God in the Rainforest

In January of 1956, five young evangelical missionaries were speared to death by a band of the Waorani people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Two years later, two missionary women--the widow of one of the slain men and the sister of another--with the help of a Wao woman were able to establish peaceful relations with the same people who had killed their loved ones. The highly publicized deaths of the five men and the subsequent efforts to Christianize the Waorani quickly became the defining missionary narrative for American evangelicals during the second half of the twentieth century. God in the Rainforest traces the formation of this story and shows how Protestant missionary work among the Waorani came to be one of the missions most celebrated by Evangelicals and most severely criticized by anthropologists and others who accused missionaries of destroying the indigenous culture. Kathryn T. Long offers a study of the complexities of world Christianity at the ground level for indigenous peoples and for missionaries, anthropologists, environmentalists, and other outsiders. For the first time, Long brings together these competing actors and agendas to reveal one example of an indigenous people caught in the cross-hairs of globalization.

Kathryn Long is a former Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at Wheaton College. Her first book, The Revival of 1857-58: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening, was awarded the Brewer Prize for outstanding scholarship in church history by a first-time author from the American Society of Church History.

Acknowledgments Introduction I. A Missionary Legend Takes Shape, 1956-1959 Chapter 1 "Palm Beach" on the Curaray River Chapter 2 Impact on the Home Front II. Entry and a Reunion with Kin, 1956-1958 Chapter 3 Tensions and Competition Chapter 4 Dayumæ, Rachel, and Betty Chapter 5 An Invitation to Meet the Family III. Life in Tewæno, 1958-1966 Chapter 6 Peaceful Contact Chapter 7 A Parting of the Ways Chapter 8 The (Apparently) Idyllic Years IV. Pacification, 1967-1973 Chapter 9 Big Oil, Waorani Relocation, and Polio Chapter 10 Early Anti-Mission Sentiment V. Access, 1974-1982 Chapter 11 An Anthropologist Arrives Chapter 12 Breaking a Pattern of Dependence Chapter 13 Ethnocide: the SIL Response Chapter 14 Land, Literacy, and "Quichua-ization" Chapter 15 Catholics and the Waorani Chapter 16 Exit from Ecuador VI. Transitions, 1982-1994 Chapter 17 The New Testament in Wao tededo Chapter 18 The Aguarico Martyrs Chapter 19 David and Goliath Chapter 20 Saving the Rainforest Epilogue: The Twenty-first Century Maps Glossary Abbreviations Maps