This article, sent today by our Board Chair Emil Jonathan L. Soriano to Bishop Noel Alba Pantoja, critically examines the participation of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC) in the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). While the task force promotes a “whole-of-nation approach” to peace and development, its record of red-tagging and militarized posture has made it a controversial institution within the peacebuilding community. Drawing from field-based perspectives of peace practitioners, civil society critiques, and academic literature on faith-based peacebuilding, this essay analyzes the opportunities and risks inherent in PCEC’s engagement with NTF-ELCAC. The paper argues that while PCEC’s involvement presents a possibility for moral oversight and community engagement, it also carries the dangers of co-optation, erosion of prophetic distance, and complicity in harmful state practices. The analysis concludes by proposing conditions under which faith actors may engage state programs while safeguarding ethical commitments to human rights and civilian protection.
State-Church Relational Dynamics
Church-state partnerships in conflict settings have long been sites of both possibility and tension. Faith-based organizations often possess deep community roots, moral authority, and extensive humanitarian experience—qualities that governments may rely on when attempting to implement peace and development programs. In the Philippines, the participation of Bishop Noel A. Pantoja, National Director of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC), in the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) exemplifies these dynamics. Pantoja’s formal inclusion as a private sector representative in the NTF-ELCAC Executive Committee (Philippine Information Agency [PIA], 2025) signals a significant moment in the relationship between evangelical churches and the state’s counterinsurgency apparatus.
Yet this development has been met with mixed—and often polarizing—reactions within the peacebuilding community. On one hand, PCEC’s involvement is framed by government actors as a necessary component of a holistic peace strategy grounded in community trust and moral legitimacy (NTF-ELCAC, 2025a). On the other, peace advocates and field workers express apprehension regarding the task force’s history of red-tagging, civilian harm, and its perceived militarization of development (Karapatan, 2023; Human Rights Watch, 2022). This paper critically analyzes these complexities, with particular attention to ethical risks, the preservation of civilian space, and the implications for faith-based peacebuilding.
NTF-ELCAC and the Structural Placement of PCEC
NTF-ELCAC was established in 2018 via Executive Order No. 70, adopting a “whole-of-nation approach” to end insurgency by integrating security, development, and governance interventions. As part of this approach, two seats in the Executive Committee are reserved for private sector representatives. Bishop Noel Pantoja occupies one of these seats, giving PCEC a formal role in the planning and oversight of task force programs.
NTF-ELCAC promotes this collaboration as an affirmation of the church’s role in nation-building, especially in the rollout of the Barangay Development Program (BDP), which proposed a substantial ₱10 million per “cleared” barangay for 2026 (NTF-ELCAC, 2025b). According to government messaging, PCEC’s presence ensures transparency, accountability, and moral grounding in implementing development projects.
However, peacebuilding literature emphasizes that once faith actors enter the structural decision-making space of a security institution, the dynamics of power and responsibility change. Engagement is no longer informal but structural, conferring political and moral legitimacy upon the state institution (Delos Reyes, 2025). This shift raises significant ethical and operational questions.
Red-Tagging and the Protection of Civilian Space
The most salient concern among peace advocates is NTF-ELCAC’s long record of red-tagging—publicly accusing activists, church workers, humanitarian organizations, and even academics of supporting communist insurgents. Human Rights Watch (2022) and Karapatan (2023) document numerous cases in which individuals were harassed, surveilled, or threatened following such accusations.
For peacebuilding field workers, red-tagging undermines a fundamental peace principle: the protection of civilian space. Humanitarian and peace organizations must maintain the ability to engage diverse stakeholders—including those critical of government policies—without being labeled as enemies of the state. When a major church body such as PCEC joins NTF-ELCAC, critics argue that it risks normalizing a structure that has, at times, endangered peace actors (Santos & Rivera, 2024).
In conflict-sensitive areas, even the perception of alignment with a securitized state agenda may compromise the neutrality of church workers, exposing them to mistrust or accusations from local communities and armed groups. Peace practitioners working on the ground emphasize that such risks can have life-threatening consequences.
Prophetic Distance and the Risk of Co-Optation
Faith-based peacebuilding theory—particularly the work of Lederach (1997)—underscores the importance of maintaining “prophetic distance,” the moral-critical space from which religious actors challenge injustice and advocate for marginalized communities. This distance is essential to the credibility and transformative potential of faith-based peace efforts.
By occupying an Execom seat in NTF-ELCAC, PCEC navigates a complex terrain. While its intention may be to influence the task force toward ethical practice, the structural reality can pressure the organization toward uncritical alignment with state goals. Delos Reyes (2025) argues that such entanglement risks compromising the church’s prophetic voice and can blur the boundaries between religious mission and state security strategy.
In the field, several pastors and community workers express apprehension that PCEC’s involvement may inadvertently position churches as conduits of counterinsurgency messaging, potentially undermining local trust. Even when the intention is transparency or peace, structural location shapes perception, and perception shapes safety and legitimacy in conflict zones.
Development, Patronage, and Conflict Sensitivity
The Barangay Development Program (BDP) lies at the core of NTF-ELCAC’s development agenda, proposing significant financial investments—₱10 million per barangay for infrastructure, livelihood, and social services (NTF-ELCAC, 2025b). Although these investments aim to address root causes of insurgency, peacebuilding scholars warn that development funding in conflict-affected areas is never politically neutral.
Manalansan (2024) highlights that development funds tied to security agendas tend to reinforce patronage networks, incentivize political loyalty, and marginalize dissenting voices. For churches embedded in these contexts, association with such programs may jeopardize their neutrality and expose them to accusations of partisanship.
