“No one looks at the world with pristine eyes.”
- Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture

This article discusses how the now classic work of the Jesuit Carlos Abesamis, A Third Look at Jesus, was influenced by the national democratic worldview and agenda. The author thinks that Abesamis,though not a member of the Nationalist Democratic movement, had embraced its outlook, spirit and struggles in his works and practice. Quejada considers the spirit of the movement as providing an important hermeneutical key to the understanding of his work. Beyond being an ideologue, however, the theologian Abesamis leads us to recover the dangerous memory of Jesus and his Kingdom. And at one point in our history, the author argues, “the national democratic movement represented for many of Jesus’ followers the concrete historical context for the Kingdom’s realization.”