Santa Fe, founded in 1610, anchors the oldest continuous Spanish Catholic mission tradition in the United States, and the annual pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayo, where pilgrims walk for miles seeking healing dirt from its sanctuary, remains one of the largest Catholic pilgrimages in North America. New Mexico's Pueblo peoples, including Taos, Acoma and Zuni, have maintained kiva based ceremonial religion continuously through the Spanish, Mexican and American periods, in many cases alongside nominal Catholic observance. The Penitente Brotherhood, a lay Catholic confraternity practicing Holy Week penance, remains active in northern mountain villages.
Facts
Identity
Jurisdiction Status Law and State
Establishment StatusNew Mexico has had no established church under United States governance since its admission as a state in 1912, despite the Catholic establishment maintained earlier under Spanish colonial rule. Religion
Leading Religious AffiliationNew Mexico: Catholic is 27% of adults, ahead of Evangelical Protestant at 25%. Margin of error plus or minus 7.1 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/new-mexico/ Geography
Census Region Origins
Origin of the NameFrom the Spanish colonial Nuevo Mexico, applied by Spanish explorers to lands north of the Rio Grande well before the later independent nation of Mexico took its own name. 1 Learn More
The Revolt That Drove the Missions Out for Twelve Years
In August 1680, the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico, coordinated across dozens of villages speaking different languages by the religious leader Po'pay of Ohkay Owingeh, rose against Spanish colonial rule in a single, carefully timed uprising that killed hundreds of settlers and missionaries and drove every surviving Spaniard out of the province entirely. The Pueblo Revolt succeeded where scattered resistance elsewhere in Spanish America had failed because it was organized specifically around ending forced conversion and the suppression of Pueblo ceremonial life the missions had imposed for eighty years, and it kept New Mexico free of Spanish rule for twelve years until Diego de Vargas's reconquest in 1692. That reconquest did not simply restore the earlier mission system unchanged, Franciscan practice afterward tolerated a degree of continued Pueblo ceremonial life it had previously tried to eliminate outright, a lasting concession historians trace directly to the revolt's success. In 2005 New Mexico placed a statue of Po'pay, carved by the Jemez Pueblo sculptor Cliff Fragua from Tennessee marble, in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall, formal federal recognition of a rebellion against federal predecessors.
Santa Fe's mission tradition, refounded after 1692, still anchors the annual pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayo today, and the Penitente Brotherhood's lay Catholic Holy Week penance remains active in northern mountain villages. Catholic identification leads the state at twenty seven percent of adults, per Pew's 2023-24 study, ahead of Evangelical Protestant at twenty five.
Connections
Associated With
This source names Americas directly: "Santa Fe, founded in 1610, anchors the oldest continuous Spanish Catholic mission tradition in the United States, and the annual pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayo, where pilgrims walk for miles..."
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source Bankruptcy Court Confirms Archdiocese of Santa Fe Plan of Reorganization Settling Hundreds of Sexual Abuse Claims
Source Chapter 11 Settlement, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gallup
This source names Pueblo Peoples directly: "New Mexico's Pueblo peoples, including Taos, Acoma and Zuni, have maintained kiva based ceremonial religion continuously through the Spanish, Mexican and American periods, in many cases alongside..."
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
This source names New Mexico directly: "decades of Spanish colonial rule in New Mexico, the Franciscan mission system's suppression of Pueblo religious life, and the coordinated uprising that drove Spanish colonists out of the province..."
Source Divinity Atlas Original Articles, Second Edition
Regions Where This Is Principal
Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey.
Source Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape StudyPew Research Center
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source 2. Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
A Religious History of the American People
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