Guerrilla-priests and liberation theology are not new phenomena in Nicaragua. Ever since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, Catholic Church leaders have played a major role in that country's politics. The result, the author writes, is a polarized church, one with a progressive minority at loggerheads with the conservative hierarchy. Kirk sets each stage of the church-state debate in a historical continuum, then examines the 40-year period of Somocismo and the Sandinista period (1979-90) that followed. This social revolution - blending nationalism, Marxism and Catholicism - dared to be different, he claims, and accordingly it paid the price.