William Cameron Townsend (July 9, 1896 – April 23, 1982) was an American Christian missionary-linguist and the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL Global).

Both organizations emphasized the translation of the Bible into minority languages, as well as the development of literacy and bilingual education programs.

Early life

Born in 1896 in Southern California, Townsend graduated from Santa Ana High School and attended Occidental College in Los Angeles. He dropped out of college to work as a Bible salesman for the Los Angeles Bible House for several years.

Work in Guatemala

First Translation Work

In 1917 the Los Angeles Bible House sent Townsend to Guatemala to sell Spanish Bibles near Antigua. After two years he joined the Central American Mission (CAM).

CAM was an evangelical Christian mission of the Disciples of Christ among the Kaqchikel Maya people in Guatemala, founded by Protestant revivalists who had agreed to divide their mission work in Central America into various regions. CAM taught that Jesus Christ's Millennial Kingdom of Peace would come after the Second Coming of Christ and viewed their mission as necessary to fulfill Christ's Great Commission to carry his message "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

Townsend was concerned that CAM's Christian message, spread exclusively in Spanish, could not reach the monolingual majority of the indigenous population.

He settled in a Kaqchikel community on the coast called Santa Catarina, and over the next fourteen years he learned the language to the point where he could translate the Bible. He also founded the Robinson Bible Institute which, with financial backing from U.S. sources, built a center for the indigenous community that included a school, medical clinic, an electrical generator, a coffee processing plant, and an agricultural supply store. During these years, Townsend's concern for the indigenous community grew, and he became convinced that the missionary practices he observed did not address their needs effectively and did not take into account their diverse languages and cultures.

According to Colby and Dennet, Townsend's CAM superiors also showed signs of unease that he had adopted indigenous cultural practices, clothing, and language. and Leonard Bloomfield were writing on this area and he used some of Sapir’s insight in his analysis of Kaqchikel. Townsend proposed using airplanes and radios to stay connected with the isolated tribes, but the financial and timely costs of new technology for such labor-intensive work was off-putting to many mission groups.

By 1933 Townsend decided to move to Mexico. This came after he met and befriended the Mexican Under-Secretary of Education, Moisés Sáenz, in Panajachel, Guatemala. Sick with tuberculosis, Townsend returned to the US in 1932 and sought the help of L.L. Legters, the field secretary of the Pioneer Mission Agency and a trusted friend. At a prayer meeting in August 1933, "'the Lord revealed his will for... Mr. WC Townsend of Guatemala to make a trip to Mexico City for the purpose of meeting with the government to get permission for sending men into the Indian tribes to learn the languages and to translate the Bible into those Indian tongues.'" Just two months later, a letter from Sáenz arrived urging both men, Townsend and Legters, to visit Mexico.

Mexico

The triumphant faction of the Mexican Revolution created the Constitution of 1917, which extended the anticlerical measures of the liberal Constitution of 1857 and restricted the Catholic Church in Mexico. Townsend and Legters, however, entered Mexico without missionary credentials. Having cut all formal organizational ties, including those to CAM, the two men used Sáenz's letter of invitation to travel to Mexico City. would view as 'deceits,' whereby the two men concealed their deeper goal behind a veil of government permission. Other critics note that Sáenz knew why they wanted to come to Mexico.

Creation of Wycliffe

Townsend and Legters had opened Camp Wycliffe in Arkansas in the summer of 1934. Named for John Wycliffe, who was responsible for the first complete English translation of the Bible, the camp was designed to train young people in basic linguistics and translation methods.

Because the Mexican government did not allow missionary work through its educational system, Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators as a separate organization from SIL. Wycliffe Bible Translators focused on Bible translation and missionary activities, whereas SIL focused on linguistic documentation and literacy education.

In the first year two students enrolled. The following year, after a training session with five men in attendance (including Kenneth Pike who would become a lifelong friend and prominent academic linguist), Townsend took his students to Mexico to begin field work.

Wycliffe Bible Translators USA was officially founded in 1942. Wycliffe Bible Translators International was established in May 1980 to provide international leadership.

Soviet Union

Townsend went to the Soviet Union with his wife to preach to people in the Caucasus Mountains. They made 11 trips there.

Controversy

In 1940, Townsend wrote a short book (80 pages) in English explaining the abuses of international oil companies in Mexico and defending the Cardenas government's nationalization of them. (See W.C. Townsend, The Truth about Mexico's Oil, 1940, SIL).

Townsend was the subject of the highly critical book Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil by journalists Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett.

Jungle Aviation and Relay Service

thumb|Helio Courier, a light [[CTOL|C/STOL utility aircraft designed in 1949; in a JAARS' hangar in 2005]]

By 1948 Townsend created the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service. Until this point operations were held together by a jeep and several two-way radios provided by the U.S. Embassy. A U.S. Army Air Corps mission pilot, Larry Montgomery, contacted Townsend in 1946, informing him that a Grumman Duck, a navy amphibious plane, was on sale as army surplus for a cheap price.

Notes

is also on the Wycliffe website.

  • Books and articles written by William Cameron Townsend
  • Extensive biography on Wycliffe's website
  • March 2014 video of the history of Wycliffe's work in the Americas highlights Townsend's initiatives in the beginning years of the organizations he founded