religions Article Christ in Yaqui Garb: Teresa Urrea’s Christian Theology and Ethic Ryan Ramsey   Citation: Ramsey, Ryan. 2021. Christ in Yaqui Garb: Teresa Urrea’s Christian Theology and Ethic. Religions 12: 126. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel12020126 Academic Editors: Denise Starkey and Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi Received: 2 February 2021 Accepted: 12 February 2021 Published: 17 February 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Religion Department, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76706, USA; ryan_ramsey2@baylor.edu Abstract: A healer, Mexican folk saint, and revolutionary figurehead, Teresa Urrea exhibited a deeply inculturated Christianity. Yet in academic secondary literature and historical fiction that has arisen around Urrea, she is rarely examined as a Christian exemplar. Seen variously as an exemplary feminist, chicana, Yaqui, curandera, and even religious seeker, Urrea’s self-identification with Christ is seldom foregrounded. Yet in a 1900 interview, Urrea makes that relation to Christ explicit. Indeed, in her healing work, she envisioned herself emulating Christ. She understood her abilities to be given by God. She even followed an ethic which she understood to be an emulation of Christ. Closely examining that interview, this essay argues that Urrea’s explicit theology and ethic is, indeed, a deeply indigenized Christianity. It is a Christianity that has attended closely to the religion’s central figure and sought to emulate him. Yet it is also a theology and ethic that emerged from her own social and geographic location and, in particular, the Yaqui social imaginary. Urrea’s theology and ethics—centered on the person of Christ—destabilized the colonial order and forced those who saw her to see Christ in Yaqui, female garb. Keywords: transregional theologies; World Christianity; Christian theology; curanderismo; mysticism; borderlands religion; comparative and transregional history and mission; Porfiriato; decolonial theory 1. Introduction In the summer of 1900, a young woman sat for an interview in a foreign land. Just a few years prior, a miraculous event sparked her divinely led mission, and she developed a remarkable and far-reaching ministry that shook her home country with miracles and hope. Her affluent father thought her a religious fanatic, but among the needy, she was seen as God’s worker and messenger. Yet she departed that comfortable home for a land where she knew neither language nor customs. Her fame preceded her, and the natives she encountered were enthralled not only by her healings but by her unusual and attractive appearance. By means of this remarkable young woman, it seemed that God had arrived through his healing agent. What had begun upon her father’s fashionable estate crossed national boundaries. She was, after all, a kind of healing missionary, forsaking her homeland to share God’s love abroad with all whom she encountered. This young woman was Teresa Urrea, revered among the Yaqui, Mayo, and Tomo- chitecos in Sonora and Chihuahua as la Santa de Cabora. The Mexican government exiled her to the United States for denouncing their oppressive treatment of Amerindians, and many of her Amerindian devotees invoked her name as they violently revolted against the state. As a political exile, she continued her remarkable life and healing work. In this context, reporter Helen Dare interviewed Urrea in San Jose, California. Even though she was herself skeptical of religion, Dare stood in awe of this young woman known widely as a saint. Urrea was, however, no less a “saint” to Dare, a laborer for Amerindian justice in the United States. To Dare, Urrea appeared as an exemplary figure—a “saint”—for Amerindian liberation. Religions 2021, 12, 126. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020126 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions