God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador

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.


Author: Kathryn T. Long
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 02/26/2019
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.20w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780190608989

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/22/2018
Booklist 11/15/2018 pg. 18

About the Author

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.