Based on a decade of field research, this work is the first book-length, scholarly examination in English of the role of Catholicism in Mexican society since the 1970s through 1995, and the increasing political activism of the Catholic church and clergy. It is also the first analysis of church-state relations in Latin America that incorporates detailed interviews of numerous bishops and clergy and leading politicians about how they see each other and how religion influences their values. It is also the first analysis of the Mexican Catholic Church which uses national survey research to examine Mexican attitudes toward religion, Christianity, and Catholicism, and provides the first inside look at the decision-making process of bishops at the diocesan level.

Roderic Ai Camp is Philip M. McKenna Professor of the Pacific Rim at Claremont McKenna College and serves on the Advisory Board of the Mexican Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution. His books include Politics in Mexico (OUP 2006) and The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico (OUP 2010).