This book takes as its starting point “the defining missionary narrative for American evangelicals during the second half of the twentieth century” (2): the 1956 killing of five American men attempting to make contact with the Waorani people of Amazonian Ecuador. The men, sent by a group of nondenominational faith missions, were inspired by the longtime romance of rugged jungle service and the drive to give witness to Jesus before an uncontacted indigenous group. They coordinated efforts to make an incursion among this indigenous group known then by the derisive term “aucas” (savages), who were much feared for their reputation for vengeance killings. One of the missionaries, Jim Elliot, left a line in his diary that would become a widely circulated inspirational “call to radical Christian commitment”: “‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose’” (10). In losing their lives, Elliot and his colleagues provided a narrative of martyrdom that stirred the imaginations of the swelling ranks of evangelicals, who famously broadcast their newfound cultural influence at Billy Graham's Madison Square Garden crusade the year after the deaths.
Long's careful reconstruction of both the event and the cultural narrative surrounding it animates the complex story of missionary endeavors among the Waorani that follows. The killings did not close a chapter but began decades of mission. Much of the volume places focus on work carried out under the auspices of the Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL), which, in conjunction with its partner organization Wycliffe Bible Translators, sent personnel to master the Wao language, a linguistic isolate, with an intended end of creating a translation of the New Testament. Two figures with interknit biographies emerge as central actors in the saga: Rachel Saint and Dayomæ. The former was a strong-willed American staff member of the SIL and the sister of one of the men killed in 1956. She held decisive control over the administration of mission activity until she was forced into retirement in the late 1970s. The latter was an equally strong-willed Wao convert to Christianity who provided SIL personnel entrée into the settlement of her family clan as she embraced the role of “Bible woman” and mission interlocutor. The two women were critical in mediating the encounters created by the growing encroachment of outsiders on Waorani territory.
Transformations to Waorani culture that accompanied the flurry of missionary activity included the growth of Christianity and decline of deadly vengeance practices among a significant number of clan groupings, devastating contact illnesses, and the inexorable march of oil companies bringing civil infrastructure and expropriating resources from the Amazon. The last of these occurrences prompted coercive territorial relocations of the Waorani that were in many regards administered by mission personnel. Amid anticolonial movements of the 1970s, scrutiny of the aims of U.S. mission organizations—which operated in theory as endeavors to serve the nonsectarian ends of education and communications but in practice remained primarily committed to evangelization—brought an end to the concession-type arrangements the Ecuadorian government created for the SIL working in Waorani settlements.
Long's exhaustive research details mission projects that surrounded and came after those of the SIL (including Roman Catholic efforts), as well as the broader contexts of Ecuadorian politics and the transnational U.S. mission imagination. While the various groups of missioners Long covers may have shared with their forbearers the basic aim of making disciples of all nations, the efforts documented here offer evidence of larger transformations in the field of global evangelization over the mid- and late twentieth century. This can be seen in the shift from mainline to evangelical sending organizations, from amateur to academic training for missioners, from steamer lines and handwritten correspondence to radio and air transport as the infrastructure of evangelization, and from cultural transformation to cultural preservation as the envisioned goal guiding evangelistic labors. The latter chapters of the book address topics of particular relevance at the turn of the twenty-first century, outlining the impact of indigenous rights movements, environmental activism, and ecotourism on Waorani people and Wao culture.
The book occupies a distinct place in the scholarly literature. Unlike the output of the popular evangelical press, it is not a hagiographic account of the heroic efforts of missionaries and successful Christianization of the Waorani. Nor does it locate itself within an anthropological literature that often treats Christianity as a hostile incursion into unsullied and presumably “authentic” indigenous cultures. As extensive as this book is, it offers a limited account of the history and culture of the Waorani people, providing a richer narrative of the U.S. evangelical organizations that worked among them. It meanwhile keeps anticolonial critique at arm's length. There is a certain turning point well through the book's 350 pages of body text where the author allows criticism of Rachel Saint's techniques to come into full view. With the excuse of keeping the Waorani from despoliation by outside influences, Long relates, Saint established herself as “gatekeeper” and “power broker” through domineering and culturally disruptive means (203–204).
More generally, Long largely resists editorializing, instead adopting a “show, don't tell” approach for interpreting the value and impact of mission endeavors. Yet, moments of defensiveness about mission operations raise questions of whether the author gives a fair hearing to the many critics of the evangelical labors she narrates. Long has a particularly deft touch in elucidating American popular media coverage that thrust Waorani mission to the center of consciousness for U.S. evangelicals. Practitioners and advanced scholars of evangelical Christian mission will find much of value in the wide breadth and deep research of this monograph.
