William Cameron Townsend
Encyclopedia
William Cameron Townsend (July 9, 1896 – April 23, 1982) was a prominent American Christian missionary whose ministry began in the early twentieth century. The organizations he founded, Wycliffe Bible Translators
and Summer Institute of Linguistics
(SIL International), both of which remain active and focused on producing translations of the Bible
in minority languages, and on facilitating literacy in minority languages.
The ethos
of these organizations is that once the Bible is available to a culture, the Christians
of that culture can become far more autonomous, and the locals should be the leaders of their church. Local Christians should be freed from depending on other organizations or cultures for training and leadership.
Not many sources report the details of William “Cam” Townsend before he began work as a foreign missionary. Born in 1896 into a lower-middle class family of Southern California
, Townsend attended Occidental College
in Los Angeles
but dropped out to serve several years as a salesman for the Los Angeles Bible House.
. After two years he joined the Central American Mission (CAM), a fundamentalist conglomeration and brainchild of some of the 19th century’s most renowned Protestant revivalists that had parceled Central America into various regions for evangelization. CAM advocated that the Millennial Kingdom of Peace would come after the Second Coming of Christ and viewed the foreign mission as necessary to bring the Word to any and all people possible before the turn of the millennium. Unlike his predecessors, Townsend did not deem social reform a wasted effort in this satanic world. He also noticed that CAM’s message, spread exclusively in Spanish, could not reach the monolingual majority of the indigenous population.
Townsend settled in a Cakchiquel
-speaking community on the coast called Sta. Catarina and over the next fourteen years learned the language to the point where he could translate the Bible. He also founded the Robinson Bible Foundation which, with generous financial backing from U.S. sources, built a center including a school, beds, medical clinic (supplied with effective western treatments for prevalent parasites like hookworm), electrical generator, a coffee processing plant, and agricultural supply store. During these years Townsend grew intimately concerned with the impoverished and excluded situation of the Latin American Indians, and the previous missionary practices which incorrectly or insufficiently addressed the indigenous people and culture.
As Townsend sought the roots of indigenous misery, he found them first in the mixed-race ‘ladino’ middlemen who acted as the sole economic and social portal to general society for monolingual indigenous communities and who were closely associated with stagnant Catholic
religion. These elites, he deduced, had a vested interest in maintaining the economic and social status quo, and therefore had no desire to improve the Indians’ education, literacy, or bilingualism, nor did they wish to inspire the values of self-improvement or capitalism.
Secondly, Townsend blamed Mesoamerican indigenous society itself. In the syncretic culture, he found the same types of oppression which European cultures imposed, but from the inside. Numerous saints required many days of festivals laden with the obligatory purchase and excessive consumption of food and alcohol. Modern healthcare scarcely reached most communities, which preferred spiritual ‘witchdoctors’ who mandated payment but, in his view, returned no effective care. Townsend thus viewed the Maya who surrounded him as trapped from both within and without, and he searched for an exit strategy, a way to break the mold.
Townsend’s fundamentalism posed conversion to Protestantism as the ultimate salvation for indigenous peoples, but he had to first confront the question of why the current missions did not attract many indigenous converts. The primary answer he found was that the illiterate monolinguals had no access to scripture. Many Indians could not read, and even those who could did not have the Bible in a language they could understand. Although syncretism reigned supreme in indigenous communities, the clergy refused Bible translation, fearing negative exegesis. Likewise Protestant missions like the Central American mission concentrated on ladino overseers as converts instead of indigenous subjects. Townsend’s superiors already showed signs of unease that he had adopted local practices, clothing, and language. Unmoved by their concerns, Townsend gradually formulated his plan and ideology which would later shape SIL.
In the end Townsend wanted indigenous-run, self-sufficient evangelical congregations. This goal, however, would not be permanently achievable without a significant restructuring of society, and the addition of various parallel programs to provide prerequisite knowledge and skills to the indigenous communities. The first two steps toward these congregations had to be a group of literate individuals with a Bible in their native tongue. Thirdly, only the removal of the aforementioned cultural shackles and inculcation of a thoroughly Protestant mentality in the larger society could ensure the congregations’ eventual survival and expansion. Finally, always a deft socialite and, at this point, a dabbler in politics, Townsend knew that many of Latin America’s Catholic statesmen and newly liberal governments would require significant convincing to even allow Protestant missionaries to operate within their borders, particularly with aboriginal populations, who had always been politically sensitive. Townsend knew whatever organization he might create had to address all of these problems.
