This project explores the complex intersections between social, political, and cultural dynamics and religious traditions. Taking the Mexican Revolution as case study, I explore the profound influence of Christian theological themes embedded in the nationwide efforts to renew the Mexican ethnocultural and sociopolitical imaginary in the early twentieth century. Focusing specifically on José Vasconcelos' educational reform, I demonstrate how the theological notions of "salvation" and "redemption" provided the intellectual framework, structures, and justification for the project of Mexican national renewal. I argue that, while this project intended to incorporate the indigenous peoples into mainstream Mexican nationalism, it actually resulted in their oppression, marginalization, and cultural genocide. I analyze this reform from the underside of history; I show how Vasconcelos' deployment of religious notions into the sociopolitical arena unwittingly represented the continuation of the original Christian/Catholic civilizing mission brought to the Americas at the turn of the sixteenth century.