The Elisabeth Elliot I Knew

Elisabeth Elliot spoke at a city-wide women’s conference in Kansas City in 1995. Evangel Church hosted the event, and Calvary University hosted Elisabeth Elliot. Since I attended Evangel and taught at Calvary, the committee asked if I’d be a personal assistant to Elisabeth Elliot. I was thrilled. It was a two-day event starting on Friday and ending on Saturday afternoon.

Elisabeth Elliot was a prolific writer. Her biblical clarity and wisdom have influenced three generations. Elliot died in 2015. Her legacy, lived out in her personal life as well as her writings, comprises 48 books, 20 of which were global best sellers, totaling nearly a million volumes sold. She was a clear and articulate speaker using personal illustrations and examples to drive a point home; to teach, edify, and admonish her audience. She was brilliant and she was practical.

As her "armor bearer" that weekend in Kansas City, I was privileged to spend some one-on-one time with her. I drove her from the airport. Got her settled in her hotel. Accompanied her to all the meetings and carried her satchel. The church had a private restroom for VIP guests. On the second day of the conference, we had a break between sessions. There were about 1500 women in attendance that day. During the break, Elisabeth Elliot took time to meet women who wanted to tell her their stories, or to shake her hand, or even to give her a hug. She took time for each woman and looked them in the eyes and listened well. The break was almost over and Elisabeth needed to use the facilities. I started to take her to the private VIP restroom when she stopped me, “I’ll just use the public one.” We walked into the ladies’ room and it looked as if it’d been hit by a windstorm. When she came out of the stall, she got a paper towel and started cleaning up the mess the women had left. Paper towels, Kleenexes, and bits of toilet paper were all over the floor. She picked them all up and threw them in the trash. Then she took a fresh paper towel and wiped down the counterspace and tidied up the ladies’ room. As she was washing her hands she noticed my strange stare. She smiled at me, “It’s still the House of the Lord and my mother always said, ‘leave a place better than you found it.’”

Life-changing words. Impactful. At that moment, I admired her even more. She walked back onto the platform and gave a powerful message about John the Baptist’s death at the whim of a teenage girl. Then she spoke of Jim Elliot, her martyred husband, and her love for the tribe that killed him.

Elisabeth Elliot’s message that day still burns in my heart. If you don’t know the story of Elisabeth Elliot, please find a list of recommended books at the end of this post. Her memory and missionary life deserve to be told and retold as an example of biblical living in the modern world. Elisabeth Howard (maiden name) married a beautiful handsome boy she met at Wheaton College. His name was Jim Elliot. The young couple was known on campus as being wholly committed to missions and Bible translation. Elisabeth Howard was raised on the mission field. Her parents were missionaries to the Congo working with Bible translation and agricultural development.

Jim had experienced the call to missions in high school. He decided to study at Wheaton because of their linguistics program. This is where he met Elisabeth Howard. In equal devotion to God, their courtship and eventual marriage would exemplify a matchless love story of hard-won purity and lived-out biblical truths. The young couple waited five years to marry so they could become better equipped with more studies to serve God on the mission field.

They finally married in Ecuador and began their ministry. A group of five men and their wives settled near the capital and studied the minority languages, learned the customs, and in due course they hoped to reach the Auca Indians in the deep areas of the jungle.

Eventually, the five young missionary men reached out to the tribe and camped on the river near the tribe’s village. In January, 1956, all five were killed by the tribesmen’s spears. Though the missionaries were armed with guns, they refused to fire against their attackers. All five men were married and all left behind young children. Their story shook the world and even LIFE Magazine made it their cover story in August that year, just months after the young men’s bodies were recovered.

That story is incredible, but even more incredible was that a young Elisabeth Elliot traveled back to the tribe with her two-year-old daughter Valerie and with Rachel, the sister of Nate Saint, another of the martyred men. They worked over two years translating the New Testament into the Auca language. Today, the entire tribe is Christian and now sends missionaries to remote areas of Ecuador to spread the Gospel. 

