“This is your friend, Elisabeth Elliot“….
If you could name just one woman as the most influential evangelical Protestant “saint” since World War 2, Elisabeth Elliot would probably be her.
Elisabeth Elliot was the wife of martyred missionary, Jim Elliot, who along with four other men, died in their attempt to share the Gospel with Ecuador’s reclusive Waorani tribe in the 1950s. After her husband’s death, heavily publicized by Henry Luce’s LIFE magazine, Elisabeth wrote the evangelical classics, Through Gates of Splendor (1957) and Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (1958), catapulting her to be one of the most sought after authors and speakers in the evangelical publishing and speaking world.1
One of the biographies by Ellen Vaughn, about Elisabeth Elliot, which I read for this Veracity blog post series. Becoming Elisabeth Elliot covers the early years of Elisabeth’s life.
Before she died in 2015, Elisabeth Elliot had been a regular speaker at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s national conferences. In fact, in the 1970s, she was the first woman to be highlighted as a plenary speaker at the Urbana Missions conference, which InterVarsity holds every three years for college students. Her 1984 Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under God’s Control influenced the courtship movement popularized particularly in the 1990’s. Elliot was also a staple in the world of evangelical radio, with her syndicated “Gateway to Joy” program, which ran for 13 years. Elliot was practically minded in her teaching, and yet an intellectual at the same time.
My wife still listens to daily reruns of “Gateway to Joy” on the Bible Broadcasting Network. The tag line in each episode is permanently etched in my mind: “This is your friend, Elisabeth Elliot.”
Fascinatingly complex, Elisabeth Elliot was both an inspirational and polarizing figure. She championed the cause of missionary work, a direct influence on me as I read Shadow of the Almighty back in my college days, a recollection of her first husband and missionary, Jim Elliot. I marveled at the courage and conviction of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot, their mutual heart to reach lost people with the Good News of Jesus, and their willingness to do difficult things for the sake of following Christ.
One of Jim Elliot’s quotes was, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose,” from a journal entry Elisabeth preserved and shared to readers as an author of more than 30 books. She was a profound influence on the lives of many evangelical thought leaders, like Joni Eareckson Tada, and Timothy and Kathy Keller. In her later years, she regularly spoke at homeschooling conferences and Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles events. A young author, Josh Harris, wrote the 1990s evangelical blockbuster I Kissed Dating Goodbye, with a prominent endorsement given by Elliot, one of the primary texts in that decade promoting “purity culture.”
Elliot’s legacy is still revered in many evangelical circles, but this legacy has since come under scrutiny, particularly among younger and more disillusioned readers. Controversially, Josh Harris has since renounced his Christian faith and persuaded the publisher to stop selling copies of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Harris had become convinced that Elliot’s theology, which promoted “purity culture,” was severely misguided. Bill Gothard, once a well-sought-out resource person for Christian homeschoolers, was forced to step down from Christian ministry, due to accusations about sexual harassment and grooming. Undoubtedly both attractive and controversial, Elisabeth Elliot’s life was anything but boring.
Elisabeth Elliot was a household name for about 50 years for many American Christians until her radio broadcast ended in the early 2000’s. Yet despite her influence, there are still many Christian young people growing up today who know nothing about Elisabeth Elliot.2
It is a complicated legacy, but one worth telling, acknowledging that Elisabeth Elliot was a remarkable, exemplary Christian figure, while still possessing very human faults.
Veracity 