Nicolas Zamora: Religious Nationalist

STUDIES IN PHILIPPINE CHURCH HISTORY Edited By Gerald H. Anderson

Nicolas Zamora: Religious Nationalist

RICHARD L. DEATS

Religion and nationalism are forces which have been closely linked together in the past century of Philippine history. The family background and life of Nicolas Zamora, an early Protestant convert, are an important example of this fact.

The great uncle of Nicolas Zamora, Fr. Jacinto Zamora, was one of the three priests charged with involvement in the Cavite Mutiny of i872. Jacinto Zamora, born in Pandacan on August 14, i835, studied theology and canon law at the University of Santo Tomas and eventually was .assigned to the Manila cathedral. There he met the brilliant Jose Burgos, curate of the cathedral. The two priests, along with the elderly Fr. Mariano Gómez, moved into prominence among a large group of Filipino clergy and laity who were championing the cause of the native priests, especially in respect to the secularization of the parishes. The developing sense of nationalism in this group was focused on the injustice of the continued dominance by the foreign missionaries of so many of the choice parishes in the country. The great risk these nationalistpriests were taking became tragically evident at the beginning of 1872, when the Cavite Mutiny occurred when veteran soldiers decided to rebel because of the tribute they were being forced to pay. Father Zamora had attended the Sampaloc fiesta on January 20, the day the shortlived revolt began. On the flimsiest of evidence, he, along with Gómez and Burgos, was arrested and taken to Fort Santiago on charges of having instigated the revolt. Having long since aroused the ire of the friars and the governmental authorities because of their vocal nationalism, their fate was sealed. After a secret trialthe proceedings of which have yet to be publishedthe three priests were executed.1

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The execution of Jacinto Zamora did not quench the independent spirit in the Zamora family; indeed, as often is the case, tho martyrdom made the fires of nationalism burn all the more intensely. Fr. Zamora's nephew, Paulino Zamora, was a man of high ideals and a seeker after truth. The wellread Paulino, embittered at the friars, did not hesitate to defy their religious authority by paying a sea captain to smuggle a Spanish Bible into Manila for him. Curious to learn about this book that had launched the Protestant Reformation in Europe, Zamora moved with his family to Bulacan, where they could be away from the scrutiny of the authorities. In Bulacan he read the Bible to his family at night and then began to call in the neighbors to study the Bible with him. Word of his independent religious activities became known, however, and one evening shortly after the outbreak of the revolution, his house was surrounded, he was arrested and, without trial, Don Paulino Zamora was exiled to Chefarina Island, a Spanish penal colony in the Mediterranean Sea.2

His oldest son, Nicolas, born on September 10, 1875, in Binondo, had inherited the independent religious spirit of the Zamoras before him. The mother of Nicolas, Epifania Villegas, died when he was young, but his father sought to compensate for this loss by giving the boy much affection and by providing him with the best education his means would allow. The father sent Nicolas to study with the wellknown tutor Don Pedro Serrano. Later Nicolas was sent to his uncle, Fr. Pablo Zamora, then curate of the cathedral. The uncle wanted the promising Nicolas to become a lawyer or a priest and helped him enter Ateneo de Manila, where in due course he obtained the Bachelor of Arts degree. During this time Nicolas was keenly interested in religion and, like his father, studied the Bible in secret. Gradually his interest turned from the priesthood to law, and, upon graduation from Ateneo, he enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas in order to study law. During this period he married Isabel de Guia in Bulacan. When the revolution broke out in 1896, the young nationalist left his studies in order to join the army of General Gregorio del Pilar. He took his Bible with him and read it to the soldiers, translating it from the Spanish into Tagalog. Nicolas distinguished himself in the army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.3

When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1898, the father, Paulino, was allowed to return to the Philippines. On his way home he visited Spain.

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Already a Mason, Paulino Zamora sought out Protestants in Madrid, and there attended his first public Protestant services.4 His companion in Madrid was Moises Buzon,5 a Filipino who had been banished with Zamora for a similar “crime” and who years later was to become a bishop in the independent Iglesia Evangelica Unida de Cristo.

When Paulino Zamora landed in the Philippines, his son Nicolas joyfully told him of the new atmosphere of religious liberty in the islands and of the Protestant services that the Americans were holding in Manila. The father shared with his son his deepening religious convictions and showed him Protestant literature he had obtained in Spain.