Humanitarian principles—neutrality, independence, and impartiality—are foundational to peacebuilding work. When church institutions appear to be aligned with state-driven development, their community engagement may be misinterpreted as political, thereby compromising their ability to act as mediators or trusted facilitators.
Opportunities for Ethical Engagement
Despite these risks, it is important to recognize the constructive potential of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC) if its engagement with NTF-ELCAC is exercised critically, conscientiously, and with clear ethical boundaries. Peacebuilding practitioners identify several avenues through which PCEC could play a genuinely transformative role:
1. Advocating for anti–red-tagging reforms within NTF-ELCAC. PCEC can use its institutional access to consistently challenge the practice of red-tagging, which has been widely condemned by human rights bodies for endangering civilians, civil society actors, and faith workers. By raising these concerns internally, PCEC can push for clear policy guidelines that prohibit labeling individuals or organizations as insurgent-linked without due process. This includes advocating for accountability mechanisms, transparent criteria for security assessments, and the protection of humanitarian and pastoral work from securitized suspicion. Such advocacy would affirm the churches’ moral responsibility to protect life and dignity.
2. Strengthening human rights–based approaches in program implementation. PCEC can help reframe NTF-ELCAC programs—particularly those under the Barangay Development Program (BDP)—around internationally recognized human rights principles. This includes emphasizing participation, non-discrimination, transparency, and accountability in planning and implementation. Church networks can help ensure that development initiatives respect civil and political rights alongside socio-economic rights, and that communities are not coerced or militarized in the name of “peace and development.” In doing so, PCEC can help shift the task force’s orientation from counterinsurgency to human-centered peacebuilding.
3. Ensuring conflict-sensitive development planning in BDP sites. Faith-based actors like PCEC can contribute valuable insights into local histories, power dynamics, and grievances that often underlie armed conflict. By advocating for conflict-sensitive planning, PCEC can help prevent development projects from exacerbating tensions, reinforcing inequalities, or legitimizing coercive state presence. This includes questioning projects imposed without genuine community consent, highlighting risks of militarization in civilian spaces, and promoting development interventions that address root causes of conflict rather than merely its symptoms.
4. Promoting inclusive, participatory community dialogues. PCEC can facilitate safe and inclusive spaces for dialogue that bring together diverse community voices—women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, farmers, and other marginalized groups—often excluded from formal peace and security discussions. Through its church and community networks, PCEC can help ensure that peacebuilding processes are grounded in lived realities rather than top-down narratives. Such dialogues can surface grievances, build trust, and reduce fear, contributing to social cohesion beyond the narrow framework of security operations.
5. Serving as an internal moral check on government messaging and conduct. By remaining rooted in its faith-based ethical commitments, PCEC can function as an internal conscience within NTF-ELCAC. This includes questioning dehumanizing language, triumphalist counterinsurgency narratives, and practices that normalize fear or violence. PCEC’s presence can remind state actors that peace is not merely the absence of armed resistance, but the presence of justice, dignity, and restored relationships. This moral role is especially critical in moments when security objectives risk overriding humanitarian and ethical considerations.
These possibilities, however, are not automatic. They require PCEC to maintain clear institutional independence, to speak truthfully even when inconvenient, and to actively resist co-optation into purely militarized agendas. Only by challenging harmful practices and insisting on strong ethical safeguards can PCEC’s engagement contribute meaningfully to just and sustainable peace rather than legitimizing contested state policies.
PCEC’s participation in NTF-ELCAC—through the leadership of Bishop Noel Pantoja—reflects both a desire to contribute to national peace efforts and a willingness to engage state-led mechanisms for development. Yet from the standpoint of peacebuilding advocates and field workers, this involvement carries significant ethical implications.
The task force’s history of red-tagging, its counterinsurgency orientation, and its politicization of development funds present risks that demand vigilant, critical engagement. For PCEC to remain faithful to its peacebuilding mission, it must preserve prophetic distance, safeguard civilian space, and position itself as a moral counterweight rather than an uncritical partner to state power.
Ultimately, the value of church participation in NTF-ELCAC will be measured not by symbolic inclusion but by the extent to which PCEC can influence the institution toward justice, human rights, and sustainable peace.
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References
Delos Reyes, M. (2025). Faith, power, and counterinsurgency: Religious actors in Philippine security governance. Mindanao Peace Studies Journal, 12(1), 44–63.
Human Rights Watch. (2022). Philippines: End red-tagging of activists and aid workers. HRW Reports.
Karapatan. (2023). Red-tagging in the Philippines: Patterns, impacts, and state accountability. Karapatan Monitor.
Lederach, J. P. (1997). Building peace: Sustainable reconciliation in divided societies. United States Institute of Peace Press.
Manalansan, R. (2024). Development, patronage, and the BDP: A conflict sensitivity analysis. Ateneo Policy Review, 8(2), 55–71.
NTF-ELCAC. (2025a). Church hails blessing of BDP engagement, joins NTF-ELCAC Execom. NTF-ELCAC Official Website.
NTF-ELCAC. (2025b). NTF-ELCAC welcomes sustained ₱10M per barangay funding proposal in 2026 NEP. NTF-ELCAC Official Website.
Philippine Information Agency. (2025). New cluster heads of NTF-ELCAC take oath. PIA Reports.
Santos, J., & Rivera, L. (2024). Civilian space under threat: The impact of red-tagging on peacebuilding work. UP Third World Studies Center.
