“In case your God is so mighty, why doesn’t he communicate my language?” So requested an indigenous man in Guatemala to William Cameron (Cam) Townsend (1896–1982) between WWI and WWII.1 Townsend had come to Guatemala promoting Bibles in Spanish, however many didn’t know the language or used it solely as a commerce language. So, Townsend modified course: he discovered the Cakchiquels’ language, devised an alphabet, analyzed the grammar, and translated the New Testomony.
We all know Townsend at present because the founding father of Wycliffe Bible Translators, the Summer season Institute of Linguistics (now SIL Worldwide), and Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (now JAARS). The founding ideas that led this “pioneering Protestant missionary”2 to launch these organizations nonetheless form Bible translation at present. That is the outstanding story of Wycliffe’s beginnings.3
Surprising Task
It was 1917, the yr the USA entered WWI. Cam was in his junior yr at Presbyterian-founded Occidental School in California and served as a corporal within the Nationwide Guard. By no means keen on lecturers, “he was stressed and pissed off with research that, to him, appeared disconnected from the lifetime of motion he craved,” writes Boone Aldridge. (Paradoxically, his lowest grades have been in Greek and Spanish.)4
After studying a biography of Hudson Taylor, missionary to China, whose pioneering religion missions deeply impressed him, Cam joined the Scholar Volunteer Motion (SVM), pledging, God prepared, to “grow to be a international missionary,” although on the time he couldn’t present thorough causes for becoming a member of.5 Then, in January 1917 he attended a particular missions assembly held by John R. Mott, chief of the SVM, who pleaded for college students to “evangelize the world on this era.” Listening to Mott cemented Cam’s want to have interaction in missions; shortly afterward, he discovered of the necessity for Bible salesmen in Central America, so he and school buddy Robbie Robinson utilized for the one-year place.
The Bible Home of Los Angeles despatched them to Guatemala, the place Cam would spend the following fifteen years, by no means finishing his school diploma.
Overcoming Linguistic Limitations
As soon as in Guatemala, Cam started promoting Spanish Bibles home by home and sharing the gospel, however he shortly found that many individuals spoke solely their mom tongue (Cakchiquel or one other native language).6 This prompted Cam to rethink his strategy.
The first issue main Cam to work particularly with the Cakchiquel was his shut friendship with Francisco (Frisco) Díaz, a 35-year-old Cakchiquel Christian who traveled with him as bag-carrier, cook dinner, and fellow evangelist. Frisco was one among few bilingual indigenous males, fluent in his mom tongue and Spanish. Frisco walked with Cam to villages all throughout Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, evangelizing and promoting Bibles in harsh circumstances — from mosquitos and malaria to threats by machete (and at the least one at gunpoint). By way of such harrowing gospel exploits on “a thousand trails,” Cam gained a profound admiration for Frisco as an equal, a colleague, and a buddy — at a time when individuals of Spanish heritage there usually disdained indigenous individuals.
In 1918, after “always” listening to Frisco share concerning the want for Jesus among the many Cakchiquel,7 Cam surveyed missionaries in Guatemala and located that the majority labored in Spanish; hardly any discovered the indigenous languages (all unwritten) because of the problem.8 The non secular wants and social plight of the oppressed indigenous inhabitants weighed closely on Cam. Frisco and Cam began dreaming of a faculty for indigenous youngsters in Frisco’s hometown of San Antonio, Guatemala.
In 1919, the work started. Having lately married Elvira Malmstrom, a stenographer from Chicago who was serving as secretary for a missionary in Guatemala Metropolis, Cam joined the Central American Mission (initials providentially CAM) as a common missionary. He and Elvira began studying the Cakchiquel language and opened the primary faculty for indigenous individuals in Guatemala (together with a clinic and rather more).
Now firmly engaged in ministry utilizing the Cakchiquel language, one other influential encounter would quickly direct Cam towards Bible translation.
Translation Work Begins
In January 1921, twelve expatriate missionaries gathered in Guatemala for a Common Indian Convention to debate ministry among the many indigenous peoples of Central America. In attendance have been the Townsends and Leonard Levingston Legters, a former missionary to the Comanche and Apache in Oklahoma who had come to Guatemala at Cam’s invitation.
The delegates reached two necessary choices, each controversial on the time: “Indians must be educated to evangelize their very own individuals” and “mother-tongue Bible translation was . . . an absolute necessity.”9 With a view to guarantee progress on these targets, they fashioned a brand new mission known as Latin American Indian Mission (LAIM) and instructed “Townsend and [Dr. Paul] Burgess to type a Bible translation committee.”10 The Townsends instantly set to work on translating the Gospel of Mark into Cakchiquel.
A sequence of hardships threatened to derail Cam from work with the Cakchiquel. His pricey path associate Frisco died of malaria on the inception of the college venture in 1919. His spouse Elvira skilled bodily and mental-health points that persevered all through their marriage. And Robbie, his school buddy and missionary colleague, drowned in 1922. Regardless of such challenges, he and the mother-tongue translators accomplished the New Testomony in 1929, dedicating it two years later. Cam even introduced the president of Guatemala with a particular leather-bound copy, an occasion that made front-page information.
Mission to Mexico
Cam’s subsequent section of ministry meant new alternatives past Guatemala. In 1934, he cofounded the Summer season Institute of Linguistics (SIL) with Legters and started work in a brand new discipline of service: Mexico.
