The narrative shifts from conflict between the USA and Mexico to Christian zeal to evangelize Mexicans. Call it what you want but it was Protestant-inspired Manifest Destiny that colonized land and people with violence, political manipulation, and theft.

More than 500 million square miles. In our terms, California, New Mexico, Nevada, and some of Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma. Taken and colonized.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 sealed the deal and, in effect, created the Brown Church of what is now the United States.

We are reading Robert Chao Romero’s splendid Brown Church, which is an accessible, story-packed study of the history of forming the Brown Church and its theology of the gospel and liberation.

Both (courageously, quickly) Abraham Lincoln and (slowly, eventually) Ulysses Grant opposed the Mexican War and the land grab. It was generated by President James Polk.

The heart of the rational was Manifest Destiny, which was a Protestant civil religion that conquered land, peoples, and Roman Catholic churches throughout the lands conquered. First tearing them from the jurisdiction of bishops in Durango and then later forming a Protestant culture-based Manifest Destiny around them to make for more Americans. It was as much about extending land for slavery as well as a lust for land itself.

The Treaty made possible in Article 8 the citizenship of Mexicans choosing to abandon their heritage (and culture) to become Americans but the decision was not ratified for decades and so it was only white or mostly white Mexicans who were given the citizenship – a major bargaining chip in the war settlement. Even then those citizens were Brown – neither White nor Black.

More than 500 million square miles. In our terms, California, New Mexico, Nevada, and some of Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma. Taken and colonized.

Land was another negotiation. The promise by the USA’s authorities was that those owning lands under Mexico would own their land now as Americans, but the promises dangled into thin air: the lands were increasingly confiscated for a variety of reasons, including law expense and manipulation of laws themselves. Just plain wrong.

The Catholic Church of New Mexico had its center in Durango Mexico, but it was soon taken over (colonized) and a non-Spanish speaking French Catholic authority (Lamy) became bishop. He stripped the churches of their culture.

Romero calls it the “cultural massacre of the New Mexico church.” Lamy created an oppressive mandatory tithe and then added exhorbitant fees for common pastoral realites like marriage and baptisms and funerals.

A resister: Padre Antonio José Martinez of Taos gets the focused story of this chp. He fought Lamy and his authorities with canon law and Scripture and especially protested with public letters. Which led to opposition, then replacing him, and then excommunication. So he became a heroic rogue pastor.

Romero calls him the father of the Brown Church in the United States.