An enduring superstar among some evangelical circles, Elisabeth Elliot remains unknown to many Christians. Best known for her writing and speaking about Christian courtship and family life, Elliot became internationally known through her missionary work in Ecuador in the 1950s.
Born Elisabeth Howard in 1926 in Brussels, Belgium, where her parents were missionaries, Elliot’s family moved back to the United States in her infancy. Later in life, Elliot spoke fondly of her parents’ Christian example and the loving home they created for her and her siblings.
She went on to attend Wheaton College where she met Jim Elliot, whom she would wed years later in Quinto, Ecuador. Wheaton, a liberal arts college born of the enthusiasm of evangelical abolitionists in the century before, inspired Elliot and many of her peers to prepare for missionary work. While at Wheaton, Elliot majored in ancient Greek with the hopes of translating the Bible.
Elliot and her husband separately made their way to Ecuador where they attempted to make contact and evangelize remote tribes in the Amazon. Apparently, one of the conditions of Jim’s proposal was that Elliot learn Ecuadorian Quichua language, a skill that she accomplished and utilized for several years. The Elliots wed in 1953 and welcomed their daughter Valerie the following year. In early 1956, Jim and four missionary companions ventured into eastern Ecuador to make contact with the Waoranis, also known as the Aucas, or savages. After an initial friendly encounter, the missionaries were unable to communicate or were perceived as a threat and all five men were killed.
In the face of immense grief at losing her young husband so suddenly, Elliot remained in Ecuador, and after meeting two Aucas women and learning the language of the tribe that killed her husband, Elliot prepared to go and evangelize. Elliot and her then three-year-old daughter, along with the sister of one of the other missionaries who had been killed, made contact with the tribe and lived with them for two years. Elliot recounted how challenging it was to live in the primitive huts without walls, continually without privacy among the people of such a different culture. According to some accounts, her diet consisted of barbecued monkey limbs and other local victuals.
Following her first husband’s death, Elliot wrote about the missionary experience and her husband’s legacy. Her words of forgiveness and Christian witness in Through the Gates of Splendor inspired a generation of evangelicals and made Elliot a household name in many Christian circles. Elliot’s old-fashioned forthrightness about the superiority of Christian culture, once taken for granted, now appears startling. She wrote about forgiving the men who undoubtedly felt justified in defending themselves by killing the missionaries, “The prayers of the widows themselves are for the Aucas. We look forward to the day when these savages will join us in Christian praise.”
In the years that followed her missionary work, Elliot and her daughter moved to New Hampshire and then Massachusetts. Elliot married Addison Leitch, professor of theology at Gordon Conwell Seminary. Four years later, Leitch was stricken with cancer and died. The experience involved immense physical suffering and was tremendously difficult for Elliot to endure as she tried to care for her husband. Throughout the long and difficult illness, Elliot later recounted, the intellectual theology her husband had studied (ironically the theology of suffering had been the focus of some of his work) become embodied and real. She said, “Throughout the ten months of watching him disintegrate I prayed for physical healing which I knew would have to be a miracle, and if that wasn’t possible I prayed that the Lord would give him peace. I really believe that God can give His peace no matter what the situation. And as far as I could tell God never gave him that peace until the last week of his life.”
After Leitch’s death, some sources say that Elliot took in two boarders. One, Walter Shepard, married Elliot’s daughter Valerie; the other, Lars Gren, became Elliot’s third husband. Elliot continued to write and speak until around 2004 when she began to suffer the effects of some form of dementia. The final decade of her life occurred largely out of the public eye. She passed away in 2015.
Over her the course of her life, Elliot wrote more than 20 books, many on topics like dating and Christian family life. She was a renowned speaker and appeared in many educational series. It’s intriguing to listen to a woman of such exotic and intense experience speak so eloquently about mundane, suburban life. Elliot seemed to be involved in her daughter’s life and was a part of the upbringing of her eight grandchildren. From this second-hand experience, and from meeting and conversing with Christian women all over the world, Elliot offers advice for creating and maintaining a happy and healthy home.
Steeped in the Bible, Elliot saw suffering in her life as God’s plan. After such painful experience losing two husbands, Elliot’s suffering became direct and personal in the end. Lars Gren said in an interview about his wife’s mental decline, “She accepted those things, [knowing] they were no surprise to God. It was something she would rather not have experienced, but she received it.”
In interviews with mainstream evangelicals, Elliot’s depth of thought seemed to far outstrip those around her. When faced with simplistic questions that lack a complex and meaningful theology, Elliot described what she experienced:
The profound and simple truth that God is God. When my husband Jim died, the Spirit of God brought to my mind the words: “I am the Lord!” Things which sound like platitudes become vital, living and powerful when you have to learn them in the bottom of the barrel, in dark tunnels. The lesson: “I am the Lord” ought to be one that we learn without going through deep waters, but apparently there isn’t any other way.
Her complexity of thought and personality are apparent. While expressing consistent hope, she described herself, like her brother, as a pessimist. She said, “My brother, Tom, is the champion pessimist in our family, although we’re all pretty good at it. His wife, Lovelace, told me once that when one of the children spills milk, to her it is only spilled milk. To Tom it raises all the cosmic questions in the universe.” Elliot shared this grim view yet spoke words of life that encouraged and brought hope to people around the world. Was she a hypocrite? No, rather, it seems, she was a woman who chose to live by hope though joyful optimism did not come naturally to her.
For thirteen years, Elliot hosted a twelve-minute daily radio program entitled “Gateway to Joy.” She opened each segment with the words, “You are loved with an everlasting love, that’s what the Bible says, and underneath are the everlasting arms. This is your friend, Elisabeth Elliot.” In many ways these words epitomize her ministry.
Elliot’s legacy is not without stain as she offered unreserved endorsement of the now-disgraced Joshua Harris’s foolish book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Harris did offer some insight into what is so attractive about Elliot. While still a Christian, he wrote about reading one of her books, “I guess a lot of people who read her writing would consider it all very backward and old-fashioned, but when I read it I can’t shake the sense that this woman had a real relationship with a glorious God. And then chose to cut the crap and take God seriously in every part of her life. I love that about her. I need her directness. I think our whole generation of evangelicals needs her directness.” Unfortunately, Harris ran from the directness and has sought shelter in euphemism and self-justification once again. But Elliot remains fiercely attractive in a way that only one who has suffered and sacrificed can be.