The first Protestant work of any permanent consequence in Manila began in March of 1899 when Methodist Bishop James M. Thoburn of India, assisted by a licensed local preacher by the name of Arthur Prautch, held a series of evangelistic services, attended largely by American servicemen in the city. Several Filipinos, including the Zamoras, were intensely interested in the services, and in June of that year Prautch began holding evangelistic meetings at the Teatro Filipino specifically for Filipinos.6 The meetings were announced in the Spanish newspapers. Twelve came to the first meeting,7 including the Zamoras and another outstanding father and son team, Don Luis and Teodoro Yangco. Luis Yangco had read the Bible since 1888 and thought of himself as the first Filipino Protestant.8 His son was to become famous as a philanthropist who gave a great deal to worthy causes, especially to Protestant work and to the Y.M.C.A.

On the fourth Sunday of the services, thirty were in attendance. The Spanish interpreter did not appear, and Prautch asked Paulino Zamora to speak to the gathering about his religious convictions.9 The noble old gentleman was not a speaker, but he indicated that his son would speak. Nicolas told the group of the execution of his great uncle in 1872 and of his father's suffering on behalf of his independent religious convictions. Then he related his own pilgrimage of religious discovery and of the power of God in speaking to men's hearts through the Bible. He was an excellent speaker and was received with a great deal of enthusiasm.10 He was asked to speak again the next Sunday. The event was announced in the papers

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and a large crowd came to the service.11

From this point on, the Zamoras, father and son, gave themselves tirelessly to developing Protestant work in the islands. Paulino opened his home at 50 Beaterio, Intramuros, for the use of missionaries in holding religious services, and he helped find other homes where additional services could be held. On October 22, 1899, James B. Rodgers, a Presbyterian and the first regularly appointed Protestant missionary in the Philippines, received into church membership at the Beaterio home Paulino Zamora, his three sons and daughter, and four others. Nicolas Zamora preferred to be a Methodist and made it clear that his membership would be transferred to the Methodist Episcopal Church as soon as its work was established in the islands.12

During the rest of that year, the young Zamora was frequently called upon in the evangelistic services being held throughout the city to testify of his faith. When Bishop Thoburn returned to Manila in February 1900, with Bishop Frank Warne, he was highly impressed with Nicolas Zamora, who by then was preaching in seven different places to large audiences. After Thoburn heard him speak and examined him about his beliefs, Zamora told the bishop of his fervent desire to become a minister.13

According to the rules of the Methodist Episcopal Church, no one could be ordained before becoming a member on trial of an Annual Conference (i.e., diocese), ordination following reception into trial membership. At the time Bishop Thoburn was in the islands, no Asian annual conference was in session. Therefore he decided to take the extraordinary step of cabling, via the New York office of the Missionary Society, to the South Kansas Annual Conference, which was in session, and asking Kansas Bishop Vincent to receive Zamora into membership on trial, elect him to deacon's orders under the missionary rule, and then transfer him to the Malaysia Mission Conference (which included the Philippines) for ordination. This highly unusual request was granted by the South Kansas Conference due to the circumstances surrounding the case. As soon as Bishop Thoburn received the affirmative cable in reply, he ordained Nicolas Zamora in Manila on March 10,1900, as a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church. This, said the bishop, enabled him to place an intelligent pastor over the Filipino converts, and thereby greatly strengthen the brave company of those who had come out from the house of priestly bondage. In that hour

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of need I felt devoutly thankful that I serve a Church which had a flexible economy.14

Commenting later on the reasons for Zamora's ordination, another Methodist bishop, Frank W. Warne wrote, “He was a good man, educated, married, converted, eloquent, knew his Bible and abundantly qualified to

preach.”15

The father of Nicolas was present at the ordination service, held in the Soldier's Home in “a room with a dusty floor, without pulpit or altar and with only a few rough chairs.” Afterward, Paulino Zamora embraced Bishop Thoburn and said in Spanish, “God, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”16

Within the first few years of Protestant work in the islands, Nicolas Zamora thus became the first ordained Filipino Protestant minister. This appears all the more striking when one recalls the tragically long struggle for an indigenous priesthood in Philippine Catholicism.17

Following ordination Zamora was sent to Shanghai for a few months of seminary study.18 The rapidly expanding Protestant work and the great need for workers precluded his being able to study for a longer period of time. Upon his return from China, Zamora was entrusted with significant evangelistic opportunities. He was appointed by the Methodist mission as an itinerant evangelist, and his fame as a preacher became well known in the Tagalog region. Many were converted in his frequent services at Plaza Goiti in Manila. By 1903 he was making regular reports that were printed in the mission journal. Thus, for example, he reported for the year 1902 as having preached 209 sermons and having baptized 70 infants and 285 adults as well as having performed 267 marriages and having officiated at four funerals. In that same year he reports having had a public debate with a priest in Caloocan where his “brother” was presidente of the municipality.19 Discussing with the priest the subject of prayers to the saints, Zamora said, “I asked him if during the 370 years in which we had been under the spiritual direction of the friars and Roman clergy he had ever heard of the canonization of one Filipino saint?”20 This was a question that Filipino nationalists were – and still are – fond of asking Roman

