EMQ » January–March 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 1
By Kathryn T. Long
Oxford University Press, 2019
480 pages
USD $34.95
Reviewed by Terry Gugger, a graduate student at Wheaton College, who has served for over twenty years in pastoral ministry, overseeing worship, discipleship, missions, and teaching and preaching in various capacities.
As evangelicals, we often seek the latest and greatest story of evangelistic success to stir our passion for lost people. This book brings back into the spotlight the sacrifice made by five missionaries, including Nate Saint and Jim Elliot, in reaching the Waorani (Auca) Indians of the Amazonian jungle of Ecuador. While the martyrdom of these five young men is well known, Kathryn Long (an ordained minister and Associate Professor of History Emerita at Wheaton College) helps the reader develop a broader understanding of the events, including both the victories and the less well-known conflicts. She encourages the reader to critically think through various aspects of advancing the gospel among lost people, particularly indigenous people groups.
Long does an outstanding job of telling the story of missionary activity among the Waorani, beginning at Curaray Beach (“Palm Beach”), the location of the martyred missionaries in 1956, and continuing to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Long brings to life the various missionaries and indigenous people through short biographical sketches, particularly highlighting the life and work of Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel, a Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) worker among the Waorani. As a sister organization to Wycliffe Bible Translators in the United States, SIL wanted to bring written Scripture to the Waorani people and was central to the entire story.
Extensive research was done by Long, as can be observed in numerous quotations from journal entries from nearly every missionary involved. There are many traditional missionary stories of encountering a new culture, causing the reader to rejoice in times of celebration and pause in times of sorrow. Long candidly presents the personal conflicts, cultural debates, and political and economic tensions. An appropriate summary may best be found in Long’s own words,
As far as the missionary-Waorani story, perhaps it is time for critics to concede that SIL workers did help the Waorani end some patterns of internal violence and survive contact with outsiders. By the same token, it may be time for North American evangelicals and also missionaries to recognize that the Waorani do not live in a historical, cultural, or geographic vacuum, nor are they frozen in time (349).
This book would be an excellent read for several audiences. For those preparing to engage in efforts to bring the gospel to unreached people groups, the book forces one to grapple with the question, “What am I bringing to the people beyond just the gospel of Jesus Christ?” For those already engaged in missions ministry, it highlights the difficulties of cross-cultural ministry. Finally, for every believer, it shines light on a world that has often been glamorized, celebrating victories but also raising questions concerning motivation and means, questions that are relevant to every cross-cultural situation. Without a doubt, I would highly recommend getting this book and reading it cover to cover.
For Further Reading
Ænkædi, Menkaye. Gentle Savage Still Seeking the End of the Spear: the Autobiography of a Killer and the Oral History of the Waorani People. Xulon Press, 2013.
Bantu, Vince L. A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity. Missiological Engagements. InterVarsity Academic, 2020.
