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 International)
Both organisations 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.
Oppression and Causes
As Townsend looked for the root of indigenous poverty and marginalization, he believed that he found three main causes. One was the mixed-race ladino middlemen who were closely associated with a "folk" Catholic religion that was quite distinct from orthodox Catholicism. Another was in some of the Mesoamerican traditions, some of which were similar to those the dominant Spanish culture imposed. Numerous saints required many days of festivals laden with the obligatory purchases and excessive consumption of food and alcohol, much of which needed to be purchased from the ladino middlemen. A third cause was the lack of modern healthcare . Townsend thus viewed the Maya around him as trapped from both within and without, and he searched for a way to help liberate them.
Plans for Translation
Townsend viewed true conversion to Christ as a solution to the challenges of indigenous peoples, but he had to discover why Protestant and Catholic missions did not attract many indigenous converts to orthodox Christian beliefs. He believed that the main reason was that the illiterate monolinguals had no access to scripture. Many Indians could not read, and even those who could, did not have the Bible in a language they could understand. Although heterodox syncretism was the norm in indigenous communities, the Catholic clergy refused Bible translation, fearing exegesis which did not agree with Catholic tradition. The Protestant missions concentrated on Spanish-speaking ladino overseers as converts instead of on the speakers of minority indigenous languages.