Elisabeth Elliot’s clear message on that day at the KC women’s conference tore at my heart. She explained how she became close friends with all the men who had killed her husband. She became fluent in their language, and many nights out by the campfires, the men and women talked about the five brave men who would not fight back. It was an ordinary night, she explained, sitting around the fire talking and listening to stories, that she discovered why Jim and the others had been killed. The background and the cause of the attack stung and she ran back to her hut to weep and agonize over what the tribe had disclosed.

There was a young 15-year-old girl in the Auca tribe who admired a boy in a neighboring tribe—an enemy to her people. The young girl and boy often met secretly in the jungle to satisfy their forbidden love. They had seen the five missionary men and they knew the foreigners meant them no harm. In fact, the missionaries often left food, clothing, and tools at the edge of the jungle to bless and minister to the primitive tribes. The girl and young boy watched them, hidden by the thick cover of the jungle. They were interested in their laughter, their language, and especially their transistor radio.

Late one night, the young girl’s father caught her coming home from her rendezvous with her lover. Her father was angry and he was about to strike her. To stop him before the first blow, the young woman told her father a lie—a lie that would change the world for Elisabeth Elliot and all the wives and children of the five missionary men.

The young girl told her father that white, hostile men were at the river and that she understood their plan was to kill the native tribes and take over the land. She said she could understand their speech, a gift from the spirits, and she had come to warn her people. The war cry went out and the warriors of their tribe went to the river and speared the young men to death. Each one died a brutal death and not one of them fought back.

Elisabeth said when she heard the story, she couldn’t breathe. Once in the hut, she muffled her weeping so as not to wake little Valerie. Inside she raged against the girl, who she now knew, against the tribe, but more sadly, her heart broke knowing that God allowed it. She said, “My dearly loved Jim died at the whim of a 15-year-old girl, because of a lie.”

This, above all things, broke her heart. And that night, as she struggled for meaning and clarity, she asked God, “How? How could you let this happen? You have no idea the pain I have gone through, the suffering and loss all because of some 15-year-old girl who was trying to cover an affair.” And Elisabeth said the Lord spoke to her, “Yes, I do Elisabeth. This is what happened to John the Baptist whom I loved. He was beheaded because of a young girl wanting to please her mother.”

Elliot said a peace came over her that night and she knew that God was using all of this for a greater good and if she would yield to Him and forgive this girl, He would be glorified in all of it. The next day the young girl came to Elisabeth’s hut and asked for forgiveness. It was there that the young Auca Indian gave her life to Christ. She was also very instrumental in helping Elliot and Rachel Saint translate the New Testament into the Auca language.

If you follow this blog, you know of the recent accusations against Elisabeth Elliot. The accusations come from a 2020 interview with 88-year-old Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. Elisabeth and Virginia knew each other. Though Elisabeth was seven years older than Virginia, they both attended Hampden DuBose Christian boarding school in Florida—though not at the same time. In 1962, after ten years on the mission field, Elliot returned to the US with Valerie. She was looking for ways to earn a living from home so she could care for her child. Writing was something she enjoyed and had success in. Three of her nonfiction books were best sellers by that time. But she wanted to try her hand at writing a novel. Friends recommended she contact a literature professor, department chair at Shelton College in New Jersey. The professor was a Hampden DuBose alumna, and might be able to help Elisabeth hone her skills at writing fiction. Elliot contacted Dr. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, a strong Christian leader, married, with a young son. The two agreed to meet halfway in New York. Elliot came from New Hampshire; Mollenkott from New Jersey. It was there they met for the first time and Elliot admired Mollenkott’s keen intelligence, strong biblical knowledge, and creative way with language. They formed a strong friendship and with Virginia’s help, No Graven Image was published in 1966.

