Being Mexican without Being Catholic: Protestants and National Identity in Mid-twentieth Century Mexico
Stephen Dove
The University of Texas at Austin
Paper for ILASSA Student Conference 2009
On paper, Mexico has been a secular state since the mid-nineteenth century. On the ground, however, religion has dominated the country’s national consciousness throughout its history, both as a catalyst for intense conflict and as a rallying point for national unity. Issues like anti-clerical reforms often divided the country, but just as often the ubiquity of popular
Catholicism in household shrines, community festivals, and the patronage of the Virgin of
Guadalupe created a common identity that bridged political, ethnic, and geographic divisions.
Even those associated with secularizing movements could not escape this complicated relationship between religion and national identity. Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, a nineteenth- century novelist and a leader during La Reforma, perhaps best epitomized this ambivalence.
Altamirano fought with the Liberals in the Reform Wars and eventually became president of
Mexico’s Supreme Court. However, he also commented concerning Mexican Catholicism, “The day in which the Virgin of Tepeyac is not worshiped in this land, it is sure that not only the
Mexican nationality will have disappeared, but also the memory of the inhabitants of this present
Mexico.”i
The late twentieth century, however, revealed that reality was not so simple. The Virgin of Tepeyac – more commonly referred to as the Virgin of Guadalupe – is, of course, still revered by most Mexicans, but today millions of Mexican Protestants, probably somewhere between five and ten percent of population, do not participate in the adoration of the Virgin or any of the other festivals, pilgrimages, and social customs that are central to popular Catholicism in Mexico. At the same time, these Protestants consider themselves no less Mexican than their neighbors, and most would argue that their faith makes them better participants in the national community than they were before their conversions.
Dove | 1 The first Protestants in Mexico during the national period were European and U.S. foreign investors who arrived in early in the nineteenth century, but Mexican converts do not trace their genealogy back quite so far. Most Mexican Protestant denominations trace their lineage back to the arrival of U.S. missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This does not mean, however, that Mexican Protestantism is purely, or even primarily, foreign product. By 1950, a century after the arrival of the first U.S. missionary, Mexican
Protestants still accounted for only about one percent of the population. Only during the next fifty years, after foreign missionaries turned over churches to local converts, did Protestantism enter its rapid growth phase.ii
Lorenzo Montero Baeza was a leading Mexican pastor from the mid-1940s until his death in 1993, serving congregations across Mexico, including sites in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Mexico City,
Puebla, and Nuevo Leon. His writing provide insight into how mid-twentieth century Protestants both refuted the traditional model of Catholic-centered Mexican identity and replaced that model with a view of national identity that accommodated and even encouraged their belief structure.
Montero’s personal story is not the subject of this presentation but is worth mentioning briefly. He was a Spaniard by birth and priest by training before he came to Mexico as an exile after the Spanish-American War. In Mexico, he adopted a new country and a new faith, converting to Protestantism while working in rural Chiapas. In that community, his high level of education – both general and religious – led him to become a pastor. Throughout his five decades of ministry, Montero made meticulous notes on sermons and other matters of church business at a time when many Protestant congregations barely kept tallies of their membership numbers, thus providing a valuable resource for historical inquiry into the period.
Methodology
Dove | 2 As would be expected, in fifty years of ministry Montero addressed a wide range of topics. This paper focuses on how the preacher confronted the dominant cultural symbols of
Catholicism, which was not only the religion of potential converts but also the former religion of
Montero and many of his congregants. Catholicism occurs repeatedly in Montero’s writings, but despite the important role Catholicism played in Protestant self-definition during the mid- twentieth century, Montero and his congregations did not consciously place their distinctions from Catholicism at the center of their own religious formation. At times Montero’s rhetoric concerning Catholicism is direct but at other times it is heavily coded.
An explanation of these two different approaches to talking about Catholicism – direct and indirect – lies in the types of documents Montero produced. This paper separates Montero’s writings into two distinct genres based on both internal structure and their use within Montero’s congregations. Once divided into these two groups on structural and functional lines, clear differences in content between the two types of writing also emerge.
The first genre in Montero’s writings is the sermon. These are preserved as annotated outlines and bear several internal markers that make them easily identifiable. Briefly, these markers include a clear title, a central biblical passage, an outline structure that culminates with a final point of exhortation to specific action, and usually a notation of the date and location of for the delivery of each sermon. Montero’s sermons were audience-specific, scriptural expositions intended for the spiritual edification of a broad community, and they seldom address Catholicism directly but rather do so through coded tropes.