The solution which Townsend eventually found was so simple as to be encompassed in a single word: linguistics. The emergent science, freshly invigorated by the first widespread publications of German Edward Sapir
(1921) and American Leonard Bloomfield
(1933), could provide Townsend’s religious goals with the scientific credibility and prestige he would need to convince governmental officials of his organization’s legitimacy. Having already used some of Sapir’s less Eurocentric perspectives in his deciphering of Kaqchikel, Townsend could use linguistic theory to train evangelicals in the United States to translate scripture into many indigenous languages. Once given access to the communities they would set up literacy programs, provide modern healthcare supplies, and subtly begin attracting local evangelical converts as linguistic informants to begin translation work. Conversion and translation would thus happen as only a part of a larger reformulation of society which would win praise in the community, and at the governmental level. Townsend hoped that by importing an ideology of capitalistic individualism, western technology, and modern medicine, he could insert the missionary/linguists into the place of the old ladino middlemen as the preferred brokers of goods and services from larger society. From this powerful position the evangelicals could reform indigenous society and create a community of entrepreneurial, bilingually educated, and above all, Protestant individuals capable of self-advancement in their national society.
As this ideology fermented, Townsend’s mind had already begun to envision where he would first send his linguists, and one area called above all: the vast and unexplored Amazon basin
. To his fellows in the Central American Mission his plan seemed extravagant, grandiose, and unrealistic. For centuries the tribes of the Amazon had been targeted by Jesuits, slave catchers, rubber tappers, and even some military operations, but remained elusive, eternally able to rely on the size and inhospitability of their native terrain to blend and forever maintain isolation. Townsend proposed using airplanes, and a radio network to contact and concentrate tribes, but the complexity and cost of such an operation baffled less technologically minded missionaries. Individual Bible translations would be incredibly labor-intensive and reach only tiny populations, some opined, and finally the concept of indigenous-run congregations in native tongues ran counter to the generally paternalistic practices of fundamentalists in Guatemala.
Sometime between 1931 and 1933 Townsend decided to use Mexico
as the initial operational theater instead of the Amazon. The first piece fell into place in Panajachel
, Guatemala, when he met by chance with Moisés Sáenz, Mexican Under-Secretary of Education, who was vacationing and visiting rural schools. Both missionary-schooled Presbyterians with common ideologies, the two became friends and Sáenz left a letter expressing his commendation of Townsend’s work in Guatemala and his welcome in Mexico. Sick with tuberculosis
and beleaguered by the continued and overwhelming lack of support for his ideas in Guatemala, Townsend traveled back to the United States in 1932 and sought the help of L. L. Letgers, the field secretary of the Pioneer Mission Agency and a trusted friend. At a prayer meeting in August 1933 “‘the Lord revealed his will for…Mr. W. C. Townsend of Guatemala to make a trip to Mexico City for the purpose of meeting with the government to get permission for sending men into the Indian tribes to learn the languages and to translate the Bible into those Indian tongues.’” Just two months later, a letter from Sáenz arrived urging the two men, Townsend and Letgers, to visit Mexico.
. Realizing this, Townsend and Letgers devised a plan to enter Mexico without missionary credentials. Having officially divorced themselves of all formal ties including the Central American Mission, the two men used Sáenz’s letter to cross the border and made their way to Mexico City. This instance represents the first of what later critical authors would view as ‘deceits,’ whereby the two men concealed their deeper goal behind a veil of government sanctity. In this case, the concept behind the anti-clerical 1917 Mexican constitution was to reduce the muscle of the Catholic hierarchy in state affairs, no so much to quell worship among the people. By reducing their religious profile without sacrificing belief, therefore, Townsend and Letgers in fact acted in accordance with the law and its intent.
The second key to success in Mexico was Townsend’s understanding of the importance of personal connections. His charm and keen attitude opened doors to many important figures. During the first trip Townsend and Letgers followed a trail of names, some friendly Americans, others Mexican officials, from dinner parties to embassy lounges and touring rural schools. Key among these was Rafael Ramírez, director of rural education in the Ministry of Public Education (SEP). Still cautious of rejection, Townsend only indirectly and subtly referenced the subject religion and Bible translation in his conversations, and always left the officials enough room for plausible deniability.
