The Beginning of the Protestant Movement in Mexico

Author(s): Eugene O. Porter

Source: The Historian , Autumn 1940, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn 1940), pp. 15-21
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24435892

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 The Beginning of the Protestant
Movement in Mexico
α»

Eugene Ο. Porter

properly dates from the Constitution of 1857, which

Although the Protestant movement in Mexico
secured freedom of speech, of the press, and of pub
lic worship, there were several efforts made to carry Prot
estant doctrines to that country before the making of the
Constitution. All of these efforts ended in failure, however,
and the experiences and reports of the missionaries con
vinced the missionary societies of the various denominations
that Mexico was not prepared to accept these teachings.
Among the early reports on Mexico was that of the Rev
erend John C. Brigham, who was sent to Latin America by
the Presbyterian church ". . . to spy out the land and see if
it could be taken for Christ, . . ." Brigham sailed in July,
1823, for Buenos Aires. After a year in Argentina he
crossed the Andes and visited the principal cities in Chile,
Peru, and Ecuador, and then entered Mexico at Acapulco.
After two months in Mexico city he returned to New York.
In making his report to the mission board he counseled the
society to

. . . wait patiently a little longer till the Ruler of

nations, who has wrought such wonders in these
countries during the last ten years, shall open still
wider the way and bid us go forward.1
One of the earliest efforts at mission work in Mexico
was undertaken by James Thomson, a Scotch Baptist.
Thomson entered the country in 1827 as a colporteur of
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 The Historian

the British and Foreign Bible society2 and as an agent of

the British and Foreign School society.3 In 1830 he was
forced to leave Mexico and his Bibles were confiscated.
Twelve years later, however, he returned and in 1843 he
passed into Yucatan, which had declared its independence
from Mexico three years before. Yucatan had a degree of
religious liberty, but this was lost when the peninsula was
again incorporated into the Republic of Mexico in the year
in which Thomson arrived; and he was compelled to leave
the country.4 As a result of Thomson's experience the
British and Foreign Bible society did not return to Mexico
until 1864 when it opened an agency in Mexico city.5
The American Bible society was also an early entrant in
the Mexican field. As early as 1818 the society obtained
plates of the New Testament in Spanish, and a few years
later sent some copies of the Scriptures to Mexico ; but these
were confiscated and destroyed by government officials.6
Later, during our war with Mexico, the society's agent, W.
H. Norris, accompanied the invading army and sold copies
of the Bible.7 It was not until i860, however, that the
society opened its first Mexican agency in Monterey.8
The first American missionary to become interested in
Mexico was Miss Melinda Rankin, of Illinois, who did
evangelical work among the Mexicans in Brownsville, Texas,
in the 1850's. Feeling that the regions beyond the Rio
Grande must be penetrated, Miss Rankin employed two
Mexicans to go into the state of Zacatecas, a distance of
three or four hundred miles, to distribute Bibles. The
families of the men were promised thirty dollars a month on
which to live, but as the American and Foreign Christian
Union was without money to pay them Miss Rankin was
compelled to leave her mission and beg in the United States.
During the Civil war the Union's blockade of the southern
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 Beginning of Protestant Movement in Mexico

ports destroyed the source of Miss Rankin's Bible supply

and she had to discontinue the work of the colporteurs.9 In
1866, however, Miss Rankin crossed into Mexico and
established a school in Monterey.10 The following year she
organized a congregation in the house of Juan Amador in
Villa de Cos, a village fifty miles northeast of Zacatecas.11
She also continued her interest in the distribution of the
Scriptures.
Another early worker in Mexico was the Reverend
James Hickey, a colporteur of the American Tract society
of Texas. Hickey was obliged to flee to Mexico in 1861
because he was a Union sympathizer. He went to Mata
moras where he entered Bible work and two years later the
Tract society appointed him its agent for Mexico. It was
through Hickey's instrumentality that Thomas Westrup,
a young Englishman, was converted. Westrup went to Mon
terey where he sold Bibles and organized a group of Prot
estants. In 1870 the Baptist Home Missionary society
employed Westrup and assumed responsibility for his
congregation.12
Several Mexicans responded to the appeals of Miss Ran
kin, Hickey, and Westrup, and planted congregations in the
northern part of the republic. In the beginning these groups
were independent, but later they were adopted by the vari
ous organized missions which entered the country in the
1870's.13
There was also a native Protestant movement which
assumed an organized form as early as 1859, when some
Catholic priests who were in sympathy with the new con
stitution formed a group called the "Constitutional
Fathers." The leaders of this movement were Aguilar Ber
miidez and Ramon Lozano, cura of Santa Barbara, Tamau
lipas. In 1861 Lozano openly separated himself from the
17

