Elisabeth Elliot: A Life

EMQ » January – April 2024 » Volume 60 Issue 1

RReviewed by Cameron D. Armstrong, Asia Graduate School of Theology, Philippines.

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Rarely does a biography make the book review list for Evangelical Missions Quarterly. Lucy Austen’s biography of Elisabeth Elliot, however, deserves its place as an exception. Readers both familiar and unfamiliar with Elliot’s story will find great encouragement in its pages, especially mission-minded Christians.

Austen divides her biography into three parts: Elliot’s life pre-Ecuador, in Ecuador, and post-Ecuador. In part 1, Austen describes Elliot’s years growing up in an evangelical Christian culture that prized personal holiness and missionary zeal, culminating in her thriving among friends at Wheaton College, including Jim Elliot. Austen takes care to emphasize facets of Elliot that would play a major part in her later public persona, such as Elliot’s introversion, love for journaling and letter writing, and a deep belief in the Lord’s guidance.

In part 2, Austen traces Elliot’s missionary career in Ecuador before and after Jim Elliot’s death by Waorani spears. Readers will be surprised to learn of the up-and-down courtship of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot and the difficulties Elliot faced in interacting with her missionary partner Rachel Saint. Part 3 tells the rest of the story of the next 50 years of Elisabeth Elliot as a public Christian, influencing generations through her books, public speaking, and radio ministry. Austen makes clear how Elliot helped shape American evangelicalism into its contemporary form, especially through her writings on biblical womanhood.

The book has many strengths, but I will mention two specifically. First, Austen portrays well how Elliot’s context was essential in developing her worldview, noting how some of Elliot’s behavior and ideas were indeed unbiblical. Austen looks critically at how Elliot grew as a Christian, a writer, and a person.

Second, the missiological community will find it fascinating how Elliot’s understanding of the missionary task evolved as a result of her experience in the Ecuadorian jungle. Dealing with such common challenges as language learning, team conflict, contextualization, raising children on the mission field, and defining success after leaving the field, Elliot’s story will resonate with anyone who has served overseas.

One weakness is that Austen gives surprisingly little detail concerning Elliot’s initial call to missions. Instead, readers are only given a single sentence relaying that her call happened sometime between Elliot’s sophomore and junior years at Wheaton (56). Such an absence appears imbalanced given the attention Austen gives to other details. The book could be strengthened if this important event were described, if such a description is available.

Austen’s Elisabeth Elliot is an excellent biography that deserves a wide readership. As Austen notes, the story of Jim Elliot’s death is “the best-known missionary story of the twentieth century” (524). Yet there is far more to Elisabeth Elliot’s life than this single event. I for one am glad to have learned more from such a powerful life.

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For Further Reading:

Through Gates of Splendor by Elizabeth Elliot (Tyndale, 1981).

Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn(B & H Publishing, 2020).

EMQ, Volume 60, Issue 1. Copyright © 2024 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.