The third and final key to the organization’s founding was the congruence of Townsend’s proposed plan with a body of intellectual thought that had already begun to circulate in the Mexican intelligentsia called indigenismo. Many Mexican intellectuals had begun to believe in the gradual incorporation of indigenous cultures into the national one through greater understandings in anthropology and linguistics. Advances in these areas would lead to more effective systems of cultural and linguistic integration (particularly bilingual education) and the eventual absorption of indigenous cultures into the national one. The great similarity between indigenismo and Townsend’s ideology was demonstrated by what SIL members refer to as the ‘miracle of Tetelcingo.’
On January 21, 1936, President Lázaro Cárdenas, known for his extensive visitations to the countryside, paid a visit to a small town just south of Mexico City where Townsend had set up a project. The reasons for this visit, and for the resulting friendship between the two men, are many and complex. Most importantly, both men shared a singular concern for the indigenous people of Mexico. Townsend’s program which combined “linguistic research, practical help, and spiritual guidance” also meshed well with Cárdenas’ general preoccupation with removing the Catholic influence from rural and indigenous education. Simultaneously Cárdenas probably understood that as an American Townsend himself had certain attractive qualities and connections that could help assuage the festering disapproval of his government in the United States, in part derived from derogatory Catholic propaganda. Independent of the reasons for the visit, the result was the sound endorsement of Mexico’s President. The events of the previous twenty years of Townsend’s life came to a head at this meeting which solidified the welcome of his linguists in Mexico for several years to come.
Townsend and Letgers opened Camp Wycliffe in Arkansas
in the summer of 1934. Named for the first translator of the entire English New Testament
, the camp was designed to train young people in basic linguistics and translation methods. Two students enrolled. The following year, after a training session with five men in attendance (including Kenneth Pike who would become a lifelong friend and well-known linguist), Townsend took his students to Mexico to begin field work. Even despite the warm welcome afforded the translators in Mexico, Townsend could not take any extra risk, and still dreamed of his operation’s expansion into the Amazon and beyond. He knew that such a blatantly religious name would be a liability when dealing with most governments and negotiating what he would still present as purely linguistic and anthropological ventures.From this small beginning has grown the worldwide ministry of the Summer Institute of Linguistics
(SIL), Wycliffe Bible Translators
, Wycliffe Associates, and the technical and logistics partner of SIL known as JAARS.
First, linguistics slowly became a more popular field of study, and standards for academic prestige were gradually raised. Townsend’s Spanish-Kaqchikel Bible never circulated widely even in Guatemala, and despite his enthusiasm for linguistics, the field would remember him as only “a devoted but linguistically naïve missionary.”
In Townsend’s mind, however, SIL’s religious goals necessitated scientific understanding and thus he endeavored to create truly competent field linguists with trustworthy credentials.
During the early years academic prowess received less priority than strategic expansion, which implied quickly training large numbers of recruits. Townsend had envisioned the organization primarily as a widespread mechanism of Bible translation. His adroit salesmanship and acute sense for politics had made this vision a success. A minority group, with Pike as a figurehead, pursued the science of language deeper than pure Bible translation. These figures filled the upper tiers of SIL’s academic hierarchy, but, at first, held relatively little sway in the operations of the organization. As the discipline of linguistics grew steadily through the 1960s and 70s, however, academic prestige in the field became a more sought-after commodity and thus more difficult to attain.
Second, a fiery controversy, composed of two separate but related components, engulfed SIL between approximately 1971 and 1981. Firstly, attention both in the U.S. and abroad shoved the increasingly high-profile organization into the international spotlight and, particularly in the halls of U.S. academia, infused the very name SIL with an air of notoriety. Backed by fresh perspectives in anthropology, critics left few facets of the Institute unscathed. Secondly, during the same period many governments argued internally over whether to continue supporting SIL with state contracts, and furthermore whether to allow SIL presence within their borders. For a variety of reasons, some well-founded and others seriously misguided, several states opted to sever ties with SIL through various tactics including outright expulsion, contract cancellations, and non-renewals. The upshot of these circumstances was that SIL could no longer work comfortably without significant competition from new actors offering similar services with comparable terms of exchange to both governments and indigenous people.
