The Development of the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1934-1982
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The Development of the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1934-1982 Fredrick A. Aldridge Jr Department of History and Politics School of Arts and Humanities University of Stirling A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Professor David W. Bebbington 28 November 2012 I, Fredrick A. Aldridge Jr, declare that this thesis has been composed by me and that the work which it embodies is my work and has not been included in another thesis. ii Acknowledgements In the course of researching and writing this thesis I benefited from the assistance of a long list of Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) and SIL International (SIL) (formerly the Summer Institute of Linguistics) members, all of whom generously gave of their time and candidly shared their experiences. To Tom Headland goes particular appreciation for his encouragement, provision of obscure documents and many hours of answering inquisitive questions. Likewise I am indebted to Cal Hibbard, the archivist for the Townsend Archives, for his help on numerous occasions. Cal’s labours to collect, organize and preserve Townsend’s voluminous correspondence over the past several decades has rendered to historians a veritable goldmine. I also wish to thank WBT and SIL for granting me an extended study leave to pursue this research project. And I am especially grateful to WBT and SIL for the complete and unfettered access to the organization’s archives and for permitting me the freedom to research the development of the organization wherever the sources led. The staff and faculty at the University of Stirling were ever helpful. My principal advisor, David W. Bebbington, deserves credit for making post-graduate study not only a rigorous undertaking but also an enjoyable and fascinating process. Colin Nicolson’s comments on the drafts of the thesis were also very helpful. It would be difficult to conceive of finding a more gratifying institution or supervisory team under which to complete one’s post-graduate education. And finally to my endearing wife Julie is owed an outsized share of the credit for the thesis’s ultimate completion, for without her patient endurance and constant encouragement it would never have come to fruition. iii Abstract This thesis examines the development of one of the twentieth century’s largest North American faith missions, the dual-organizational combination of the Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) from its founding in 1934 to 1982. WBT-SIL grew out of the distinctive vision of its founder, William Cameron Townsend (1896-1982), a former Central American Mission missionary. The extraordinarily inventive Townsend conceived of an approach to Christian mission that construed Bible translation as a linguistic and quasi-scientific enterprise, thereby permitting the non-sectarian SIL side of the organization to collaborate with anticlerical governments in Latin America, where it undertook pioneer Bible translation for indigenous peoples speaking as-yet unwritten languages. This unique government relations and scientific approach to missions was at many points in conflict with the prevailing missionary ethos of the organization’s North American evangelical constituency. Therefore the WBT side of the mission functioned as the religious arm of the enterprise for the purposes of publicity and recruiting. The dual organization drew sharp critique from nearly every quarter, ranging from North American evangelicals to Latin American Catholics to secular anthropologists. The controversial nature of the organization begs the question: Why did WBT-SIL become the largest faith mission of the twentieth century? This study seeks to answer this question by analysing the development WBT-SIL in both its foreign and domestic settings. The principal argument mounted in this thesis is that WBT-SIL met with success because its leaders and members followed Townsend’s lead in pragmatically adapting the organization to widely varying contexts both at home in North America and abroad as it sought to serve indigenous peoples through Bible translation, literacy iv and education. By striking a creative balance between maintaining the essentials of a traditional faith mission and imaginative breaking with convention when conditions necessitated a progressive approach, WBT-SIL became one of the largest and yet most unusual of twentieth-century evangelical missions. v Table of Contents List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Introduction ....................................................................................... 3 Chapter Two: Pioneering and the Progressive Ideal .............................................. 21 Chapter Three: The Linguistic Approach .............................................................. 72 Chapter Four: Cameron Townsend and the Strategy of ‘Service to All’ ............. 126 Chapter Five: On the Home Front ....................................................................... 179 Chapter Six: Staying the Course .......................................................................... 228 Chapter Seven: Conclusion .................................................................................. 280 Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 298 Appendix I ........................................................................................................... 319 Appendix II .......................................................................................................... 321 vi 1 List of Abbreviations Archives BGA – Billy Graham Center Archives CAA – Central American Mission Archives GIAL – Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics MBA - Mexico Branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Archives PSC – Pike Special Collection TA – William Cameron Townsend Archives UOA – University of Oklahoma Archives WSA – WBT-SIL Corporate Archives Individuals AEB – Albert E. Bishop BFE – Benjamin F. (Ben) Elson CH – Calvin (Cal) Hibbard CJM – Charles J. Mellis Jr EAN – Eugene A. Nida FER – Frank E. Robbins GMC – George M. Cowan JDHS – Judge J. H. Scott KLP – Kenneth L. (Ken) Pike KLW – Kenneth L. (Ken) Watters LA – Lambert Anderson LLL – Leonard Livingstone (L. L.) Legters LR – Lawrence Routh PG – Phillip (Phil) Grossman RDS – R. D. Smith RGS – Robert G. (Bob) Schneider RSP – Richard S. (Dick) Pittman WCT – William Cameron Townsend WGNS – Willam G. Nyman Sr WW – William Wonderly 2 Organizations AAA – American Anthropological Association ABS – American Bible Society ABWE – Association of Baptists for World Evangelism AIM – Africa Inland Mission CAM – Central American Mission CAMF – Christian Aviators’ Missionary Fellowship CIM – China Inland Mission COD – Church of the Open Door EFMA – Evangelical Foreign Mission Association IFMA – Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association ILC – International Linguistic Center IWGIA – International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs LAIM – Latin American Indian Mission MAF – Missionary Aviation Fellowship NACLA – North American Congress on Latin America PMA – Pioneer Mission Agency SIL – Summer Institute of Linguistics SIM – Sudan Interior Mission USAID – United States Agency for International Development WA – Wycliffe Associates WBT – Wycliffe Bible Translators WCC – World Council of Churches 3 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION _____________________________________________________ Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, and looks to God alone, Laughs at impossibilities, and shouts, ‘It shall be done!’ Wycliffe and SIL Theme Song _____________________________________________________ The development of the Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) and Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) combination is a paradox that begs for an explanation. After all this dual organization, essentially sister organizations comprising a single institution, was at once one of the most controversial and one of the most successful evangelical missions of the twentieth century. This strikingly unconventional mission was formed in the mid-1930s and officially incorporated in 1942 under the direction of a former Central American Mission missionary, William Cameron Townsend. In the early 1930s it was Townsend’s twofold objective to train missionary candidates in the rudiments of descriptive linguistics and then to send the graduates of his summer course into anti-clerical Mexico, where they would take up Bible translation among the nation’s indigenous peoples. To gain access to Mexico, Townsend established SIL as a scientific and humanitarian organization. Since a number of highly placed Mexican government officials were eager to employ SIL’s linguistic expertise in indigenous language development, they permitted SIL to enter Mexico under government sponsorship as a scientific organization, while also allowing its missionary-linguists to pursue Bible translation. SIL was not the type of missionary institution that most North American evangelicals would easily understand or support. Therefore WBT was created to relate to evangelicals at home as an expressly religious mission. The WBT-SIL combination was an elegant solution to the thorny problem of relating to two entirely 4 different publics. If the dual strategy was ingenious, it was nonetheless provocative. To more than a few observers, ranging from Christian fundamentalists to secular anthropologists, WBT-SIL was nothing more than a charade