Mexican Churches

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

The number of Hispanics living in Oregon has burgeoned over the past several decades. The number of Spanish-speaking churches in the state has also grown exponentially. However, most non-Hispanic Oregonians know very little about the Hispanic population. This lack of knowledge about Latinos, and about Hispanic ministries specifically, is found among academics and Anglo Protestants alike. This book is the result of my desire to provide information that will serve as a bridge between Spanish-speaking and English-speaking churches and facilitate understanding between groups in the broader population, and provide a well-documented study for the academy.

Following the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the early 1500s, Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian friars fanned out across the central and southern areas of the country, founding hundreds of mission churches and monasteries to evangelize the Native population. This book documents more than 120 of these remarkable sixteenth-century sites in duotone black-and-white photographs. Virtually unknown outside Mexico, these complexes unite architecture, landscape, mural painting, and sculpture on a grand scale, in some ways rivaling the archaeological sites of the Maya and Aztecs. They represent a fascinating period in history when two distinct cultures began interweaving to form the fabric of modern Mexico. Many were founded on the sites of ancient temples and reused their masonry, and they were ornamented with architectural murals and sculptures that owe much to the existing Native tradition—almost all the construction was done by indigenous artisans. With these photos, Spears celebrates this unique architectural and cultural heritage to help ensure its protection and survival.

These churches have never before been photographed so thoroughly, with such meticulous attention to their exuberant detail and splendor, providing a glimpse of the setting in which people lived, worked and worshipped in colonial Mexico. 86 color plates.

The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches contains information on the major personalities, events, facts, movements, and beliefs of the Reformed churches.

In the eighteenth century the Mexican Church experienced spiritual renewal and intellectual reform. This is a rounded portrait of the Mexican Church at its meridian, touching upon virtually all aspects of religious life.