The controversy period forced members and leadership to reconsider their strategies and methodology. SIL members, particularly Kenneth Pike, had identified the risks and downsides of the Townsendian approach years earlier. Outside pressure coincided with internal stresses caused by the logistical difficulties of maintaining the JAARS network of bases, particularly in the Amazon. These forces allowed some inside of SIL to push through needed reform against stodgy opposition, or in the words of David Stoll, “the nerds’ vote finally won out over the flyboys’.” As a result of these power shifts Townsend's ideology was adapted and post controversy, he played a more passive, fatherly role.
Wycliffe Bible Translators
Wycliffe Bible Translators is an interdenominational organization mandated to making a translation of the Bible in every living language in the world, especially for cultures with little existing Christian influence. Wycliffe was founded in 1942 by William Cameron Townsend and is associated with...
and Summer Institute of Linguistics
SIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
(SIL International), both of which remain active and focused on producing translations of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
in minority languages, and on facilitating literacy in minority languages.
The ethos
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...
of these organizations is that once the Bible is available to a culture, the Christians
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
of that culture can become far more autonomous, and the locals should be the leaders of their church. Local Christians should be freed from depending on other organizations or cultures for training and leadership.
Not many sources report the details of William “Cam” Townsend before he began work as a foreign missionary. Born in 1896 into a lower-middle class family of Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
, Townsend attended Occidental College
Occidental College
Occidental College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887, Occidental College, or "Oxy" as it is called by students and alumni, is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges on the West Coast...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
but dropped out to serve several years as a salesman for the Los Angeles Bible House.
Work in Guatemala
Under the auspices of the Los Angeles Bible House he sailed to Guatemala in 1917 to sell Spanish Bibles near AntiguaAntigua
Antigua , also known as Waladli, is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was named by Christopher Columbus after an icon in Seville Cathedral, Santa Maria de la...
. After two years he joined the Central American Mission (CAM), a fundamentalist conglomeration and brainchild of some of the 19th century’s most renowned Protestant revivalists that had parceled Central America into various regions for evangelization. CAM advocated that the Millennial Kingdom of Peace would come after the Second Coming of Christ and viewed the foreign mission as necessary to bring the Word to any and all people possible before the turn of the millennium. Unlike his predecessors, Townsend did not deem social reform a wasted effort in this satanic world. He also noticed that CAM’s message, spread exclusively in Spanish, could not reach the monolingual majority of the indigenous population.
Townsend settled in a Cakchiquel
Kaqchikel language
The Kaqchikel, or Kaqchiquel, language is an indigenous Mesoamerican language and a member of the Quichean–Mamean branch of the Mayan languages family. It is spoken by the indigenous Kaqchikel people in central Guatemala...
-speaking community on the coast called Sta. Catarina and over the next fourteen years learned the language to the point where he could translate the Bible. He also founded the Robinson Bible Foundation which, with generous financial backing from U.S. sources, built a center including a school, beds, medical clinic (supplied with effective western treatments for prevalent parasites like hookworm), electrical generator, a coffee processing plant, and agricultural supply store. During these years Townsend grew intimately concerned with the impoverished and excluded situation of the Latin American Indians, and the previous missionary practices which incorrectly or insufficiently addressed the indigenous people and culture.
As Townsend sought the roots of indigenous misery, he found them first in the mixed-race ‘ladino’ middlemen who acted as the sole economic and social portal to general society for monolingual indigenous communities and who were closely associated with stagnant Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
religion. These elites, he deduced, had a vested interest in maintaining the economic and social status quo, and therefore had no desire to improve the Indians’ education, literacy, or bilingualism, nor did they wish to inspire the values of self-improvement or capitalism.
Secondly, Townsend blamed Mesoamerican indigenous society itself. In the syncretic culture, he found the same types of oppression which European cultures imposed, but from the inside. Numerous saints required many days of festivals laden with the obligatory purchase and excessive consumption of food and alcohol. Modern healthcare scarcely reached most communities, which preferred spiritual ‘witchdoctors’ who mandated payment but, in his view, returned no effective care. Townsend thus viewed the Maya who surrounded him as trapped from both within and without, and he searched for an exit strategy, a way to break the mold.
