as thanksgiving for his survival in an accident. Some people just do it once, but some devote their lives to it, and it seems to me that he’s one of the latter.
Whether or not his actions will lead to results doesn’t matter, as far as I see it. He’s already devoted to the bit, and only old age (and poor health) will likely stop him.
i don’t disagree at all, except with your implication that doing it in a religious context somehow invalidates it.
at the core it’s the same thing as an atheist or agnostic performing a hunger strike or locking themselves to a fence. literally no functional difference, it just has different sociocultural aesthetics.
they are both fucking disturbing and controversial as hell. but to verbally come down on the perfomers of the protest is to entirely miss the point.
Ah, my bad. I didn’t mean to imply that it being done in a religious context invalidates it, just that the religious context would inform us more about the man’s intent and whether or not they’d continue on doing so regardless of the result.
I used the term “pledge” earlier, but maybe it’s better to use the word “vow” to refer this. The term in Filipino is “panata” (which wiktionary translates to “vow”). It usually isn’t as dramatic as this, however. And as far as I’ve observed, a lot would do these vows after they deem their prayers to have been heard (usually recovery from illness or accidents, or recovery from financial ruin), and thereafter, no matter what, they’d try to fulfill their vows, whether that’d be a crucifixion reenactment, or attending processions, or even just as simple as foregoing alcohol or vices or letting their hair grow.
edit:
I must clarify my position here, I guess. I am neither in favor nor against the practice. But having grown up in the country where these practices occur, I just felt I have to clarify some things. Personally? I don’t mind. They’re doing these things with good intentions, and they’re hurting no one. As far as I know, they don’t force anyone to join them, but rather, make sure that those who are following their footsteps are sure they want to.
fair enough. it’s definitely a complex topic and i’m glad to see there are at least some individuals on here who don’t just divert to insults and thinly veiled racist remarks. thx 4 being chill and not like the guy who assumes i am christian and is currently trying to convert me via harassment? i assume?
lemmy has shown some interesting colors lately lolol
re your edit:
yes, neither am i for or against the practice. i value informed consent and i value when people bring attention to global violence. and when those come together in a disturbing way that hits the associated press, that’s also cool i guess.
not cool with people invoking bigoted rhetoric against the people protesting. guess that’s the tldr of my position.
Thanks as well. It’s certainly a POV I didn’t consider (that it’s akin to a protest) having grown up in the culture that produced such practices. Again, thanks!
The backwards whackos are the religious people. Nothing to do with race. You’ll see the same type of comments on any post about the latest crazy republican shit pulled in the US.
Holier than thou is thinking your stupid act is somehow powerful enough to magically fix problems in the world you foot snot. just like this guy and people with thoughts and prayers.
Is any of the money raised in the spectacle going to help the victims in Ukraine or Gaza? No? Then who’s here being “holier than thou”?
if you think it’s anything more than self-agrandizing act of “holier than thou”, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Enjoy your “monotheistic” holiday tomorrow.
Now, now, it’s not THEIR fault the Bible was dumbed down and sanitized through translations.
Most Christians don’t realize the polytheistic undertones started from the very first line. It carried through into the Latin version but not much further than that:
“In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.”
“In the beginning the GODS created heaven and earth.”
The only remnant, really, English speakers have left is the first commandment "^6 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
^7 Thou shalt have none other gods before me."
Which makes sense if you understand that the Old Testament is the history of the Jews, not the history of humanity. Of course there are other Gods, but I AM YOUR GOD.
That un-confuses a lot of the Old Testament, such as “where did the wives for Adam and Eves kids come from?” Well, easy, Adam and Eve weren’t the first people, they were the first Jews. The mysterious wives came from outside the faith.
I almost feel bad for those ancient Hebrews. They were just trying to understand their world with very very imperfect tools to do so.
They “knew” that every tribe had its own protection god and they knew that they were different from the tribes around them. So they built a narrative to explain the facts of their existence. “We are different than our neighbors, therefore we must have came from some places else. Egypt is some place else”. “Other tribes eat pork and we don’t. It must be because our protective god doesn’t like it. How did he tell us? Well there must have been some time when he told one of us.” They kept on reasoning backwards, trying to find the effect from the causes.
I feel a lot less bad for people in modern times who take these bronze age ideas seriously.
what the hell lmao
didn’t expect literal 8th century religious bigotry to show up on lemmy. cringe, buddy.
Hey I am not against you having your equinox party. Go right ahead and honor the goddess Estor. I just find it amusing that you lot call yourself monotheistic. It isn’t bigotry that I know your religion better than you do.
ok troll, tell me again what my religion is based off of pure extrapolation from nothing (you were wrong from the start)
Nietzsche said it best: Christianity is Platoism for the masses.
Paul and the Gospel writers took the very worst part of Greco-Roman thought and Judaism then combined it together. Then as it infected the Empire it grabbed holidays from various pagan groups.
It’s like wandering into r/Atheism but even worse lmao
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