An account of American missionary activity abetted by Mexican nationalists.Lazaro Cardenas, president of Mexico 1934 40, is widely remembered as the most nationalistic and populist Mexican executive and was demonized by foreign investors scandalized by his nationalization programs, particularly in the oil industry. Less well known are his efforts to Mexicanize indigenous populations and to reduce the power of the conservative Catholic hierarchy by encouraging anti-clericalism and Protestant evangelical activity. Common aims therefore united Cardenas and Cameron Townsend, an...

Winner of 2014 Book Award for Excellence in Missiology from the American Society of Missiology
Winner of the 2015 Christianity Today Award for Missions/Global Affairs
Named by the International Bulletin of Missionary Studies as an Outstanding Book of 2014 for Mission Studies

Predominantly Catholic for centuries, Latin America is still largely Catholic today, but the religious continuity in the region masks enormous changes that have taken place in the past five decades. In fact, it would be fair to say that Latin American Christianity has been...

Winner of 2014 Book Award for Excellence in Missiology from the American Society of Missiology
Winner of the 2015 Christianity Today Award for Missions/Global Affairs
Named by the International Bulletin of Missionary Studies as an Outstanding Book of 2014 for Mission Studies

Predominantly Catholic for centuries, Latin America is still largely Catholic today, but the religious continuity in the region masks enormous changes that have taken place in the past five decades. In fact, it would be fair to say that Latin American Christianity has been...

Catholic priest and radical social critic Ivan Illich is best known for books like Deschooling Society and Medical Nemesis that skewered the dominant institutions of the West in the 1970s. Although commissioned in 1961 by American bishops to run a missionary training center in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Illich emerged as one of the major critics of the missionary movement. As he became a more controversial figure, his center evolved into CIDOC (Centro Intercultural de Documentacion), an informal university that attracted a diverse group of intellectuals and seekers from around the...