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Catholics. The following Sunday Zamora took his Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles to the convento to continue the discussion with the priest (the degree to which he knew these languages, especially Hebrew, is not certain). He asked the priest to bring up any questions he would like from his own Roman Catholic Bible. A large crowd had gathered, but the debate did not last long. Zamora reports that it ended when the priest, in exasperation, tried to strike him on the face and then retired to his convento.21 Zamora's experience in debating while studying law served him well in his frequent debates during these years of incessant evangelistic work.

The earliest center of Zamora's work outside of Manila was at Malibay, where his preaching was highly effective. By mid1901 in that place, Homer Stuntz reports there was “a total of members and probationers such as exceeded the total visible missionary results that were secured in China for fifteen years.”22

The services in Malibay were held in the large,

old, Roman Catholic Church which had been damaged during the war with America and which was being left unattended by any priests. In addition to the preaching, Bibles and New Testament portions were sold, and house visitations were made. On Christmas day of 1901 Presiding Elder Stuntz received over three hundred probationary members into the church. He writes:

After receiving eight times over as many people as could stand in a double row in front of the altar, we had the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. It was the first time many of these poor people had ever received the cup. The wafer was all that had ever touched their tongues. There was perfect reverence, and deep spiritual interest. . . . Here were over four hundred partakers of the Holy Supper, nearly all of whom were in the possession of as clear and definite a knowledge of the forgiveness of their sins and their acceptance in Christ as any whom I had ever ministered to in settled pastorates in the twenty years of my ministry. . . . 23

Thus is seen the dynamic response made by the Filipinos to the evangelistic efforts of one of their own countrymen at the turn of the century.

Pastor Zamora was ordained as elder in 1902, and in 1903 he was appointed as the first pastor of the Cervantes Church (Cervantes Street

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being the original name of Avenida Rizal) or, as it was also called, the First Filipino Church.24 This church became the focal point of Methodist work in downtown Manila, and it grew rapidly under the forceful leadership of the Rev. Mr. Zamora.

In addition to his pastoral responsibilities, Zamora's evangelistic work continued. One of those still living, who heard him preach, gives a colorful account of those experiences. Dr. D. D. Alejandro (retired Methodist bishop), writes:

It was my happy privilege to have listened several times to Pastor Zamora's preaching way back in 1906 and 1907 at the Teatro Rizal on old Ilaya Street, corner of Azcarraga. The theater, with a seating capacity of over a thousand, was always full on every Sunday I worshiped there. He was a great speaker, oratorical, somewhat bombastic in style, but mighty and sincere in expression. He had a terrible booming voice that could easily be heard all over the place and outside where a throng of late comers always could be found. He used good, very good Tagalog, embellished with Latin quotations from the Bible and interspersed with Spanish phrases.25

Pastor Zamora was also called upon for teaching responsibilities. As there was as yet no seminary, the earliest training of church workers was done through Bible Institutes. These courses began in 1903 and each generally lasted for about one month.

The courses were taught by the missionaries, but Zamora was asked to deliver lectures on such subjects as the life of Christ and on the life of John Wesley.26 Later, when the first seminary opened, he lectured there and at the deaconess training school as well.

Because of his great ability, Zamora was frequently called upon by the missionaries to help settle difficult situations that arose from time to time. In 1906 he was sent to the Tondo area of Manila because of a great deal of unrest that had developed there. A number of Methodists wanted to start their own church under Filipino leadership. They had started a society known as Katotohanan in order to foster religiopatriotic sentiments, and they were advocating both political and ecclesiastical independence. Zamora was initially able to quell the unrest, and the work in Tondo began to grow once more.

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However, the members of the society gradually began to win Pastor Zamora over to their side. Their slogan was, “While God has given other nations the right to serve and administer the religious life of their people, the Filipinos were also endowed by the divine Providence with the same right.”27 This independent spirit proved attractive to the grandnephew of Fr. Jacinto Zamora. Despite his outstanding accomplishments in the Methodist work, Zamora had chafed under what he felt was the small voice Filipinos were given in the actual policymaking decisions of the mission. As one who fought in the Philippine revolution, he had seen the eclipse of hopes for early independence from the Americans. Although the new colonial regime was far better than the old, it was still a bitter fact for the revolutionists to accept decades more of colonialism. By the same token, Zamoralike Aglipay before him – found himself in a church whose fife was controlled by foreign funds and personnel. Strides were being made in selfleadership, but they were not fast enough for the Tondo independistas.

