God’s Campesinos? Mexico’s Revolutionary Church in the Countryside

While revolutionary attempts to eradicate religion have been well studied, this article explores a little-known attempt to construct state hegemony within the religious sphere by founding a revolutionary Church (the Iglesia Católica Apostólica Mexicana, or Mexican Catholic and Apostolic Church) in 1925. The article first explores the agrarian ideology of the schism, conceived as a revolutionary form of spiritual modernisation. It then charts the popular reception of the schism in Mexico State and argues that some agrarianised communities appropriated the new religion because it was seen as the spiritual adjunct of land reform, a means of blending popular revolutionary and religious beliefs, and a sectarian political weapon.