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This book is an ethnographically oriented history of the weekend Christian Cursillo movement, the “short course in Christianity,” among American Catholics and Protestants. What is today known interchangeably as the Cursillo (Cursillo de Cristiandad, or CdC) short course in Christianity or the Fourth-Day Christian movement began in 1944 on Mallorca, the largest of the Spanish Balearic Islands, as an effort at religious revitalization for Spanish Catholic men. In 1957, thirteen years after their Mallorquín inception, Catholic Cursillos came to American Catholic culture by way of two Spanish Catholic air force pilots stationed in Waco, Texas. From the beginning, the weekend Cursillo movement was geared toward men, to provide them with a place to experience Christ and the Holy Spirit and a setting where their spirituality could grow. For men unaccustomed to showing their emotions, the weekend Cursillo offered the time and space to talk about their personal lives with other men in a safe space.

This chapter talks about Carlos Calatayud Maldonado, who made his Cursillo in Ciudad Real in 1956, at the cusp of the Cursillo weekends' worldwide expansion. Despite Bishop Jesús Enciso Viana's 1956 pastoral letter that sent Bonnín into exile and forced the three-day Cursillos and group reunions to operate clandestinely, what were now known as Cursillos de Cristiandad, the Hervás-renamed “Cursillos for Pilgrim Leaders,” supported by both Hervás and Bonnín, began to spread around the globe. Mallorquín and other Spanish cursillistas who knew Bonnín and Hervás introduced the weekend course in spirituality abroad. From 1956 until Enciso's death in 1964, one kind of Cursillo weekend was officially offered—the more ecclesial Hervás weekend. After Enciso's death, Hervás-influenced CdC weekends became even more prominent, and he was credited with being the founder of the weekend Cursillo.

This chapter shows how mainline American Protestants had heard enough about the Catholic Cursillo weekend to be convinced that they had to experience the three days for themselves. What they were hearing was exciting and intriguing; Catholic friends and relatives talked about changed lives, new relationships with Christ, improved marriages, and, generally speaking, new outlooks on life as a result of their weekend experience. American Catholic cursillistas spoke with enough conviction and passion that they inspired Protestants from a variety of traditions to seek out and make a Catholic Cursillo. In the 1960s and 1970s, Protestants were able to make a Catholic Cursillo weekend in the Diocese of Peoria. It was a small group of Reformed, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian laymen and women who, moved by their experiences during their Catholic Cursillo weekends, formed their own movements based directly on the Catholic Cursillo method.

This chapter discusses how, for the cursillistas interviewed for this book, making their Cursillo was about becoming a better person. They emerged from the intensive three days as renewed men, women, Catholics, Protestants, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, husbands, and wives. For Catholic cursillistas like José Herrera, the weekend experience led them to nothing less than an epiphany. For the first time in their lives as brown-skinned Mexicans, they believed that their individual gifts were important to the future of their Church. For those middle- and upper-middle-class white, non-Hispanic men and women like Sue Davis who made their weekend, the three days of their Cursillo affirmed their lay Catholic and Protestant identities. They returned to their homes and families rejuvenated, prepared to “be church.” They were ready to take on increased responsibilities in the lives of their families, parishes, dioceses, and neighborhoods.

This chapter talks about other movements and encounters that have branched off from the mainline Fourth-Day movements. While technically not part of the Fourth-Day movement proper, the offshoots share in the major aims and goals of the Cursillo weekend encounters that inspired them. The proliferation of Fourth-Day movements and their offshoots indicates the depth of desire by contemporary American Christian men and women to encounter Christ, experience healing and renewal, and become part of a new community. These offshoots also signal something else that is peculiarly American—the pluralism of Christianity. In part because of the disestablishment clause, American religious history—in this case Christian—is replete with instances of sectarian movements. It would be historically inaccurate to say that America has a “Christian history.”

This chapter shows that Catholic and Protestant Cursillos are lay-sponsored, parachurch, church-supported weekend retreats that address individual Christians as important, vital members of the larger Church body. Although some within the Cursillo movement shun the term retreat, the word accurately captures the intensive spiritual experiences and exercises that happen on a Cursillo weekend, whether Catholic or Protestant. As we have seen, six tables of five to six candidates and one mentor per table eat, sleep, pray, and worship together for seventy-two-hours, from Thursday to Sunday evening. Whether it is a Catholic Cursillo, a Tres Dias weekend, a Kairos Inside Weekend, or any of the other Fourth-Day weekends or their offshoots, the course is carefully orchestrated according to a manual by a team of dedicated Cursillo lay leaders who dedicate months of planning to sponsoring a successful weekend.

Chapter 3 argues that Chavez’s La Causa can be fruitfully understood as a quasi-religious movement with Chavez as its prophetic leader. It traces the leader’s spiritual development in the Cursillo movement. It maps and interprets much of the religious rituals of La Causa, including the prayer pilgrimage and the leader’s three public fasts. It interprets key symbols of La Causa, and it follows the leader to his Gandhi-style ashram at La Paz, in California’s Keene County, including a discussion of the influence of Synanon and the game. It also engages Bruce Lincoln’s theories of “religions of resistance” and “religions of revolution.”