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 The Historian

Roman church and organized a church under provisional

statute.14 This may have been the "Church Catholic of our
Lord Jesus Christ" which the Report of the Secretary of
Finance of the United States of Mexico for January, 1879,
lists as the first Protestant church in Mexico.15
In the 1860's many Mexicans formed themselves into
groups to study moral and ethical questions. These groups,
cultos libres, formed "a special characteristic of primitive
Mexican Protestant worship." 10 An example is the group
organized in Pachuca by Dr. Marcelino Guerrero, who was
to become associated with the Methodist Episcopal church.
Aguilar Bermudez formed a similar group in Mexico city
in his own home and several priests and prominent liberals
became members.17 Don Sôstenes Juarez, a near relative of
Benito Juarez, formed in the federal capital an independent
congregation which he called the "Society of Christian
Friends." Juarez had left the Catholic church after reading
a Bible which had been brought to Mexico by a priest in
the army of Maximilian.18 He was to become associated
with the mission of the Methodist Church, South. Dr. Julio
Mallet Prévost, together with his wife and José Lleguno, be
gan work among their friends in Zacatecas, and within a few
years the gospel had spread to other villages near Zacate
cas.19 Thus, little churches, the "ecclesiae" of Apostolic
days, were formed and many of these became the nuclei of
congregations when the organized missions entered the
country.20
In 1868 the "Church of Jesus in Mexico" was organized
in Mexico city. It was really a protest against the Roman
church, for among the first adherents were as many Catho
lics as Protestants. There was a large amount of unrest
and discontent among a section of the Romanists in Mexico
and they manifested their feelings by joining the new church.

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 Beginning of Protestant Movement in Mexico

It was "a spontaneous movement for greater liberty of con

science, a purer worship, and a better church organiza
tion." 21

It is possible that the Church of Jesus had the encourage

ment and support of the liberal government, as apparently
there was no lack of money for the new movement. Former
Catholic church buildings were obtained and about 100,000
pesos were spent upon missions. The movement spread
rapidly and within a year several congregations numbered
more than 3,000 members.22 The new church published two
periodicals, La Estrella de Betlehem, in Mexico city, and
La Antorcha Evangelica, in Villa de Cos, Zacatecas.23
In the year of its organization the Church of Jesus sent
a commission of three ex-priests, Rafael Diaz Martinez,
Francisco Dominguez, and Enrique Orestes, to the United
States to appeal for aid and Protestant guidance from the
various missionary societies.24 The American and Foreign
Christian Union answered the call and sent Reverend Henry
C. Riley of the Protestant Episcopal church. Riley was an
Englishman, born in Chile, who had an excellent command
of the Spanish language. He resigned as minister of a
Cuban congregation in New York city to become the first
Protestant bishop of the valley of Mexico, "as he was the
last." 25
But the various denominations in the United States be
came dissatisfied with the union movement in Mexico. The
contributors to the American and Foreign Christian Union
came to believe that it bore a somewhat exclusive aspect,
that it was promoting the services of one denomination, the
Protestant Episcopal. A conclusion was reached, therefore,
among the various denominations, to discontinue the union
effort and allow each church to enter the field.28 Thus began
sectarian rivalries and jealousies in the Republic of Mexico.
19

