Biography offers complex portrayal of world-famous missionary and author

Book review: ‘Elisabeth Elliot: A Life’ by Lucy S.R. Austin, ★★★★★

Book published by Crossway.

It has been about a year since I read Lucy S.R. Austin’s voluminous biography of Elisabeth Elliott, but of the dozens of books I’ve read in the past few years, it’s the one that most often causes me to ponder.

Strangely enough, of the biographies I’ve read, it’s the one I read starting out with the least knowledge of the subject. I knew who Elliot was by name, as she was one of the most influential women in American Christian evangelicalism during the second half of the 20th century. But I had missed her most famous moments as a matter of timing: During her first bout of fame, when she received worldwide recognition as a missionary who ministered to the South American indigenous tribe involved in the murder of her husband, I was too young to be following such news stories. And when she became a leader of the evangelical purity culture focusing on chastity in the 1980s and ’90s, I was well past the age to where most purity lessons were aimed.

Austin’s book, Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, was based on years of interest and research into Elliot’s family letters and personal journals. It weighs in at 624 pages, about double the length of an authorized biography published around the same time. To say that Austen was able to write an intimate portrayal — although one based primarily on Elliot’s own words — would be an understatement. Although there are times that the book becomes almost too detailed — do we really need to know what someone wore to an event in the 1960s? — it never failed to keep my interest.

In fact, it may be Austen’s attention to detail that has caused the book to stick with me as long as it has. For although it might be easy for the uninformed to see someone such as Elliot — a key figure in a movement that took a black-and-white attitude toward a subject as complex as human sexuality — as a stereotype, she never comes across as one throughout the book. She may the most complicated figure I have “met” in my life; I’m aware of her complexities perhaps even more than those of the people I live, work, play and worship with.¹

Many reviewers have made note of the fact that Elliot, with her traditional evangelical view of the necessity of a wife’s submission to her husband, was sharply critical of women who didn’t adopt adopt their husband’s last name — yet throughout professional career she was known by the last name of Elliot, the name she got from her first husband, without adopting the names of her second and third husbands. (Her first two marriages ended with her becoming a widow.)

But her defiance, even if that may not be the best word for that, of traditional gender roles went beyond that. She seemed to not be aware of the privilege she had because of her intellect and her education, and she constantly had a leadership role even if that wasn’t recognized by her titles. She simply wasn’t the submissive woman that many in the more conservative reaches of turn-of-the-21st-century evangelicalism would have had her be when they bought her books, listened to her radio show or sought her out at conferences.

And, deep inside, her private thoughts didn’t fit the evangelical mold of the times either. She at times wondered about the purpose of missionary work, even questioning whether it was appropriate to expect converts who had grown up in a far different culture than hers to adopt her faith’s norms on sexuality. She was troubled about matters of racial, economic and cultural privilege before “privilege” became a buzzword. Much of her life was marked by inner suffering and by a faith crisis — and this was decades before the term “faith crisis” had entered the evangelical vocabulary. And while she was highly influential in American evangelicalism, often she felt constrained or diminished by it. As Austen wrote:

She was upset by what seemed like lazy thinking and even intellectual dishonesty: Christian jargon, religious platitudes, packaging God into a neat box that could be taken out after luncheon and put away before the spring hat show. She felt she was expected to “further the ‘cause’ of missions,” even at the expense of telling the truth, that people wanted a hero to worship rather than a fellow pilgrim who would share what God was showing her on the journey.

And so it is that whenever I run into life’s complexities, when I wonder what is going on in the minds of the people I know, when I wonder whether I am living consistently with my values, when I wonder what God is thinking, I am reminded of Elisabeth Elliot. Somehow I think she would be pleased with that, even if her public mission was to encourage the living of a life that fits into a neat box.

1. Elliot isn’t the only person of complexity in the book. Its portrayal of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth’s first husband, the one who died in his efforts to share his faith with indigenous peoples who were all but unknown to the outside world, raises more questions than answers. He was hesitant to get married before having a sudden about-face, and the reasons are never clear. There has been speculation among some readers that Jim may have been gay — and in the 1950s, not just in evangelicalism but in American culture, it was common for gay men to marry women. As thoroughly as Elisabeth left a written record of her life, there isn’t enough information, at least in the public record, to draw a conclusion. It is possible that neither Jim nor Elisabeth had the vocabulary or awareness to describe his feelings.