A number of elements led the Townsends to transition out of Guatemala. Each Cam’s and Elvira’s well being started failing. It was the peak of the Nice Melancholy, and so they had little cash. And because the Cakchiquel congregations have been turning into self-supporting and self-governing, Cam had a rising want to serve in a brand new discipline.11
A brand new ministry alternative was additionally introduced to them. Whereas the Townsends have been in the USA on deputation in 1933, Legters met with Cam to debate the concept of beginning a linguistic coaching faculty. That they had exchanged a number of letters for the reason that convention in Guatemala twelve years prior and shared a ardour for Bible translation amongst indigenous peoples. Legters had additionally performed surveys amongst jungle tribes within the Amazon, and his experiences intrigued Cam. That yr, after a lot prayer by him and others, Cam sensed that God would have him “give his abilities and energies to Mexico.”12
Cam and Legters took a imaginative and prescient journey to Mexico that November, however they confronted opposition from the beginning. On the border, the Mexican immigration official denied them entry, stating, “Non secular missionaries are usually not permitted to enter.”13 However God amazingly opened the door. As the 2 males paused to wish and take into account their choices, Cam remembered a letter he had with him. In God’s sovereignty, two years prior, whereas in Guatemala, Cam had met Dr. Moisés Sáenz, then undersecretary of Mexico’s Division of Training and a “champion of Protestantism.”14 Just a few months after that assembly, Sáenz despatched him a a call for participation to come back do multifaceted work in Mexico much like Cam’s work in Guatemala.
Cam promptly introduced this letter to the Mexican border official, who granted him and Legters provisional entry.15 Throughout that preliminary journey to Mexico, Cam met key leaders who prompt he conduct rural academic analysis. He revealed the outcomes, and Mexican officers invited him again to conduct linguistic analysis.
Additional satisfied that God was at work, Cam organized “Camp Wycliffe” in Arkansas in the course of the summer time of 1934. He named the summer time linguistic faculty after John Wycliffe, translator of the primary full Bible in English. For a number of years following, he returned to Mexico with SIL trainees, getting into “as linguists somewhat than as missionaries.”16 Just a few years later, he acquired an surprising village go to from Mexico’s then president Lázaro Cárdenas, who gave Cam’s Bible translation work an enormous endorsement. The go to started a lifelong friendship that cemented a fruitful partnership with SIL.17
Lastly, in 1942, when SIL membership reached nearly 100, Cam based Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) to deal with the executive wants within the USA. WBT-SIL quickly expanded work all through the Americas, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa.
Pioneering Ministry
Cam was a visionary pioneer, a long time forward of his time. He devoted his life to indigenous peoples when no different full-time missionaries within the area have been doing so. It wasn’t till a few years later that mission businesses shifted technique from reaching continents and nations to reaching individuals teams.
In 1931, Cam revealed the diglot Cakchiquel-Spanish New Testomony, aiming to switch literacy in Cakchiquel to Spanish — a full twenty years earlier than UNESCO most well-liked bilingual over monolingual training.18
Cam additionally broke floor by making use of descriptive linguistic ideas somewhat than the extra frequent comparative linguistics of the day to assist achieve understanding of the complicated system of phrase formation in Cakchiquel. (Every verb had 100 thousand potential conjugations!)19
“Cam Townsend was a visionary pioneer, a long time forward of his time.”
As well as, Cam started dreaming of utilizing airplanes to succeed in peoples within the jungle when flying was nonetheless in its infancy, a imaginative and prescient he would notice via founding JAARS in 1948.20 It was not with out purpose that Billy Graham mentioned regarding Cam’s legacy, “No man on this century has . . . advance[d] the reason for Christian missions as [has] Cameron Townsend.”21
Scripture in Each Tongue
Within the ninety years since Cam’s first summer time institute of linguistics (1934), the tempo of Bible translation has accelerated amongst minority languages. A number of Bible-translation organizations now contribute, with WBT-SIL nonetheless taking part in a major function. In 2018, Wycliffe celebrated their one thousandth New Testomony. The primary 5 hundred languages took 67 years (1934–2001), however the second 5 hundred languages took solely 17 years (2002–2018).22
In 1935, the French Academy reportedly listed 2,700 totally different languages on the earth, which led Cam to purpose on the time that “a thousand languages . . . wanted the Scriptures.”23 Right now’s up to date checklist extra exactly identifies 7,396 totally different languages. One-sixth of those nonetheless require Bible translation to start (1,216). A 3rd have both a full Bible or a New Testomony (2,437). Over half at present have Bible-translation exercise in progress (3,801). This previous April, the Tz’utujil of Guatemala, a individuals group subsequent door to the Cakchiquel, turned the 744th language on the earth with a full Bible; their celebration was held the place Cam and Elvira lived a century in the past!
To assist end the duty, the Townsend-launched Bible-translation organizations are making advances in AI expertise, leveraging satellite tv for pc Web, serving as authorities for linguistic information and analysis, publishing on translation idea, and doing rather more. As well as, Wycliffe International Alliance was fashioned in 2011, bringing collectively over 100 organizations to collaborate in translating the Bible in language communities worldwide.
Cam’s fingerprints could be discovered on Bible translation work amongst 1000’s of language teams and numerous individuals around the globe. Such individuals embrace Chief Tariri in Peru, who discovered of God’s love in his language from Bible translators and turned from hate to “let God come into [his] coronary heart,”24 or Kwame in Ghana, the son of a witch physician, who discovered about Jesus from the translated phrase in Dilo, his mom tongue; he trusted in Jesus and is now a Bible-translation chief.
With Romans 15:20 in thoughts, Cam’s motto was “at all times pioneer.” That very same pioneer spirit is alive and effectively at present. The remaining process of Bible translation consists of a number of the least-reached, most under-resourced, most remoted individuals on the planet. A lot has been completed; a lot work stays.
