This biography examines the life of a most unusual twentieth-century evangelical, Kenneth L. "Ken" Pike (1912-2000), who served with the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Pike began his missionary career as a Bible translator, but he went on to become a world-class linguist who made his mark on the science of linguistics and the study of indigenous languages around the world. Known among linguists and anthropologists for his theoretical contributions, this volume seeks to bring Pike to a wider audience by illuminating his life as a key evangelical figure, one who often broke with conventional evangelical constraints to pursue the life of the mind as a Christian intellectual and scholar. Here is a story of how one evangelical Christian man served the global church, the scientific community, and the world's indigenous peoples with his entire heart, soul, and mind.

Informed take on the amazing growth of a very unusual missionary organization The two-sided mission organization comprising Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics is a paradox that begs for an explanation. The Summer Institute has long been doing laudable linguistic, humanitarian work in many countries, while Wycliffe has been one of the largest, fastest growing, and most controversial Christian missionary enterprises in the world. In this wide-ranging study Boone Aldridge—a religious historian and twenty-year insider at WBT-SIL—looks back at the organization’s early years, from its inception in the 1930s to the death of its visionary founder, William Cameron Townsend, in 1982. He situates the iconic institution within the evolving landscape of mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism, examines its complex and occasionally confusing policies, and investigates the factors that led, despite persistent criticism from many sides, to its remarkable rise to prominence.

Informed take on the amazing growth of a very unusual missionary organization The two-sided mission organization comprising Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics is a paradox that begs for an explanation. The Summer Institute has long been doing laudable linguistic, humanitarian work in many countries, while Wycliffe has been one of the largest, fastest growing, and most controversial Christian missionary enterprises in the world. In this wide-ranging study Boone Aldridge--a religious historian and twenty-year insider at WBT-SIL--looks back at the organization's early years, from its inception in the 1930s to the death of its visionary founder, William Cameron Townsend, in 1982. He situates the iconic institution within the evolving landscape of mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism, examines its complex and occasionally confusing policies, and investigates the factors that led, despite persistent criticism from many sides, to its remarkable rise to prominence.