The second genre will be referred to as direct commentaries, though they might accurately be called “not sermons.” These documents are complete manuscripts whose focus is thematic rather than Scripture-specific. Montero did not use them in worship services but rather
Dove | 3 in special meetings and conferences.iii The direct commentaries provide historical interpretations of contemporary issues, one of which was Catholic belief and practice.
Direct Commentaries: Establishing Position
Montero wrote several direct commentaries on Catholic subjects ranging from the adoration of the Virgin and the Second Vatican Council. One of these writings, on the Feast of
Candelaria, illustrates well the basic structure and point of view that permeates the works of this genre.
Montero begins with a definition of the subject matter. In his words, “This Romanist festival, so well-perfected in various places, claims to celebrate the ‘Purification of Mary and the presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple.’” Montero then explains that Catholics celebrate the festival on February 2 and because it is forty days after the birth of Jesus.iv
This didactic introduction seems to be unnecessary. Montero’s parishoners were Spanish- speaking Mexicans. They grew up in Catholic Mexico and, for the most part, in households that participated in the culture of popular Catholicism. Thus, few probably needed Montero to tell them what Candelaria celebrated and even fewer were unaware of the date of the celebration. In fact, the audience for this particular message on Candelaria was a group of Protestants in
Cintalapa, Chiapas, a town whose patron saint was the Virgin of Candelaria and whose biggest annual festival occurred on February 2.v If anyone was familiar with the meaning and practice behind Candelaria, it was these people.
Montero’s word choice shows why he chooses such a rudimentary, and in many ways unnecessary, starting point. First, Montero identifies Candelaria as “Romanist,” a derogatory term for all things Catholic that Latin American Protestants inherited from their U.S. missionary forebears.vi This nomenclature serves as a marker establishing Montero’s position even before
Dove | 4 he identifies his subject of study. From here, he points out that Catholics “claim” (se pretende)
to celebrate the events that his listeners probably already associate with the festival. The
preacher implicitly discredits those associations and indicates that his audience may believe they
know the meaning of Candelaria, but in fact they do not.
After identifying the Feast of Candelaria and delineating it as a site of contest over
meaning, Montero proceeds to raise specific questions about the festival itself and its larger
implications for Catholicism. Each question leads to a specific claim distinguishing
Protestantism from Catholicism. The four questions Montero asks his auditors to consider about
Candelaria are, again in his words, “When did this celebration begin? Who is the source of this
deliberate Roman-Catholic idolatry? Where did the celebration of this festival emerge for the
first time? Who had this diabolical idea?” Montero’s primary concern is with origins. He has
already presented his less than favorable interpretation of the Catholic view of those origins.
However, he now leaves any subtle or implied critiques of Catholic practice behind in favor of a
direct attack on Candelaria as “idolatry” and a “diabolical idea.” His introductory definitions
serve to prepare his audience for his counterpoint.
Montero then moves from framing his questions to naming his two main allies in this
fight: 1) what is “attested by history” and 2) what is “encountered in the New Testament.”
Throughout the direct commentaries, Montero leans on history and Scripture as euphemisms for truth. By placing these concepts at odds with Catholicism, Montero can claim Catholicism is untrue and therefore idolatrous and of the devil rather than holy and of God. In the case of
Candelaria, Montero focuses more on history than he does on Scripture, another factor that
separates the direct commentaries from the more Scripture-dependent genre of his sermons.
Dove | 5 In the case of Candelaria, Montero uses history by telling his audience the “true” story of the festival’s origins. Montero’s sources for this history are not cited directly, but a two-part authority is clear. First, Montero draws on his background as a Catholic priest by quoting Latin prayers and liturgical readings. Second, Montero possessed a large library, and the overall narrative of Montero’s story is similar to that of several widely disseminated works in the early- to mid-twentieth century including Edward Gibbon’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.
In short, the “true” story according to Montero is that in the sixth century the “illiterate and crazy” emperor Justinian institutionalized the celebration in an attempt to meld civil and religious power, building on the established by Pope Gelasius fifty years early when the pontiff initiated Candelaria as a stand-in for the Lupercalia, a February festival honoring a Roman deity.
Chief among the similarities that allowed Gelasius and Justinian to translate the pagan festival to its Catholic counterpart, Montero said, was the centrality of candles as a symbol of purification in each celebration. The end result was that “Romanism continues with the lustrations of the pagans.”
Sermons: More Subtle and More Powerful Critiques
In Montero’s sermons, we do not find such a direct condemnation of Catholic belief and practice. However, since they reached a larger audience on a more regular basis, his sermons were in many ways a more important tool for guiding his congregants toward rethinking the connections between their national and religious identities.
