By Alejandro Moreno Morrison.
To the memory of my great-great-grandfather,
the REV. ARCADIO MORALES ESCALONA, Th. D.,
who rests from his labours for his deeds follow him (Revelation 14:13).
Anyone acquainted with Mexican history will realize that the title above is ambiguous. That is because, on the one hand, there is a period in the Mexican political and legal history known as the Reformation, while the term “Reformation”, on the other hand, has a very specific and well defined religious and theological connotation in ecclesiastical contexts. Such ambiguity is intended since there is a close relationship between the political movement in Mexico called the Reformation and the history of the Presbyterian Church in Mexico. Furthermore, some readers will be able to notice, as well, some of the similarities that at least I see between the English Reformation and Mexico’s political “Reformation”.
The political “Reformation” in Mexico (1830-1870) was the movement carried out by the “Liberals” (in its classical European sense rather than the modern sense) against the conservative oligarchy and the Roman-Catholic clergy, who together concentrated all the economic, social, religious and political power in Mexico. Both, the time frame and the movement itself, overlap with the beginnings and development of the evangelical movement in Mexico, which eventually lead (in one of its several branches) to the foundation of the Presbyterian Church in Mexico.
In the summer of 1822, «Diego» Thompson (a Scottish missionary of Presbyterian background) arrived to Peru with the twofold mission of establishing schools in the “Lancasterian” method and of distributing Bibles in Spanish as an agent of the British and Overseas Bible Society. It took him five years to make his way up north from Peru to Mexico City, where he arrived in May 1827, with 300 Bibles and 1,000 New Testaments. The newly arrived Bibles immediately got the attention of many people. On the one hand, a few Roman-Catholic clergymen and such statesmen as Dr. José María Luis Mora, “considered the father of Liberalism in Mexico”, received favourably the distribution of Bibles. Nevertheless, the official reaction of the Dioceses of Mexico was to ban the circulation of the Bible, and to confiscate and burn those Bibles already distributed among the people, even though such Bibles were the authorized Spanish translation of the Roman Church with the Apocrypha (the Scío de San Miguel version, published in Barcelona, 1820). In spite of the ban, Bibles continued arriving into Mexico and Circulating clandestinely throughout the decades of the 1830’s to the 1860’s.
This was a time of great turmoil in Mexico as the Conservative Party (and the Roman-Catholic Church) strived to maintain its power, while from the outside Mexico faced war with the United States of America (USA) and intervention from France. But above and beyond the earthly affairs of the “city of man”, a Christian soldier of the USA Army saw the Mexican War as an opportunity to build the “City of God” by distributing Spanish Bibles to the Mexican people wherever he went. Likewise, during the French intervention (1864 1867), a Moravian chaplain of the French Army lead evangelical worship services in downtown Mexico City. By the mid-1850’s, the Liberal Party gained control of the Mexican Congress and passed a set of laws known as the “Reformation Laws,” as well as the 1857 Constitution, patterned after the USA Constitution. A ruling criterion and aim of the new legislation was to limit the power of the Roman-Catholic clergy and to recognize religious freedom and freedom of expression. Moreover, a number of buildings and estates that were property of the Roman-Church (which owned 70% of the real-estate property in Mexico) were “secularized,” that is, taken away from ecclesiastical hands to be destined for public use or to be sold for productive activities (very much as Henry VIII had done in England over 300 years earlier). Eventually, the use of several of these “secularized” buildings was granted to Protestant Churches and organizations like the Bible Society.
All such changes were officially condemned by the Roman pope Pius IX and thus opposed by the majority, though not all, of the Mexican Roman-Catholic clergy. In fact, a schism was brought about by a small group of priests who sworn loyalty to Mexico and the new Reformation Laws and who thereby endeavoured to establish “the Reformed Mexican Catholic Church independent from that of Rome” and upon the foundations of the early Church. These “Mexican Catholics” turned to the Episcopal Church o the USA for a serious ecclesiastical authority that would provide their meetings with an official character and to credit their gatherings toward the formation of a church. The first evangelical service of this group took place in Mexico City in November 18, 1865.
