This book argues that the Iglesia de Jesús (Church of Jesus), far from being a Protestant North American import, had its roots in Mexican Catholicism. The Baroque Catholicism of the colonial period, with its emphasis on the saints, allowed for a plurality of religious expression that kept the heterodox traditions of different races and cultures in the fold of the universal Church. This plurality, Cruz posits, made possible the growth of Enlightened Catholicism in the Bourbon and early republican periods. Enlightened reformers’ critiques of papal authority and exteriorized piety would influence the theology of the nationalist Catholic reformers who laid the foundation for the Church of Jesus.

The Iglesia de Jesús, then, did not begin as a self-consciously Protestant movement. Cruz's chronicle of its transformation from a Catholic reform movement to a missionary arm of the U.S. Episcopal Church is the highlight of the book, demonstrating how the move was far from inevitable. Unfortunately, Cruz's examination of this period, and of the Church of Jesus in general, is rather short. Of six chapters, only the last is devoted to the Church of Jesus. For the reader familiar with Mexican religious history, much of the first five chapters, which cover the broader scope of Baroque/Enlightened/national Catholicism, will not be new. However, by connecting the Church of Jesus to this deeper past, Cruz contributes to an “ecumenical history of the Christian Church” that sheds light on the common origins of what would later be thought to be very different religious traditions (199).