^* Our thanks go to Christine Beier, Jeff Good, Victor Manfredi, Lev Michael, Denny Moore, and especially Lise Dobrin for enlightening discussion of these issues. We are also grateful to Brian Joseph and to three anonymous Language referees for additional comments on this paper. These people of course bear no responsibility for the views expressed here.

¹ SIL's branches in various countries are also incorporated separately; these include such groups as SIL in Brazil, defined in Portuguese as the ‘International Society of Linguistics in Brazil’ (see http://www.sil.org/americas/brasil/PortHome.htm).

² Henceforth, we use ‘SIL’ as a cover term for the package of closely associated suborganizations dedicated to Bible translation, which include SIL International, Wycliffe Bible Translators, JAARS, and so forth.

³ SIL International reported over $41,000,000 in revenue on its 2005 tax return. Almost all of these funds are provided by Christian supporters of the Bible translation mission.

⁴ As evidence, one need only consider the output of many SIL members. While the degree of interest in linguistics naturally varies from one individual to the next, a typical result of decades of work is a translation of large portions of the Bible and a handful of linguistic publications. The material on the Cacua language of the Colombian Amazon is a case in point: since 1965, SIL linguist Marilyn Cathcart has produced a full translation of the New Testament (together with Lois Lowers and Cacua speakers, completed in 2005), as well as a significant portion of the Old Testament, but only four article-length academic publications on the language (Cathcart 1973, 1979, Cathcart & Levinsohn 1976, 1977). In other words, despite more than forty years of work on it, the Cacua language remains virtually undescribed in published sources.

⁵ SIL's founder, W. Cameron Townsend, put it this way: ‘You must be able to analyze these languages, master them, and make them bear God's message in an accurate way. Why, if you use the wrong verb form, the Indians say “Why, what is wrong with God? He can't talk our language right. He blunders” ‘ (Townsend 1960).

⁶ From http://www.wycliffe.net/v2025.shtml, retrieved July 2006.

⁷ The emergence of these values in Western social history (as opposed to Biblical mandate) is amply documented. On cleanliness and the home, see Frykman & Löfgren 1987. Thompson 1967 is a classic study on the history of work discipline. On the cultural assumptions inherent in Western commodity exchange, see Sahlins 1972. On sedentarization, see Scott 1998.

⁸ At http://www.sil.org/anthro/communitywork.htm, accessed April 2007.

⁹ See http://www.jesusfilm.org.

¹⁰ Factionalism may likewise be created by the proliferation of religious choices within a community. Whereas in Western society choice is taken for granted as an intrinsic value—the more of it the better—for some groups religious choice may be held to be a divisive and disruptive force. In some coastal Arapesh villages of Papua New Guinea, for example, people believe that the presence of multiple churches is undermining to a village's well-being and unity (Lise Dobrin, p.c.).

¹¹ Reports of profound cultural change brought about by SIL missionaries come from many parts of the world. Some of the most drastic are from Amazonia, where for a number of native groups SIL activity has led to the abandonment of traditional practices such as shamanism, natural healing, and native mythologies; has created dependencies on Western medicines and goods; and has produced factionalism between believers and unbelievers (see e.g. Dowdy 1994, 1995, Hefley & Hefley 1972, Hemming 2003, Hvalkof & Aaby 1981b, Larson & Dodds 1985, Smith 1981). Accounts such as these led to charges of ‘ethnocide’ leveled against SIL by a group of anthropologists in the 1970s (e.g. Moore 1979; cf. Olson, this collection).