Wheaton College, a Christian college in Wheaton, Illinois, has announced that it will edit a plaque honoring five missionaries who were murdered in Ecuador by a native tribe in 1956. The college has folded under pressure to remove the “dehumanizing” word “savage” to describe the brutal murder of the missionaries.
“Wheaton College announced its plan to rephrase dehumanizing wording included on a plaque honoring Christian martyr Jim Elliot and the four missionaries killed by the Waorani people in Ecuador due to ‘pejorative’ language referring to the tribe as ‘savage,'” reports the Christian Post.
The plaque read, in part:
They chose the jungles of Ecuador — inhabited by the Auca Indians. For generations all strangers were killed by these savage Indians. After many days of patient preparation and devout prayer, the missionaries made the first friendly contact known to history with the Aucas.
On January 8, 1956 the five missionaries were brutally slain — martyrs for the love of God.
Wheaton President Philip Ryken recently sent a letter to students, faculty, and staff, informing them that some individuals have complained that the language on the plaque is offensive.
“Specifically, the word ‘savage’ is regarded as pejorative and has been used historically to dehumanize and mistreat indigenous peoples around the world,” Ryken said in the letter obtained by Christian Post. “Any descriptions on our campus of people or people groups should reflect the full dignity of human beings made in the image of God.”
Wheaton’s class of 1949 had dedicated the plaque on January 8, 1957, in memory of Edward McCully and James Elliot — two class of 1949 alumni. McCully and Elliot were both slain while sharing the Gospel in Ecuador, during what is known as “Operation Auca.”
The report added that Elliot’s wife, Elisabeth Elliot — along with their 3-year-old daughter — went to live with the tribe that killed her husband to share the Gospel with them two years later, and that “the Auca tribe finally accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior in 1960.”
Joseph Moore, Wheaton’s director of marketing and communications, told Christian Post that the plaque will be updated so that it “continue[s] to honor the sacrificial witness of the five missionaries it honors while at the same time avoiding the unnecessary offense of pejorative stereotypes.”
“This is especially important for a story that is central to our mission and identity — a story we want the world to know,” Moore said. “Wheaton College will always honor Jim Elliot and Ed McCully — along with Nate Saint ’50, Roger Youderian, and Pete Fleming — who died in service to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“In the 64 years since the College received this gift, we have also continued to grow in our understanding of how to show God’s love and respect to others,” Moore added.
Now, a task force will be appointed by Wheaton’s senior administrative cabinet to review the plaque’s choice of words, and make a “rephrasing recommendation” by May 1.
The task force will reportedly consist of a faculty historian, a faculty missiologist, a representative from the Wheaton College Alumni Association’s board of directors, a graduate student, and an undergraduate student.
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