Women’s History Month: 5 notable female missionaries

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015)

Celebrated missionary Elisabeth Elliot died on June 15, 2015. She was 88. | Twitter

Elisabeth Elliot is best known for her decision to live with the very tribe in rural Ecuador that had murdered her husband, Jim Elliot, and four others when they had tried to evangelize them.

Elliot’s act of forgiveness and efforts to advocate on behalf of the tribe, known as the Waorani, inspired many, and helped lead much of the people group to embrace Christianity.

She also authored multiple books, including Through Gates of Splendor (1957), Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (1958), The Savage My Kinsman (1961), and The Journals of Jim Elliot (1978), tell the story of her time together with Jim evangelizing Ecuador and tackling issues such as suffering, loneliness, singleness, manhood, womanhood and family.

John Piper, notable Bible teacher and author, remarked in 2015 that Elliot was “a blunt woman” who had, like Jesus and her late husband, “called young people to come and die.”

“Sacrifice and suffering were woven through her writing and speaking like a scarlet thread. She was not a romantic about missions. She disliked very much the sentimentalizing of discipleship," said Piper.

"The thread of suffering was not just woven through her words, but through her relationships. Not only did she lose her first husband to a violent death three years after they were married; she also lost her second husband, Addison Leitch, four years after her remarriage.”

Whose names would you put on this list? Let us know in the comments below.