Townsend’s fundamentalism posed conversion to Protestantism as the ultimate salvation for indigenous peoples, but he had to first confront the question of why the current missions did not attract many indigenous converts. The primary answer he found was that the illiterate monolinguals had no access to scripture. Many Indians could not read, and even those who could did not have the Bible in a language they could understand. Although syncretism reigned supreme in indigenous communities, the clergy refused Bible translation, fearing negative exegesis. Likewise Protestant missions like the Central American mission concentrated on ladino overseers as converts instead of indigenous subjects. Townsend’s superiors already showed signs of unease that he had adopted local practices, clothing, and language. Unmoved by their concerns, Townsend gradually formulated his plan and ideology which would later shape SIL.
In the end Townsend wanted indigenous-run, self-sufficient evangelical congregations. This goal, however, would not be permanently achievable without a significant restructuring of society, and the addition of various parallel programs to provide prerequisite knowledge and skills to the indigenous communities. The first two steps toward these congregations had to be a group of literate individuals with a Bible in their native tongue. Thirdly, only the removal of the aforementioned cultural shackles and inculcation of a thoroughly Protestant mentality in the larger society could ensure the congregations’ eventual survival and expansion. Finally, always a deft socialite and, at this point, a dabbler in politics, Townsend knew that many of Latin America’s Catholic statesmen and newly liberal governments would require significant convincing to even allow Protestant missionaries to operate within their borders, particularly with aboriginal populations, who had always been politically sensitive. Townsend knew whatever organization he might create had to address all of these problems.
The solution which Townsend eventually found was so simple as to be encompassed in a single word: linguistics. The emergent science, freshly invigorated by the first widespread publications of German Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
(1921) and American Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. His influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural linguistics...
(1933), could provide Townsend’s religious goals with the scientific credibility and prestige he would need to convince governmental officials of his organization’s legitimacy. Having already used some of Sapir’s less Eurocentric perspectives in his deciphering of Kaqchikel, Townsend could use linguistic theory to train evangelicals in the United States to translate scripture into many indigenous languages. Once given access to the communities they would set up literacy programs, provide modern healthcare supplies, and subtly begin attracting local evangelical converts as linguistic informants to begin translation work. Conversion and translation would thus happen as only a part of a larger reformulation of society which would win praise in the community, and at the governmental level. Townsend hoped that by importing an ideology of capitalistic individualism, western technology, and modern medicine, he could insert the missionary/linguists into the place of the old ladino middlemen as the preferred brokers of goods and services from larger society. From this powerful position the evangelicals could reform indigenous society and create a community of entrepreneurial, bilingually educated, and above all, Protestant individuals capable of self-advancement in their national society.
As this ideology fermented, Townsend’s mind had already begun to envision where he would first send his linguists, and one area called above all: the vast and unexplored Amazon basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
. To his fellows in the Central American Mission his plan seemed extravagant, grandiose, and unrealistic. For centuries the tribes of the Amazon had been targeted by Jesuits, slave catchers, rubber tappers, and even some military operations, but remained elusive, eternally able to rely on the size and inhospitability of their native terrain to blend and forever maintain isolation. Townsend proposed using airplanes, and a radio network to contact and concentrate tribes, but the complexity and cost of such an operation baffled less technologically minded missionaries. Individual Bible translations would be incredibly labor-intensive and reach only tiny populations, some opined, and finally the concept of indigenous-run congregations in native tongues ran counter to the generally paternalistic practices of fundamentalists in Guatemala.
Sometime between 1931 and 1933 Townsend decided to use Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
as the initial operational theater instead of the Amazon. The first piece fell into place in Panajachel
Panajachel
Panajachel is a town in the southwestern Guatemalan Highlands, in the department of Sololá. It serves as the administrative centre for the surrounding municipality of the same name. The altitude is...
, Guatemala, when he met by chance with Moisés Sáenz, Mexican Under-Secretary of Education, who was vacationing and visiting rural schools. Both missionary-schooled Presbyterians with common ideologies, the two became friends and Sáenz left a letter expressing his commendation of Townsend’s work in Guatemala and his welcome in Mexico. Sick with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and beleaguered by the continued and overwhelming lack of support for his ideas in Guatemala, Townsend traveled back to the United States in 1932 and sought the help of L. L. Letgers, the field secretary of the Pioneer Mission Agency and a trusted friend. At a prayer meeting in August 1933 “‘the Lord revealed his will for…Mr. W. C. Townsend of Guatemala to make a trip to Mexico City for the purpose of meeting with the government to get permission for sending men into the Indian tribes to learn the languages and to translate the Bible into those Indian tongues.’” Just two months later, a letter from Sáenz arrived urging the two men, Townsend and Letgers, to visit Mexico.
