Elisabeth Howard Elliot, 1926-2015
Elisabeth Howard was born in Belgium in 1926 to missionary parents but grew up near Philadelphia. After attending public school and later Hampden DuBose Academy, a Christian boarding school in Florida, she enrolled at Wheaton College in 1944, majoring in Greek to prepare for missionary linguistic work. At Wheaton, she met fellow Greek major Jim Elliot, and the two began a relationship during her senior year. After graduation, Elisabeth pursued further training with Wycliffe Bible Translators and gained teaching and ministry experience in Alberta, Canada, Florida, and New York City, where she worked with the Plymouth Brethren’s publication Voices from the Vineyard in preparation for missionary service.
In 1952, Elisabeth and Jim each independently set out for missionary work in Ecuador, she among the Colorado Indians (Tsáchila) and he among the Quichua people. In 1953, they decided to marry and, after a flood destroyed part of Jim’s station at Shandia, they briefly worked together with the Quichua people in Puyupungu, before returning to Shandia in 1954. Their daughter, Valerie, was born in 1955. After Jim’s death in 1956 at the hands of the Waorani and the resulting international attention, Elisabeth wrote Through Gates of Splendor (1957) and Shadow of the Almighty (1958), to further narrate the sacrificial death of Jim Elliot and his fellow missionaries. Remaining in Ecuador, Elisabeth continued her mission work among the Quichua in Shandia until the fall of 1958, when she, Valerie, and Rachel Saint were invited by Dayuma and her Waorani kinsman to live among the very people who had killed her husband. While living with the Waorani, Elisabeth began work on a lexicon for the Wao language, setting the stage for the later translation of the Wao New Testament completed by Catherine Peeke and her colleagues.
After returning to the United States in 1963, Elisabeth settled in New Hampshire and channeled her experiences on the mission field into a prolific writing and public speaking ministry. Elisabeth’s books often explore the themes of discerning the will of God, perseverance through suffering, and the complexities of missionary service in titles like The Savage My Kinsman (1961), No Graven Image (1966), These Strange Ashes (1975), and Passion and Purity (1984). Elisabeth’s daily radio program, Gateway to Joy, aired for over a decade, reaching thousands of listeners across the country. After the death of her second husband, theologian Addison Leitch in 1973, she taught at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, MA. In 1977, she married Lars Gren, who became her collaborator and agent. Elisabeth Elliot remained a respected and influential voice in American evangelical discourse until her death in 2015.