There were other factors that entered the picture as well. Tensions between Zamora and some of the missionaries had become hard to contain. Not a few of the missionaries were paternalistic toward the Filipinos and expressed this paternalism in ways that could not but be offensive to a highly capable nationalist like Zamora. Once at a Bible Institute, for example, he overheard one of the missionaries say that Filipinos would never make good pastors.28 Another wrote of Filipinos, “For all their veneer,” they are still “primitive and childlike.” The same writer further stated that the trouble with people like Zamora was due to visiting Americans who came around talking about independence of the islands and thus unnecessarily stirred up the nationals.29 The missionary bishop for Methodist work in the Philippines at that time, William H. Oldham, wrote:

There is . . . amongst the Tagalog ... a strong desire to assert themselves as not needing either tutelage or direction. This feeling in itself is praiseworthy; but there is mingled with it a certain lack of' judgment, a headiness and a touch of arrogance that the present ability to manage affairs scarcely warrants.30

Then, as now, Western smugness was the source of no end of difficulty in relationships across national boundaries. In the missionary writings of

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the period, many writers revealed keen sensitivity to Filipino national hopes and aspirations; but others – riding on the crest of America's first taste of colonialism – showed little such sensitivity. This same dichotomy, of course, was seen in American attitudes of the time toward Western imperialism generally and was reflected on a national scale in the public controversy that developed as the United States went against her own heritage and became a colonial power at the close of the nineteenth century.

There was still another factor in the growing difficulties between Zamora and the mission. Its importance should be neither exaggerated nor forgotten, but seen rather as part of the total picture and remembered as a demonstration of the fact that men's motives for momentous decisions are often not as unambiguous as we might wish. Some of the missionaries believed that Pastor Zamora had been charging high fees for performing weddings and that he had solemnized some marriages under questionable circumstances, as in marrying minors without parental consent. He had already been reminded by the district superintendent that such practices were against church discipline, and in early 1909, when the superintendent brought up the issue once more, Zamora rejected the counsel and announced that he was withdrawing from the Methodist Episcopal Church.31

On February 28, 1909, at St. Paul's Methodist Church in Tondo, announced before a congregation of several hundred persons, the formation of La Iglesia Evangelica Metodista en las Islas Filipinas, a church that was to be completely free of foreign control and leadership.32 A short time later, he said in one of his sermons, “It is the will of God for the Filipino nation that the Evangelical Church in the Philippines be established which will proclaim the Holy Scriptures through theleadership of our countrymen.” 33

Evaluating the schism twenty years later, Frank C. Laubach wrote that “the demand for selfdetermination and proper recognition, which is like a rising tide in every country, came more rapidly than the mission could prepare themselves for it.”34

The new church continued to hold the

same discipline and doctrines as the Methodist Episcopal Church, thus illustrating the nontheological nature of the split and demonstrating, as

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in the case of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, the strong hold of nationalistic sentiments on Filipino religious leaders.

The Iglesia Evangelica Metodista, or the “IEMELIF” as it is called today,35 spread mostly among the Tagalogs in the Manila area. Four of the nine Filipino conference members and onefifth of the local preachers (25 out of 121 ) went with Zamora from the Methodist Episcopal Church. In the first year about 1,500 out of the total of 30,000 Methodists in the Manila district joined the schism.36 Noteworthy is the fact that “not a Bible woman, a deaconess, or a young person trained in the public schools and able to speak English . . . [was] drawn into the new organization.”37

This then was a movement largely among the older Tagalog Filipinos who had lived through the fires of the revolutionary period. The younger generation was more moderate in its outlook and more accepting of the American colonial policies. Zamora's followers, however, thought of him as “the man God chose to preach the Gospel to us in Tagalog and [the one who] showed us that we Filipinos can take care of ourselves spiritually.”38

Today the IEMELIF leadership thinks of its divine mission as “that of bringing Christ to the nation the Filipino Way.39

The IEMELIF established itself firmly among the Tagalogs of the Central Luzon region and is at present the largest of the completely independent and indigenous Protestant groups. It has suffered from inadequate financial resources and from a lack of welleducated leadership. In addition, the IEMELIF experienced a number of schisms from its own ranks, leaving it in 1965 with 66 churches, 106 pastors, 65 lay workers, 51 deaconesses, and approximately 15,000 members.40

Nicolas Zamora became the general superintendent of the IEMELIF and guided it through its early years of growth and development. His life, however, was tragically cut short during n cholera outbreak in 1914. He died on September 14 of that year when he was 39, only two years older than Fr. Jacinto Zamora was when he was executed. Despite the early death of these two members of the Zamora family, they both left an important mile. stone in the religious history of the Filipino people, a history in which nationalism has been a prominent factor.