The Initial Foray
With the Mexican Revolution in full swing, successive liberal governments systematically and sometimes violently targeted the Catholic Church as one of many societal ills which brought Mexico to its knees and submitted the nation to the will of the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Realizing this, Townsend and Letgers devised a plan to enter Mexico without missionary credentials. Having officially divorced themselves of all formal ties including the Central American Mission, the two men used Sáenz’s letter to cross the border and made their way to Mexico City. This instance represents the first of what later critical authors would view as ‘deceits,’ whereby the two men concealed their deeper goal behind a veil of government sanctity. In this case, the concept behind the anti-clerical 1917 Mexican constitution was to reduce the muscle of the Catholic hierarchy in state affairs, no so much to quell worship among the people. By reducing their religious profile without sacrificing belief, therefore, Townsend and Letgers in fact acted in accordance with the law and its intent.
The second key to success in Mexico was Townsend’s understanding of the importance of personal connections. His charm and keen attitude opened doors to many important figures. During the first trip Townsend and Letgers followed a trail of names, some friendly Americans, others Mexican officials, from dinner parties to embassy lounges and touring rural schools. Key among these was Rafael Ramírez, director of rural education in the Ministry of Public Education (SEP). Still cautious of rejection, Townsend only indirectly and subtly referenced the subject religion and Bible translation in his conversations, and always left the officials enough room for plausible deniability.
The third and final key to the organization’s founding was the congruence of Townsend’s proposed plan with a body of intellectual thought that had already begun to circulate in the Mexican intelligentsia called indigenismo. Many Mexican intellectuals had begun to believe in the gradual incorporation of indigenous cultures into the national one through greater understandings in anthropology and linguistics. Advances in these areas would lead to more effective systems of cultural and linguistic integration (particularly bilingual education) and the eventual absorption of indigenous cultures into the national one. The great similarity between indigenismo and Townsend’s ideology was demonstrated by what SIL members refer to as the ‘miracle of Tetelcingo.’
On January 21, 1936, President Lázaro Cárdenas, known for his extensive visitations to the countryside, paid a visit to a small town just south of Mexico City where Townsend had set up a project. The reasons for this visit, and for the resulting friendship between the two men, are many and complex. Most importantly, both men shared a singular concern for the indigenous people of Mexico. Townsend’s program which combined “linguistic research, practical help, and spiritual guidance” also meshed well with Cárdenas’ general preoccupation with removing the Catholic influence from rural and indigenous education. Simultaneously Cárdenas probably understood that as an American Townsend himself had certain attractive qualities and connections that could help assuage the festering disapproval of his government in the United States, in part derived from derogatory Catholic propaganda. Independent of the reasons for the visit, the result was the sound endorsement of Mexico’s President. The events of the previous twenty years of Townsend’s life came to a head at this meeting which solidified the welcome of his linguists in Mexico for several years to come.
Townsend and Letgers opened Camp Wycliffe in Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
in the summer of 1934. Named for the first translator of the entire English New Testament
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached...
, the camp was designed to train young people in basic linguistics and translation methods. Two students enrolled. The following year, after a training session with five men in attendance (including Kenneth Pike who would become a lifelong friend and well-known linguist), Townsend took his students to Mexico to begin field work. Even despite the warm welcome afforded the translators in Mexico, Townsend could not take any extra risk, and still dreamed of his operation’s expansion into the Amazon and beyond. He knew that such a blatantly religious name would be a liability when dealing with most governments and negotiating what he would still present as purely linguistic and anthropological ventures.From this small beginning has grown the worldwide ministry of the Summer Institute of Linguistics
SIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
(SIL), Wycliffe Bible Translators
Wycliffe Bible Translators
Wycliffe Bible Translators is an interdenominational organization mandated to making a translation of the Bible in every living language in the world, especially for cultures with little existing Christian influence. Wycliffe was founded in 1942 by William Cameron Townsend and is associated with...
, Wycliffe Associates, and the technical and logistics partner of SIL known as JAARS.
