A 40-Mile Walk Through Bohol, Religion, and Grace

Author: Atharv Pathak

In my second week in Bohol, I made my first long-distance journey on foot - a Saturday night walk from Tubod Mar to Tagbilaran City. My expectations were simple: an enchanting night sky and surroundings that felt truly Filipino. I wanted to see the bare skeleton of Bohol's towns, stripped of the people and noise of daytime life. And I did.

What I found brought back the reaction I'd had when I first learned about Filipino history - something close to rage, and pity. Two images from early in the walk explain why.

Spanish Colonial Baroque churches and the fifth statue of Jesus I passed within the first hour of my walk.

I have a deep personal respect for historical monuments, religious ones included, so it wasn't the buildings themselves, or the presence of religion, that bothered me - it was what I knew about their origin. I'd set out hoping to find what felt distinctly Filipino about the island, and found myself wondering whether these colonial remnants could even count as part of the local culture at all. At the time, I'd more or less convinced myself that anything genuinely cultural had to be indigenous to a place to begin with. Having been raised in a devoutly Hindu family in Nepal, and having grown more agnostic - atheist, even - over the years, I never felt that same way about my own family's faith, since it had been passed down across generations with no coercion involved. Filipinos, by contrast, were overwhelmingly animist before colonization - pagan, in Western terms - and were made Christian through violent, coercive conversion by colonial powers.

I'll admit I'm a stubbornly opinionated person, quick to argue, and not always able to keep my internal criticisms exactly internal when it comes to things I feel strongly about. So on my first day in Tubod Mar, when my host family began praying before dinner, I prayed along and smiled - but quietly, I couldn't shake the discomfort of watching what felt to me like the continuation of an imperialist practice. Seeing pictures of Christ on nearly every household door, and watching hundreds of people pray in the grand hall of the Church of St. Michael, that discomfort mostly stayed with me - even though I had nothing but respect for the faith itself.

It wasn't until my third and final week in Bohol, shortly after the walk to Tagbilaran, that I began noticing the small, real impacts of these practices on people's lives - and that's when the moral high ground I'd put myself on finally started to wobble.

After returning home on Sunday and resting, my host family invited me to church with them for Father's Day prayers. Out of respect and genuine curiosity, I went along. For the first time, I wasn't a judgmental bystander at the gates but part of the congregation itself, listening to the sermon and seeing its effect on people up close. The children, especially, were delighted to see their fathers honoured during the service. Seeing that joy up close made me feel closer to Bohol, and to my host family.

The next day came a conversation that unsettled the certainty I'd been carrying all along. My business partner, Shinn and I found ourselves talking with Ms. Fanny, a wonderful woman running a nail salon by herself in Jagna. When we mentioned we'd been to church the day before, she lit up and told us about her own journey toward faith. About eight years earlier, Ms. Fanny had lost her husband and found herself without any real source of strength or companionship. It was the church, its teachings, and the community that gave her the strength to carry on and make a life for herself.

After that conversation, one question wouldn't leave me alone: can the present-day positive impact of a tradition be reason enough to set aside its questionable origin? I wanted to know what Filipinos who were fully aware of Christianity's violent history in their country actually thought about its place there now. I went back to the Church of St. Michael the Archangel to ask the priest directly, but his schedule of masses and travel made that impossible. Beyond him, I wasn't sure where else to find someone to talk it through with.

I was lucky, then, to run into Erika - a thoughtful, patient Filipina-Arab woman who has lived in Bohol for close to a decade. Like me, she spent much of her life agnostic before, in her own words, "discovering Jesus" in her early twenties. She was open to deep discussion on almost any topic, and patient enough to really listen before offering her own view. We talked for hours, disagreeing on almost everything, each putting our views forward without trying to convince the other.

When I asked her directly how she felt about the violent way Christianity arrived in the Philippines, she gave me a thoughtful, considered answer. One point that struck me was a well-known Bible verse - Genesis 50:20, which she summarized as the idea that even through human evil, God can bring good to many. For her, God had used the evil of colonialism itself to bring faith - and with it, help - to Filipinos.

I didn't agree with the verse itself, but for the first time, I had a real sense of the other side of this question - not just an abstract one. I could empathize with it, putting myself in a believer's shoes and seeing, through their eyes, why their faith felt right to them - for the strength and the joy it gave. And I finally recognized a trait I'd carried with me the whole time without quite noticing it: I've always been quick to argue, quick to correct people whose opinions are unfamiliar to me. My arguments about religion have mostly lived in theory - in online debates and abstract discourse. These three weeks in Bohol, actually watching and living what these ideas mean for someone's daily life, gave me a rare chance to slow down - to listen and observe instead of debate.

Leaving Bohol on my last day, on the way to the airport, I passed the same kind of structure again - a Baroque facade, another statue of Christ at the gate. I still remain critical of colonialism, and I haven't made peace with how Christianity arrived in the Philippines. But looking at that building one last time, I didn't feel rage or pity anymore. I felt something closer to patience - a willingness to listen and understand before I judge. Three weeks, and the same kind of building, looked entirely different to me by the end.