The venue matters intensely. Senator Imee Marcos did not deliver her explosive allegations in a Senate hearing, a press conference, or a political sortie where attacks and theatrics are expected. She delivered them on the stage of a religious gathering, under the lights, under the choir, under the seal of a church that commands millions. And most tellingly, she delivered them without interruption.
That silence is the story.
The Iglesia ni Cristo did not cut the microphone. It did not escort her offstage. It did not issue an immediate disclaimer. It allowed, or at the very least did not block, a sitting senator from publicly shaming the sitting President of the Philippines at an event the INC itself organized. That is not neutrality. That is permission.
INC has long insisted that it does not meddle in politics, yet it simultaneously moves like a disciplined political machine. Its bloc voting is treated like sacred doctrine. Its endorsements are traded like currency. Its members are mobilized with military precision. In every election cycle, candidates line up outside its gates like supplicants seeking absolution. No other religious institution in the Philippines holds power so explicitly, and no other religious institution deploys that power so openly.
So when INC allowed Imee Marcos to speak and to accuse the President and the First Lady of drug use it was not an accident. It was an institutional decision made through action or inaction. Either the leadership approved the content, or it determined that stopping her would be more costly than letting her continue. In both scenarios, INC signaled that it was willing to let a political earthquake unfold on its stage.
That tells us three things about INC today.
First, INC is not simply a religious body; it is a political actor with calibrated instincts about power. It knows when an administration is strong enough to defy and when it is weak enough to wound. Allowing Imee’s speech suggests that INC sees the Marcos administration not as a fortress but as a faltering structure: one vulnerable to blows, one no longer treated with the deference of 2022.
Second, INC understands the spectacle of public humiliation. Within its theology, unity and order are prized. Disruption is controlled. Chaos is avoided. So when the institution lets chaos erupt on its own stage, it is not chaos; it is choreography. It is a signal to its members and to the political class that the winds have shifted. It is a declaration that power is no longer symmetrical, that the First Family no longer enjoys the ceremonial immunity once assumed.
Third, INC is reminding politicians of a truth they pretend not to know: block votes come with a price. Legitimacy is transactional. Favor is conditional. The same platform that elevates a president can also be used to weaken him. Politicians who treat INC as an election machine must also accept that machines can jam, reverse, or crush whatever enters their gears.
For a religious group to host the most brutal public attack on a sitting president by his own sister is not merely political interference. It is political commentary. It is institutional judgment. It raises the question: is INC positioning itself for realignment? Is it hedging ahead of a power shift? Or is it punishing a president it believes has failed to deliver what was promised?
Whatever the answer, one thing is clear. The Marcos civil war did not erupt in a vacuum. It erupted on holy ground. And INC, by allowing the spectacle to unfold, has chosen a side. It may deny it. It may claim neutrality. But power is revealed not only by what one says, but by what one allows.
In a country where church and state pretend to be separate but function as conjoined twins, INC’s silence becomes an instrument. A tool. A weapon.
The President may dismiss Imee’s allegations. Malacañang may scold her, minimize her, or accuse her of opportunism. But the symbolism cannot be undone. A religious institution that once crowned presidents has now hosted a public unmasking of one.
The question now is not about Imee. It is about INC.
What does a church gain by letting a nation watch a president bleed on its altar?
And what will the political class owe it after this?