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N O T E S

1 Sancho Inocencio, Biography of Father Jacinto Zamora (Manila, 1954), See also Horacio de la Costa, S.J., “Gomez, Burgos and Zamora: Priests and Citizens,” Bulletin ng Kapisanang Pangkasaysayan ng Pilipinas (Philippine Historical Association), No. 3 ( March, 1958), pp. 8992.

2 Frank C. Laubach, Seven Thousand Emeralds (New York, 1929), pp. 68 ff.

3 Felix V. Bayot, "The Life Story of Nicolas Zamora," translated and condensed by Juan Nabong, Philippine Christian Advance, II, 4 (Apr., 1950), 57. Also, written interview with Lazaro G. Trinidad, bishop and general superintendent, IEMELIF, Oct. 23, 1965.

4 Homer C. Stuntz, The Philippines and the Far East (Cincinnati, 1904), pp. 417f.

5 Written interview with Cipriano Navarro, general treasurer of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, Oct. 29, 1965.

6 Richard L. Deats, The Story of Methodism in the Philippines (Manila, 1964) pp. 3 ff.

7 Frank W. Warne, A Filipino Evangelist: Nicolas Zamora (New York, n.d.), p. 5.

8 Laubach, op. cit., p. 69.

9 Warne, op, cit., p. 6.

10 Laubach, op. cit., pp. 6g ff.

11 Warne, op. cit., p. 6.

12 James B. Rodgers, Forty Years in the Philippines. A History of the Philippine Mission of The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 18991939 (New York, 1940 ), pp. 32 f.


14 Stuntz, op. cit., p. 433.


16 Ibid., p. 8.

17 Whereas Roman Catholic missions began in the Philippines in 1565 and spread rapidly throughout the archipelago, it was not until the first decade of

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the eighteenth century that a Filipino was ordained to the priesthood. Even to the present day, there is a critical shortage of Filipino priests. See the essay in this volume by Horacio de la Costa, S.J., "The Development of the Native Clergy in the Philippines"; also Richard L. Deats, Nationalism and Christianity in the Philippines (Dallas, 1967).

18 Gil Abesamis, "The Pastoral Ministry of the IEMELIF Church" (unpublished B.D. thesis, Dasmariiias, Cavite: Union Theological Seminary, 1965), p. 10.

19 Zamora does not make it altogether clear in his report whether this was his blood brother, or, more probably, simply a fellow Protestant. He said, "On June 1st, 1902, I went to Caloocan to preach the Gospel there for the first time, at the request of our brother, the Municipal Presidente." Official Journal o f the Philippine Islands District o f the Malaysia Annual Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church, 1903 (Manila, 1903), p. 42.

20 Ibid., PP. 4243.

21 Ibid., p. 43.

22 Stuntz, op. cit., p. 442.

23 Ibid.

24 Today this church is known as Knox Memorial Church. Still on Avenida Rizal, it is one of the largest Protestant churches in Asia, having over 4,000 members and services in English and three Philippine languages weekly.

25 Written interview, Oct. 27, 1965.

26 Official Journal, op. cit., 1904.

27 Marcelino Gutierrez, "The IEMELIFFirst Indigenous Church in the

Philippines," Philippine Christian Advance, II, 4 (April, 1950), 35

31 "Bishop Bashford in Manila," WorldWide Missions, XXI, 7 (1909), 67.

32 Gutierrez, op. cit., p. 3.

33 Aklat PangAlaala Sa Ika50 Anibersario ng Iglesia Evangelica Metodista en las Islas Filipinas, 19091959 (Manila, 1959), p. 78.

34 The People of the Philippines (New York, 1925 ), p. 305.

35 The shortened name comes from combining the first letter of each word in the full Spanish title, "Iglesia Evangelica Metodista en las Islas Filipinas."

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36 Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of The Methodist Episcopal Church, 1909 (New York, 1909), p. 349.

37 "Bishop Bashford in Manila," op, cit., p. 7.

38 Ang Ilaw, Feb., 1928, p. 1.

39 Abesamis, op. cit., p. 4.

40 1965 Directory of Workers, IEMELIF (mimeographed; Tondo, Manila, 1965).

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Nicolas Zamora: Religious Nationalist