In conversation with Kristine Wright, Jennifer Scheper Hughes considers the birth of Christianity in Mexico in the context of catastrophic disease. At the end of the sixteenth century, a deadly outbreak took almost two million lives and left the colonial church in ruins. In the aftermath, Spanish missionaries and Indigenous Catholic survivors asserted radically different visions for the future of the church in the Americas. In this counterhistory of Christian origins, Hughes shows how Indigenous survivors shaped and defined what is arguably the first and oldest Christian institution in the hemisphere.  

This event is part of CCSR's Religion and the Public Conversation series. The 2021-2022 theme for this series is "Indigenous Traditions and Diaspora."

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