William Cameron Townsend

Categories: Missionaries | Christian missions | 1896 births | 1982 deaths

William Cameron Townsend (1896–1982) is a prominent christian missionary whose ministry began in the early twentieth century. His ministry organizations remain (2005) active, and are famous for minimizing cultural impacts, and focusing primarily on producing good-quality translations of the Bible in native languages. The ministry necessarily includes logistics including aviation and radio services, as well as literacy training for illiterate native speakers, and linguistics training for missionaries.

The primary benefit, in missionary terms, is that once a bible is available to a culture, the christians of that culture become far more autonomous, and the native church can grow at its own speed. In large part native christians are freed from any need for training or external support from other cultures.

When young Cameron Townsend tried to sell Spanish Bibles in Guatemala in 1917-18, he discovered that the majority of the people he met did not understand Spanish. Neither did they have a written form of their own language, Cakchiquel. Townsend abandoned his attempts to sell Bibles and began living among the Cakchiquels. He learned their language, created an alphabet for it, analyzed the grammar, and translated the New Testament in only ten years.

Concerned about other minority language groups, Townsend opened Camp Wycliffe in Arkansas in the summer of 1934. Named for the first translator of the entire English Bible, the camp was designed to train young people in basic linguistics and translation methods. Two students enrolled. The following year, after a training session with five men in attendance, Townsend took the five to Mexico to begin field work. From this small beginning has grown the worldwide ministry of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Wycliffe Associates, and the technical department of SIL known as JAARS.it:William Cameron Townsend