What fate has doomed the people of the United States and the people of Mexico to be as they are to each other? It is not fate but plain ignorance, and alas! very much on our own side. We do not know the truth about Mexico, the story of her triumphs, her defeats, her beating onward against the winds of adversity. We have listened to slanders against her. We have believed the lies of the riffraff from within who robbed her. We have helped them in their robberies. In a word, we have treated Mexico not at all as we have treated Canada, for we have hurt her. The worst ill feeling always comes from the one who has done an injustice to the other. It goes without saying that no one can read history to his or her own profit with a mind full of unconquerable prejudices. In other days, that was how history was written, and it is the reason why it could and was truthfully said that history is nothing but a recorded lie. Modern research is rapidly changing all that. Prejudice is being taken out of historical writing. It will be a more difficult task to take it out of reading. Nevertheless that too must be done. For what civilization is going to be will, to a greater extent than we now realize, perhaps, depend on what we learn of its mistakes as well as its triumphs. No history written in the English language has more need to be approached without prejudice than that of Mexico. Too much of the English record called Mexican history is the work of conscious or unconscious special pleaders. We shall notice these as we go along. The present urgent necessity is to make sure of our warning against prejudice. Strange to say the necessity of this warning may not be understood, and there are good reasons for expressing the fear. Prejudice against anything Spanish is part of the inheritance of English-speaking peoples. It is in their blood. Its sources are both political and religious. To remove them it is first necessary to uncover them. That may take a little time, but it will be time well spent for those who do really wish to get at the truth. It is not difficult to find the reasons for our dislike of Mexico and Mexico’s dislike for us. For the latter the story is spread over the record of our dealings with Mexican problems; for the former, it may be had by an honest confession of what is in the minds and hearts of the majority of English-speaking people. It will profit us to take a look at both.

Who was the “Mysterious Sofía,” whose letter in November 1934 was sent from Washington DC to Mexico City and intercepted by the Mexican Secret Service? In The Mysterious Sofía Stephen J. C. Andes uses the remarkable story of Sofía del Valle to tell the history of Catholicism’s global shift from north to south and the importance of women to Catholic survival and change over the course of the twentieth century. As a devout Catholic single woman, neither nun nor mother, del Valle resisted religious persecution in an era of Mexican revolutionary upheaval, became a labor activist in a time of class conflict, founded an educational movement, toured the United States as a public lecturer, and raised money for Catholic ministries—all in an age dominated by economic depression, gender prejudice, and racial discrimination. The rise of the Global South marked a new power dynamic within the Church as Latin America moved from the margins of activism to the vanguard. Del Valle’s life and the stories of those she met along the way illustrate the shared pious practices, gender norms, and organizational networks that linked activists across national borders. Told through the eyes of a little-known laywoman from Mexico, Andes shows how women journeyed from the pews into the heart of the modern world.

This engaging book explores the effects of the rush to adopt contemporary styles of worship by many Protestant congregations. It discusses some of the different programs for "marketing" worship, explores the implications for the integrity of a church's mission and spiritual life, and proposes some alternative means for rejuvenating worship.

Mexican Martyrdom is a series of true stories of the terrible anti-Catholic persecutions which took place in Mexico in the 1920s. Told by the Jesuit priest, Fr. Wilfrid Parson, these stories are based upon cases he had seen himself or that had been described to him personally by the people who had undergone the atrocities of those times. Though most contemporary readers don t know it, a full-fledged persecution of the Church, with thousands of martyrdoms, took place in modern times, just south of our own border including the famous Jesuit priest, Fr. Miguel Pro, was martyred before a firing squad during this persecution.

While Mexico's spiritual history after the 1910 Revolution is often essentialized as a church-state power struggle, this book reveals the complexity of interactions between revolution and religion. Looking at anticlericalism, indigenous cults and Catholic pilgrimage, these authors reveal that the Revolution was a period of genuine religious change, as well as social upheaval.