Many of the same themes that the pastor addressed in the direct commentaries also appear in his sermons but without the direct correlation to Catholic practice. The most prevalent of these recurring tropes are idolatry and paganism. In a direct commentaries on the Assumption of Mary, Montero freely identified veneration of Mary as a turn toward the “paganization of
Dove | 6 Christianity” and the worship of false gods.vii In the sermons, this association is much more
delicately stated but also much more instructive of what “paganization” meant for Mexicans.
One discourse in which the metaphor of idolatry appears prominently in the undated
sermon “Lost Ones within the Home,” which addresses the problems of Catholicism on a
personal rather than a national level.viii This message, based on Luke’s parable of the Lost Coin, calls Montero’s parishioners to look among their own families for people who are spiritually
“lost.” He identifies “marks of sin” as generic types of behavior like disobedience, disorder, and wickedness.
As he transitions to his conclusion, however, Montero offers his auditors a visual image
of a first-century Jewish woman sweeping her house, harkening back to the parable he read
before the sermon. In Montero’s version, the woman sweeps up “all the dirtiness, from the
nooks and crannies and idols that appear in the corners of the house.”ix Luke’s telling of this
story makes no mention of idols and only little mention of sweeping, but Montero makes a point
to speak about idols found inside the home, much like the common Mexican practice of
constructing household shrines to saints, especially the Virgin. Only by sweeping away this part
of the “dirtiness” can the woman find her lost coin.x
The implications for Montero’s listeners are clear. Addressing the ingrained culture of
Catholicism is not just a project Protestants must undertake on a national level; they must also
address this problem in their own households. Since most members of Montero’s audience were
first-generation converts, they still shared intimate connections with non-Protestants. Montero
emphasized to his congregation that this “sin” was not something they should overlook simply
because it occurred in the home. In fact, the closeness of these “lost” people was all the more
reason for his parishioners to take a stand not only for the evangelical view of the faith but also
Dove | 7 against the “idolatry” practiced in Mexican households. The implied connection is that
household idols – in other words, Catholic saints – are a large part of the problem behind family
members who refuse to convert to Protestantism.
This sermon illustrates Montero’s theological methods for discrediting Roman
Catholicism as an appropriate marker of Mexican identity. However, this destabilization of
ingrained religio-national identity was only half of his agenda. The second half was to offer a
replacement for what he had just removed. In other words, the pastor attempted to instruct his
congregants on how being good Protestants actually made them better Mexicans.
The introduction to the sermon “A People Acquire a National Conscience” lists several
generic symbols of national identity including flags, national anthems, and statues, and then
claims that there are two ways to treat these markers. The first is to “extol the homeland” and
“foment national unity.” The second is to “denigrate” the homeland and “work to divide it.” As
an example of the latter trend, Montero holds up the Synarchists, a Mexican political movement
of the 1930s that emerged from right-wing Catholicism and opposed the agenda of Lazaro
Cardenas.xi
Montero’s embodiment of the positive trend, by contrast, is Benito Juárez, the Mexican
president who oversaw the writing of the Liberal Reform Laws that, among other things,
severely curtailed the power of the Catholic Church. His favorable view of Juárez appears again in a direct commentary he wrote about the president. In this four-page, undated document,
Montero recounts the story of Juárez’s life with a special emphasis on his anti-Clericalism and his opposition to “pseudo-Mexicans” who threatened the Republic by inviting the rule of the
“foreign” monarch in Maximilian von Habsburg.xii
Dove | 8 Juárez served as a patriotic example for this mid-twentieth Century preacher, but he did not fully embody the theological or social positions of Montero and his congregations. Montero also needed to draw on unique markers of Protestant identity beyond shared Liberal principles to replace the Catholic symbols of national identity.
Montero’s most direct analysis of what distinguished Protestants from non-Protestants came in his sermon “Signs of Conversion,” based on the story of Paul’s Damascus Road conversion in the book of Acts. In this discourse, Montero provided six essential marks of a genuine conversion that included: 1) meeting Christ personally, 2) obeying God, 3) praying, 4) being filled by the Holy Spirit, 5) serving Jesus, and 6) testimony from a fellow believer.
These broad themes rely heavily on Protestant “buzz words,” but Montero’s explication of these signs reveals more useful measurements of what being Protestant meant to the pastor.
The first five signs represent spiritual disciplines and beliefs that were not unique to Protestants.
Catholics also talked about all three members of the Trinity, prayed, and committed various acts of service in the name of religion. Montero, however, explains the difference between
Protestants and Catholics in terms of authenticity and degree of faithfulness. For example, he notes, “It was not that he (Paul) did not pray earlier. Yes, he prayed, but like a Pharisee, according to the rule of those that prayed in the Temple. And not like a child of God.”