A couple of years later, a Presbyterian Church was established in Villa de Coss, Zacatecas, as a result of the preaching of Dr. Julius Mallet Prevost, elder in the Presbyterian Church and Consul of the USA in that city. The church grew rapidly with members from all the ranks of society (including governors and local cabinet members) and established churches in nearby cities like Fresnillo and Concepción del Oro. By 1870, these Presbyterian Churches came under the wing of the Pennsylvania Synod.
In 1868, the Episcopal Church of the USA sent a missionary pastor to Mexico, the Rev. Henry C. Riley. Rev. Riley was born and had spent part of his life in Santiago de Chile, and was pastor of a large Spanish-speaking congregation in New York, so he was fluent in Spanish. A few months after his arrival, the Rev. Riley sent back to the USA the following report: “A perfect hurricane of Protestant desires is raging against the Roman Church. I felt, as if I had suddenly found myself in the Reformation time. The great task to be accomplished is to edify as soon as possible churches and educational institutions.” In time, instead of the “Reformed Mexican Catholic Church”, the Mexican Episcopal Church was established with people coming from the Mexican Catholic movement and several “evangelical societies» that had functioned clandestinely over the previous decades.
One of the leaders of this church, don Julián Rodriguez, persistently invited Mrs. Felipa Escalona de Morales to attend their services. Mrs. Escalona de Morales (or Mrs. Morales) was a pure Mexican Indian (thus at the lowest rank in society) and a member of the Liberal Party. She worked in the domestic service at the residence of Ignacio Ramírez, one of the top leaders of the Liberal Party. Although Ignacio Ramirez was an atheist and had inclinations to the occult, he gave Mrs. Morales a Bible. Albeit not formally educated, Felipa and her husband Bartolo enjoyed a quite awakened mind and had learned to read and write. From an early age, Felipa taught her son Arcadio to read and to love the Bible. Both parents were very religious, although they did not attend the Roman-Catholic mass.
In January 1869, Felipa Morales sent her son Arcadio (who had just turned 19 years old) to a Tuesday service in the Protestant Church on her behalf. Arcadio Morales was deeply scandalized by the mere suggestion of attending a Protestant gathering. At the end he attended merely out of obedience to his mother, who asked him “to see and to hear and to report back to her”. Thought not willingly, Arcadio attended the service with a friend of him and Mr. Rodríguez, the church leader who had been so persistent in inviting the Morales-Escalona family. On that particular weekday service an infant baptism was administrated. The Protestant service made a powerful impression on the young Arcadio, who told Mr. Rodriguez that, if that was what Protestantism was all about, he had been a Protestant already for a long time.
Nevertheless, Arcadio entered into a deep conflict of conscience upon the mere thought of leaving the religion in which he had been raised. For the first time, he addressed a prayer in his own words: “My God, You see in what state I am; I do not know on whose side lays the truth; but You, who are neither Catholic nor Protestant, help me; I do not want my soul to be lost. If this new religion is the true one, let me embrace it with all my heart, and if that in which I have lived is Yours, then, Lord, do not let me abandon it even for a moment”. Then he took yet another step toward making up his mind about the matter; he purchased two Bibles, one Roman-Catholic and another Protestant, in order to confirm that the Protestant Bible was not different and, therefore, that all these years reading the Bible had led him to be a “Protestant” albeit unaware of it. One week after his first visit, Arcadio Morales Escalona was back in the Protestant service, now with a passionate devotion for the gospel. He soon became a “reader” at the Church, while also involved in the distribution of Bibles, and the preaching of the gospel in public places.
A few years later (October 1872), the first Presbyterian missionaries (proper) from the USA (mostly from Pennsylvania) arrived to the coastal city of Veracruz, off the Gulf of Mexico. The missionaries were Mr. & Mrs. Henry Clifton Thompson, Mr. & Mrs. Paul H. Pitkins, Mr. & Mrs. Maxwell Phillips, Miss Helen P. Allen. A couple of months later (December 28, 1872), the Rev. & Mrs. Merril N. Hutchinson arrived to Mexico City and immediately got in touch with the Protestant Church and the young Arcadio Morales.
