The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas

The European Christian mission to the Americas faced a catastrophic epidemic in 1576, leading to different visions for the future of Christianity. The Church of the Dead provides a counter-history, focusing on the power of Indigenous Mexicans who reconstructed the church and reasserted ancestral territories as sovereign. Christianity in the Americas today is not the creation of missionaries but of Indigenous Catholic survivors.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 03 August 2021
Publisher: New York University Press

Many scholars view the European Christian mission to the Americas as a foregone conclusion, but in its early stages, it was on the verge of collapse. In 1576, a devastating epidemic struck Indigenous Mexican communities, claiming the lives of nearly two million people and leaving the colonial church in disarray. During this crisis and its immediate aftermath, Spanish missionaries and surviving pueblos de indios held vastly different visions for the future of Christianity in the Americas.

The Church of the Dead presents a counter-history of American Christian origins, centering the power of Indigenous Mexicans. It demonstrates how their Catholic faith remained resilient even as Spanish missionaries' religious fervor waned. While Europeans grappled with their inability to halt the tide of death, succumbing to despair, Indigenous survivors worked tirelessly to rebuild the church. They reclaimed ancestral territories as sovereign, establishing Indigenous Catholic states that rivaled the jurisdiction of the diocese and the power of friars and bishops.

Today, Christianity in the Americas is not the product of missionaries but rather of Indigenous Catholic survivors of the colonial "mortandad," the founding condition of American Christianity. By employing archival research, visual culture, church history, theology, and the history of medicine, Jennifer Scheper Hughes offers a groundbreaking and poetic reexamination of North American religious history.

Weight: 642g
Dimension: 166 x 237 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479802555