By the early 1970s, Elisabeth was keenly aware something dark was happening among evangelical women across the United States. As a frequent speaker for women’s groups and as an active member of evangelical circles, she saw shifts in American theology and teaching. Shifts she considered not only unbiblical, but dangerous. When she discovered that her good friend Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, after 20 years of marriage, had divorced her husband and was publishing pro homosexuality and radical feminism articles, Elisabeth Elliot felt she needed to intervene.

At the 1975 first meeting of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus, in Washington DC, Elisabeth Elliot confronted Mollenkott straight on—an account both women confirm in their journals. It was in the lunch buffet line that Elliot came up to Mollenkott, put her arms around her and said, “Virginia! I am here to straighten you out!” What happened after that is where the stories diverge. Virginia wanted the confrontation to be in private, so she asked Elliot to her hotel room at the conference center. It is there that Virginia reports Elliot confessed her same-sex attraction. But in fact, it was there that Elliot begged Virginia to return to her faith and a Bible-based ideology of sex, women’s roles, and holy living. Two completely different accounts. Interestingly, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott had no written details of that encounter—not in journals, or books, or popular press articles. The only time that Mollenkott accuses Elliot of same-sex attraction was in that 2020 interview with William Stell. Three months later, Mollenkott died.

Personally, I can believe that Elisabeth Elliot confronted her dear friend Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. Elliot was a straight shooter and she was no-nonsense. How do I know Elliot’s account is true and not Mollenkott’s? First, because Mollenkott was double-minded and a double-minded person is unstable in all her ways (James 1:8). Secondly, because I know personally that Elisabeth Elliot cared enough to confront.

After a wonderful weekend of hearing Elisabeth Elliot speak at Evangel Church, I had the privilege of driving her to the airport. It’s about a 45-minute drive. We’d not been in the car long and I wanted her to rest if she needed—she’d given a lot to the women for two days. We rode in silence for a while, and then Elisabeth Elliot asked me about my weight. You see, I’ve been overweight since I was 14 years old. I have dieted, exercised, taken pills and potions, and even been to nutritionists. I think other people are more bothered by my weight than I am. Sometimes I wonder if I have reverse anorexia—I see myself as thin, at least in my mind’s eye. That day in the car, Elliot’s question caught me completely by surprise. She talked to me, very personally, about discipleship and appetite. “You know that gluttony is a sin, right? And that not controlling our appetites—whatever appetites they might be—does not glorify God.” The words stung, primarily because I knew they were true. But you have to think of the courage and guts it took for Elisabeth Elliot to confront me, a stranger, about my relationship with food in light of my relationship to God. This took a lot of guts, but also a deep love. She wanted to help me live out my faith. Later, she sent me a book on nutrition and some healthy recipes she and her daughter Valerie were getting ready to publish.

When I read the false scandalous articles about Elliot and Mollenkott meeting in that hotel room, I KNEW Elliot wasn’t there to divulge some secret bisexual attraction. She was there to confront Virginia, her friend—to save her. Elliot’s entire life had been about sacrificing her comfort for others’ good—even her own enemies. Elisabeth was one of the greatest Christian women of all time. She influenced generations of Christians to view sexuality from a biblical standpoint. For women of my generation, no one had a greater influence than Elliot who helped us navigate the rough waters of the sexual revolution and hostile feminism. Elisabeth Elliot was a lighthouse to us all during chaotic times. I am forever grateful to her. Her courage and her love demonstrated to me a kind of faithfulness—a faithfulness she lived out in every aspect of her life. Elisabeth Elliot was a hero. Peace.

— Teri

Elisabeth Elliot Recommended Books

Through Gates of Splendor, 1957     

Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, 1958         

The Savage My Kinsman, 1960        

No Graven Image, 1966

Let Me be a Woman, 1966    

The Liberty of Obedience, 1968       

Who Shall Ascend, 1968       

The Journals of Jim Elliot, 1978       

Love Has a Price Tag, 1979   

Passion and Purity, 1984       

A Path Through Suffering, 1990