Montero then asked his audience whether they were praying sincerely, listening for the
Holy Spirit, or if they were praying like the unconverted. The pastor does not detail how the unconverted pray. However, the examples of Paul praying like a Pharisee and in the Temple are implied references to other Scripture passages where Jesus chastised people who prayed publicly, repetitiously, and elaborately.xiii These critiques are similar to the ones Montero levied
Dove | 9 against Catholic practices in his direct commentaries, drawing a connection between the unconverted and Mexico’s Catholics.xiv
For Montero, the basic mark of conversion was not partaking in altogether different religious practices but rather undertaking the same practices correctly. His idea of “correctness” occurred on an individual rather than corporate level. This emphasis also appears in
“Experiences of Worship,” where Montero compares the “superstition” of those who worship
“images” to the “true worship” Protestants offer to God. Again, the preacher makes no direct mention of Catholicism, but his exhortation reminds his listeners that “worship is not a parade or a representation,” clear references to Catholic liturgical practice. xv As in “Signs of Conversion,”
Montero differentiates between the public spectacle of Catholicism and the personal authenticity of Protestantism. This distinction between a Catholicism of shallow meaning and a
Protestantism of deep meaning was a significant difference for Montero, and one that related to his belief that Protestants better served Mexican national identity. Whereas Mexican Catholics created common national identity through communal practices like a shared patron saint and collective funding of religious festivals, Montero argued that Protestants contributed to a stronger nation on an individual basis, especially by practicing self-discipline, eschewing vices like alcohol and tobacco, and obeying authorities
Conclusion: Being Mexican without Being Catholic
Montero chief criticisms of Mexican Catholicism was that it was syncretic and created a system of identity dependent on multiple objects of devotion rather than a single focus. First, he attacked Catholicism as thinly-veiled paganism, essentially dismissing it on theological grounds.
This argument resonated within the Protestant community, a competitor with Catholicism in the religious marketplace of Mexico. However, the apostasy argument would have held little sway
Dove | 10 among potential converts who participated in cultural Catholicism in their daily lives. Thus,
Montero’s second criticism of Catholicism was that this system undermined the stability of the
Mexican nation. In addition to dividing the country into partisans of certain saints, Montero argued that Catholicism represented values detrimental to a strong nation. Catholicism was a religion of ritual and repetition but not content.
Leaving Catholicism behind as a national rallying point was not enough, however.
Montero also offered Protestantism as the best religious system for unifying the Mexican people.
Montero’s Protestantism replaced national symbols like the Virgin and saints’ day festivals with an emphasis on individual discipline. Even though this discipline was personal and confined to each person, it could also produce a collective national unity. The cumulative effect of individual conversions would produce a stronger nation united in a common belief system and united in a more simple single-object worship system. In this way, Montero argued, being
Protestant was the best way to be Mexican.
i Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Paisajes y Leyendas: Tradiciones y Costumbres de México (México D.F.: Editorial Porrúa, 1974 [1884]), 129. The Virgin of Tepeyac is another name for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Tepeyac is the location of the Virgin’s first appearance in 1531. ii For the purposes of this paper, the term Protestant is used as a synonym for the Spanish evangélico, a label that includes mainline Protestants, Pentecostals, and a number of adherents in independent churches. For a U.S. audience, “Protestant “provides a better idea of these people’s common beliefs than the cognate “evangelical,” which can mean a much more tightly circumscribed ideological group. iii Correspondence with David Montero Montero, 24 Nov 2008. iv “La Candelaria.” v Correspondence with David Montero Montero, 24 Nov 2008. vi See, for example, Deborah Baldwin, Protestants and the Mexican Revolution: Missionaries, Ministers, and Social Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 25 and William Butler, Mexico in Transition from the Power of Political Romanism to Civil and Religious Liberty, (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1892). vii “The Assumption of Mary to Heaven,” 18. viii Though undated, Montero catalogued this sermon in the same binder as sermons from the early 1950s.
Dove | 11 ix Emphasis added. x “Lost Ones within the Home.” xi For a fuller treatment of Synarchism in Mexico, see Jean A. Meyer, El sinarquismo, el cardenismo y la Iglesia: (1937-1947) (México, D.F.: Tusquets, 2003). xii Lorezo Montero Baeza, “Lic. Benito Juarez Garcia,” (n.d.). xiii See Matthew 6:5-8 and Luke 18:9-11. xiv “Signs of Conversion,” n.d. xv “Experiences in Worship.”
Dove | 12