Peru
Kenneth Pike was the first SIL representative to visit Peru in late 1943. SIL signed a contract with the Peruvian Ministry of Education on June 28, 1945. In Peru and later expansions, Townsend “found [his] mission tailor-made to the needs of U.S. policymakers…American missionaries had always accompanied American businesses abroad, but the political climate in postwar Latin America gave Townsend’s new crop of missionary translators and educators a special appeal to U.S. ambassadors who were charged with securing markets and resources for the American economy.” 1942 also marked Peru’s victory against Ecuador in a conflict concerning the two countries’ oil-rich Amazonian borderland. President Manuel Odría, Prado’s successor, supported Townsend’s aviation-based plan as a means of bringing military expertise and equipment from the U.S. As firm nationalists, both presidents strongly believed in the value of the Amazon for its natural resources and possible colonization, and both also agreed that the SIL would be the most important organization to introduce the indigenous population to the new realities of western expansion, all while providing a nascent infrastructure.The Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS)
By 1948 Townsend created the third important corporation tied to SIL: the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service. Until this point operations were held together shakily only by a jeep and several two-way radios provided by the U.S. Embassy. A U.S. Army Air Corp Mission pilot Larry Montgomery contacted Townsend in 1946 offering a Grumman Duck, a navy amphibious plane, for a cheap price. The plane proved its worth and even served as the sole rescue transport for a crashed Peruvian military plane in 1947, but required far too hefty of an investment to achieve the potential which Townsend envisioned. Furthermore, a small fleet would require a hanger, runway, mechanics, more pilots, fuel, and parts. The missing piece was funds. Townsend sought money successfully by soliciting several wealthy evangelicals including the son and heir of Quaker Oats founder Henry P. Crowell, and thus JAARS was born.Adapting Management
Townsend remained active in SIL as the founder and organizational leader for many years. His power gradually ebbed, however, under the influence of two general trends:First, linguistics slowly became a more popular field of study, and standards for academic prestige were gradually raised. Townsend’s Spanish-Kaqchikel Bible never circulated widely even in Guatemala, and despite his enthusiasm for linguistics, the field would remember him as only “a devoted but linguistically naïve missionary.”
In Townsend’s mind, however, SIL’s religious goals necessitated scientific understanding and thus he endeavored to create truly competent field linguists with trustworthy credentials.
During the early years academic prowess received less priority than strategic expansion, which implied quickly training large numbers of recruits. Townsend had envisioned the organization primarily as a widespread mechanism of Bible translation. His adroit salesmanship and acute sense for politics had made this vision a success. A minority group, with Pike as a figurehead, pursued the science of language deeper than pure Bible translation. These figures filled the upper tiers of SIL’s academic hierarchy, but, at first, held relatively little sway in the operations of the organization. As the discipline of linguistics grew steadily through the 1960s and 70s, however, academic prestige in the field became a more sought-after commodity and thus more difficult to attain.
Second, a fiery controversy, composed of two separate but related components, engulfed SIL between approximately 1971 and 1981. Firstly, attention both in the U.S. and abroad shoved the increasingly high-profile organization into the international spotlight and, particularly in the halls of U.S. academia, infused the very name SIL with an air of notoriety. Backed by fresh perspectives in anthropology, critics left few facets of the Institute unscathed. Secondly, during the same period many governments argued internally over whether to continue supporting SIL with state contracts, and furthermore whether to allow SIL presence within their borders. For a variety of reasons, some well-founded and others seriously misguided, several states opted to sever ties with SIL through various tactics including outright expulsion, contract cancellations, and non-renewals. The upshot of these circumstances was that SIL could no longer work comfortably without significant competition from new actors offering similar services with comparable terms of exchange to both governments and indigenous people.
The controversy period forced members and leadership to reconsider their strategies and methodology. SIL members, particularly Kenneth Pike, had identified the risks and downsides of the Townsendian approach years earlier. Outside pressure coincided with internal stresses caused by the logistical difficulties of maintaining the JAARS network of bases, particularly in the Amazon. These forces allowed some inside of SIL to push through needed reform against stodgy opposition, or in the words of David Stoll, “the nerds’ vote finally won out over the flyboys’.” As a result of these power shifts Townsend's ideology was adapted and post controversy, he played a more passive, fatherly role.
External links
- Calvin Hibbard: William Cameron Townsend Stimulator of linguistic research among ethnic minorities and champion of their cultural dignity (official biography at the SIL website; the same biography is also on the Wycliffe website)
- Books and articles written by William Cameron Townsend