The Mexican Reformation

About this book

This book reveals that the Catholic church in colonial New Mexico was far from monolithic, but exhibited a diversity of expressions and perspectives. In the mid-nineteenth century, one movement, eventually named Iglesia de Jesús, sought to reform the Catholic Church in line with the policies of Benito Juárez's government. This movement would lay the foundation for the formation of Protestant churches in Mexico. Its roots in the worldview of the baroque and in the challenges of the Catholic enlightenment provide an insight into the evolution of a distinctly Mexican Protestantism within its social and political contexts as well as a window into the process underlying the development of religious expressions in Latin America.