Steven Castro McManus

The long and arduous "mumon linahyan" that has engulfed Guam’s community for a number of years is echoing schisms of another era in history – 1517 to be exact and seems to be resulting in the same kind of reformation that followed. Pope Leo X’s corruption that exploited the faithful seem to have been reborn today in the person of one Archbishop Anthony Apuron. Unfortunately, the people of Guam have been suffering at the hands of this kind of colonial screw balling since Magellan “discovered” Guam in March 1521 and perhaps the passage of Bill 326 is the beginning of a new era.

Leo’s pattern of abuse served only to alienate indigenous peoples and drive them into the arms of another genus of Christianity. The radical ideas of Martin Luther was not just spiritual; it was nationalist in nature. German sentiment against the powerful Italian Medici was fertile soil for a reformation that would give them their own Christianity – thus the Lutheran Church was born. The Scots would get their Presbyterian Church, the English, their Anglican Church and the American colonists their Methodist and Baptist churches. And in each case, better systems of governments ensued.

Is it a coincidence that Guam’s religious rumblings are occurring simultaneously with the islands growing movement toward decolonization? Massachusetts outcast and Rhode Island founder Roger Williams probably wouldn’t think so. His Christian zeal for a better church in 1636 also fashioned a more democratic state that would inform the ideals of the U.S. Constitution more than a hundred years later.

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With the shameless and wasted plea from Archbishop Hon (Tai Fai) to our local leaders to obstruct Bill 326, the hyper-militarization of an emasculated Guam and the fact that we still do not have fair representation in Congress and can’t vote for the president, revolution for change should be at a fever pitch.

Guam has tolerated injustice for so long because of what Patrick Carnes describes as traumatic bonding – where a strong emotional attachment is formed between an abused person and their abuser. The abused person simply cannot see the reality of their pitiful condition because of the years of long-term oppression is perceived as normal and even loving. Why else do so many victims and families on Guam who know of sexual abuse turn a blind eye and go back to the church of the abuser? And why else does Guam continue to swear blind allegiance to a country who in one breath confesses to crimes of genocide, slavery, political corruption etc., and yet in the other breath will further abuse us with a Clinton or a Trump and deny Guam its most basic civil rights of fair representation and the right to decide its political destiny?

Guam has so much potential to be a world game changer. We can be independent like the Philippines, flourish economically like Singapore and be eco-sensitive like Palau. But we choose to be colonized, abused and controlled.

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But like Hurao and Matapang who confronted the apathetic Chamorros and rallied them to take on the Spanish empire, it is time for Guam’s second great awakening. An awakening that not only pushed for the passage of Bill 326 but one that will finally challenge anything that reeks of autocracy including the abolition of Guam’s deplorable political status. That Guam will, in the words of Andrew Camacho, the vice president of Concerned Catholics of Guam, be willing to endure possible church bankruptcy so that the island can rebuild a pure church and perhaps build a truer republic as well.

Steven Castro McManus is a resident of Yona.