The arrival (thus the growing presence) of the Presbyterian missionaries into an Episcopal environment inevitably brought about the discussion of church polity. The Episcopalians were advocating for the appointment of an “Archbishop of the Evangelical Missions in Mexico” to oversee all of the evangelical societies and incipient churches. Moreover, as it was in the very origins of the Presbyterian movement in the Church of England, the issue was also raised concerning the use of vestments and other «Romish rituals» that remained in the worship of that nascent Protestant Church.
Once again, the young Arcadio faced a dilemma on matters of the highest order: What is the right way of worshipping the Lord? After earnest prayer and long conversations with the Rev. Hutchinson on the matter (guided by Scripture as their sole authority), Arcadio embraced the Presbyterian polity and manner of worship leaving behind the Episcopal ways, and thus took the firm resolution “of establishing the Presbyterian Church in the capital of the [Mexican] Republic”. Like the Presbyterian forefathers, Arcadio was excommunicated from the Episcopal Church for his Presbyterian persuasion, which they took as «treason.» “Yet”—he records— “with a small number of brethren who followed me, we continued unaltered fighting against the common enemy, ‘Romanism’, and laying the foundations of Presbyterianism in the capital [city] of Mexico”.
In time, a small faculty of professors was formed in order to provide theological education to future Mexican ministers like Arcadio Morales. Such faculty included originally the missionary pastors Maxwell Phillips (Greek) and M. N. Hutchinson (Theology). In the years to come such faculty was enriched with the involvement of L. Polemus, Rollo Ogden, J. Milton Green (Th. D.), S. T. Wilton, (Th. D.), and Hubert Brown, (Th. D.).
On the 21st of May, 1874, Arcadio was examined and approved on his theological training, in the constituting meeting of the Presbyterian Church in Mexico City (which lasted four days with recesses). He, then, proceeded to make his public profession of faith and to be baptized (since Presbyterians did not accept the Roman baptism) along with other 64 believers who were the first members of the first Presbyterian Church in Mexico City.
The Presbyterian Church was growing so rapidly, not only in Mexico City but also throughout all the Mexican territory, that there was a growing need for pastors all throughout Mexico. Along with ten other “seminarians” Arcadio Morales continued his theological education under the Presbyterian missionaries above mentioned. By 1878, the theological education and aptitudes of these young Mexicans were deemed appropriate to proceed to ordain them to the holy ministry in the Presbyterian Church. That same year, 1878, the Rev. Arcadio Morales Escalona became the first pastor of “El Divino Salvador”, the first Presbyterian Church in Mexico City, with 240 registered members, 88 children baptized and growing!
The Reformation had taken root in Mexican soil.
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Alejandro Moreno Morrison is a Mexican lawyer and Reformed theologian. He earned a law degree (equivalent to the LLB) at Escuela Libre de Derecho (Mexico City), and a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, Florida), part of such theological studies included a summer at the University of Oxford. At Reformed Theological Seminary he was teaching assistant of the Rev. Dr. Ronald H. Nash. He was also Spanish resources consultant for the Rev. Dr. Richard L. Pratt at Third Millennium Ministries. Alejandro has ministered as intern, teacher, and visiting preacher and teacher at churches and missions of several denominations including Iglesia Presbiteriana Reformada de México, Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México, Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana Conservadora de México, Iglesia Presbiteriana Ortodoxa Reformada, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, North America Synod. With the latter he was in charge of a mission congregation in Mexico City during 2014. He has also been guest lecturer in Systematic Theology, Ethics, Evangelism, and Apologetics at Seminario Teológico Reformado of Iglesia Presbiteriana Reformada de México, in Contemporary Political Systems at the Faculty of Law of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and in Corporate law at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (Global Startup Lab for Mexico). Since 2010 he is adjunct lecturer in Jurisprudence at Escuela Libre de Derecho.
Reforma Presbiteriana México 