The New Mexican Hispanic population of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains remains predominantly Catholic despite vigorous home mission activities by Protestant churches from 1850 to 1920. Bandi Jones Walker analyzes the impact of those home mission efforts in order to understand why numerical successes were limited, why specific sectors of the population found Protestantism appealing, and what contributions were made to the community life of the region.
This book joins a group of recent books focused on Protestant activities in Catholic areas. Most of these publications analyze foreign mission enterprises in countries where the dominant political and economic culture is Catholic. This book complements these studies because mission activities in New Mexico were orchestrated by home mission organizations and because the dominant political and economic culture was increasingly Anglo in the 1850–1920 era.
Protestant efforts benefited from the confusion caused by the transfer of Catholic establishments from Mexican to U.S. Catholic administration following the war in 1846. Some Mexican priests broke from the U.S. Catholic church to ally with Protestant churches. Like other scholars, Walker finds that Protestants were most successful in areas that the Catholic church had neglected to cultivate or where rivalries persisted.
Protestant schools were a particular attraction in locales that had no public schools. Here Protestants taught English, which offered opportunities for those wishing to interact with the Anglo population. Mission schools were an important contribution to the region; however, they were more commonplace in foreign missions than these home missions. Additionally, Walker notes that the presence of a school did not secure survival for the church; rather, its incorporation into the main organization of the church structure determined success.
Walker makes an important contribution to the literature of Protestant-Catholic interaction in the U.S. Southwest, but the book would have been considerably strengthened if it had given more attention to the context of Protestant development in the United States and in Mexico. References to the Social Gospel Movement are sparse, with comments restricted to the criticism missionaries received for their attention to social issues. The source of this criticism is unclear. The Mexican context also warrants attention. The time period presented corresponds to the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the era of significant Mexican migration to the U.S. Southwest, yet this parallel is never mentioned. Protestantism in the Sangre de Cristos presents an important topic, but in limited scope.