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 The Historian

The Presbyterian church (North) and the American

Friends entered Mexico in 1871 ; the Cumberland Presbyte
rian, the Baptist, and Congregational in 1872; and the two
branches of Episcopal Methodism in 1873. Before 1875
nine Protestant denominations from the United States had
missionaries in the southern republic.27 Today there are
thirty-four Protestant sects searching for converts in
Mexico.28
One of the effects, therefore, of the Reform Laws was
the influx into Mexico of Protestant missionaries. It could
not be expected that the Roman clergy would condone the
foreigners with the tolerance prescribed by the constitution ;
and the newcomers encountered no little persecution. In Jan
uary, 1874, Protestants were assaulted in Toluca. Four
months later the Reverend J. L. Stephans of the Congrega
tional church was slain at Ahualulco, Jalisco, by a crowd of
fanatics.29 In the following year a Protestant church in
Guerrero was attacked during the service and several wor
shipers were killed. Nevertheless, the Protestants made
progress and in 1875 there were at least 125 congregations
with eleven churches and ninety-nine halls where services
were held.30 Fifteen years later the government census
showed 52,000 Protestants in Mexico.31 Today there are
150,000 native Protestants in that country.32 Of this num
ber an estimated fifty-four per cent are members of three
denominations, the Methodists claiming twenty-two per
cent, the Presbyterians nineteen per cent, and the Baptists
thirteen per cent.33
NOTES

ι. Quoted by Hubert W. Brown, Latin America (New York, 1909), pp.

183-185.
2. Charles L. White, A Century of Faith (Philadelphia, 1932), p. 173.
3. Brown, of. cit., p. 185. As an agent of the School society, Thomson was
interested in introducing the Lancastrian system of education. He met
with a favorable reception from the civil authorities and established
20

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 Beginning of Protestant Movement in Mexico
Lancastrian schools in several Latin American countries, including Mex
ico, where a school of 300 children was opened in the building of the
Inquisition in Mexico city. See Ibid., p. 188.
4. G. Baez Camargo and Kenneth G. Grubb, Religion in the Republic of
Mexico (London, 1936), p. 87.
5. Brown, op. cit., p. 194.
6. Encyclopedia of Missions, p. 24. The Bible was first translated into
Spanish in the year 1270.
7. Camargo and Grubb, op. cit., p. 87.
8. Brown, op. cit., p. 194.
9. Melinda Rankin, Twenty Years Among the Mexicans (Cincinnati, 1875),
p. 139·
10. Alden Buell Case, Thirty Years with the Mexicans (New York, 1917),
Ρ·2Ι3· .
11. Robert E.
Review of th
12. Rankin, op
13. John W. B
14. Camargo a
15. David A. W
16. Annual Re
Church, South
17. Camargo a
18. Edward L.
I9'9)> PP· 195-196. Maximilian permitted the sale of Bibles without
commentaries, that is, Protestant Bibles. See Ernest H. Gruening, Mexico
and Its Heritage (New York, 1928), p. 209.
19. Camargo and Grubb, op. cit., p. 88.
20. Missionary Review of the World, March, 1890, p. 228.
21. Quoted by Percy F. Martin, Mexico of the Twentieth Century (London,
1907). I. P- 99
22. Ibid., i, p. 100.
23. Camargo and Grubb, op. cit., p. 89.
24. Ibid, p. 90.
25. Martin, op. cit., I, p. 100.
26. William F. Butler, Mexico in Transition (New York, 1892), p. 288.
27. Encyclopedia of Missions, 2 ed. (New York, 1910), p. 840.
28. Camargo and Grubb, op. cit., pp. 136-137.
29. The priest who instigated the attack escaped, but the government ar
rested three hundred of the mob and retained about one hundred for
formal trial. Of these twenty were convicted, eight being executed and
the remainder sentenced to life imprisonment. See Alfred C. Wright,
"Forty-five Years After Martyrdom," in Missionary Review of the
World, September, 1919, p. 687.
30. H. H. Bancroft, History of Mexico (San Francisco, 1888), VI, p. 414.
31. G. Reginald Enoch, The Republics of South and Central America (Lon
don, 1912), p. 386.
32. The census of the Mexican government for 1930 estimated the number of
native Protestants at 130,322, but it is generally claimed that there are
150,000 today.
33. Camargo and Grubb, op. cit., p. 102.

21

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