As in Europe, secular nation building in Latin America challenged the traditional authority of the Roman Catholic Church in the early twentieth century. In response, Catholic social and political movements sought to contest state-led secularisation and provide an answer to the 'social question', the complex set of problems associated with urbanisation, industrialisation, and poverty. As Catholics mobilised against the secular threat, they also struggled with each other to define the proper role of the Church in the public sphere. This study utilizes recently opened files at the Vatican pertaining to Mexico's post-revolutionary Church-state conflict known as the Cristero Rebellion (1926-1929). However, looking beyond Mexico's exceptional case, the work employs a transnational framework, enabling a better understanding of the supranational relationship between Latin American Catholic activists and the Vatican. To capture this world historical context, Andes compares Mexico to Chile's own experience of religious conflict. Unlike past scholarship, which has focused almost exclusively on local conditions, Andes seeks to answer how diverse national visions of Catholicism responded to papal attempts to centralize its authority and universalize Church practices worldwide. The Politics of Transnational Catholicism applies research on the interwar papacy, which is almost exclusively European in outlook, to a Latin American context. The national cases presented illuminate how Catholicism shaped public life in Latin America as the Vatican sought to define Catholic participation in Mexican and Chilean national politics. It reveals that Catholic activism directly influenced the development of new political movements such as Christian Democracy, which remained central to political life in the region for the remainder of the twentieth century.

Chapter 1. Messages Sent, Messages Received?: The Papacy and the Latin American Church at the Turn of the Twentieth Century - Lisa M. Edwards -- Chapter 2. Catholic Vanguards in Brazil - Dain Borges -- Chapter 3. Eucharistic Angels: Mexico's Nocturnal Adoration and the Masculinization of Postrevolutionary Catholicism, 1910-1930 - Matthew Butler -- Chapter 4. Transnational Subaltern Voices: Sexual Violence, Anticlericalism, and the Mexican Revolution - Robert Curley

Looking beyond prominent figures or major ecclesial events, Liberation Theology and the Others offers a fresh historical perspective on Latin American liberation theology. Thirteen case studies, from Mexico to Uruguay, depict a vivid picture of religious and lay activism that shaped the profile of the Latin American Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century. Stressing the transnational character of Catholic activism and its intersections with prevalent discourses of citizenship, ethnicity or development, scholars from Latin America, the US, and Europe, analyze how pastoral renewal was debated and embraced in multiple local and culturally diverse contexts. Contributors explore the connections between Latin American liberation theology and anthropology in Peru, armed revolutionaries in highland Guatemala, and the implementation of neoliberalism in Bolivia. They identify conceptions of the popular church, indigenous religiosity, women’s leadership, and student activism that circulated among Latin American religious and lay activists between the 1960s and the 1980s. By revisiting the multifaceted and oftentimes contingent nature of church reforms, this edited volume provides fascinating new insights into one of the most controversial religious movements of the 20th century.

Anti-Catholicism in the Mexican Revolution, 1913–1940 examines anti-Catholic leaders and movements during the Mexican Revolution, an era that resulted in a constitution denying the Church political rights. Anti-Catholic Mexicans recognized a common enemy in a politically active Church in a predominantly Catholic nation. Many books have elucidated the popular roots and diversity of Roman Catholicism in Mexico, but the perspective of the Church’s adversaries has remained much less understood. This volume provides a fresh perspective on the violent conflict between Catholics and the revolutionary state, which was led by anti-Catholics such as Plutarco Elías Calles, who were bent on eradicating the influence of the Catholic Church in politics, in the nation’s educational system, and in the national consciousness. The zeal with which anti-Catholics pursued their goals—and the equal vigor with which Catholics defended their Church and their faith—explains why the conflict between Catholics and anti-Catholics turned violent, culminating in the devastating Cristero Rebellion (1926–1929). Collecting essays by a team of senior scholars in history and cultural studies, the book includes chapters on anti-Catholic leaders and intellectuals, movements promoting scientific education and anti-alcohol campaigns, muralism, feminist activists, and Mormons and Mennonites. A concluding afterword by Matthew Butler, a global authority on twentieth-century Mexican religion, provides a larger perspective on the themes of the book.

The book investigates the formation of the Cristero diaspora, a network of Mexican emigrants, exiles, and refugees across the United States who supported a Mexican Catholic uprising during the late 1920s. These emigrants had a profound and enduring impact on Mexican American community formation, political affiliations, and religious devotion.

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.

"Historians have long looked to networks of elite liberal and anti-clerical men as the driving forces in Mexican history over the course of the long nineteenth century. This traditional view, writes Margaret Chowning, cannot account for the continued power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, which has withstood extensive and sustained political opposition for over a century. How, then, must the scholarly consensus change to better reflect Mexico's history? In this book, Chowning shows that the church repeatedly emerged as a political player, even when liberals won elections, primarily because of the overlooked importance of women in politics. Catholic women kept the church alive through the wars of independence and made it into the political force it continues to be in present-day Mexico. Using archival sources from ten Mexican states, the book shows how women, who were denied the vote and expected to stay out of the political sphere, nevertheless forged their own form of citizenship through the church. After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, women self-consciously developed new lay associations and assumed leadership roles within them. These new associations not only kept Catholicism vibrant, they also pushed women into public sphere. Methodologically, this book shows the value of exploring gender in political and religious history and reveals the equal importance of informal political power to more formal activities like voting"--