Kenneth L. Pike: An Evangelical Mind
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2021
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Publisher's Description
This biography examines the life of a most unusual twentieth-century evangelical, Kenneth L. "Ken" Pike (1912-2000), who served with the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Pike began his missionary career as a Bible translator, but he went on to become a world-class linguist who made his mark on the science of linguistics and the study of indigenous languages around the world. Known among linguists and anthropologists for his theoretical contributions, this volume seeks to bring Pike to a wider audience by illuminating his life as a key evangelical figure, one who often broke with conventional evangelical constraints to pursue the life of the mind as a Christian intellectual and scholar. Here is a story of how one evangelical Christian man served the global church, the scientific community, and the world's indigenous peoples with his entire heart, soul, and mind.
Endorsements (4)
“Boone Aldridge’s biography of Kenneth Pike tells the astonishing story of an evangelical Christian mind that became truly innovative. How many anthropologists, scholars of religion, or linguists know that one of the basic tools of their intellectual analysis, the distinction between etic and emic views of cultural systems, owes its origins to an American missionary reared in fundamentalist circles? This book will explode preconceptions, widen horizons, and inspire deep reflection.”
“We have needed an intellectual biography of Kenneth Pike, and now we have one, carefully researched and engagingly written. I am pleased to recommend this work, especially in the way that it provides further insights into the life and thought of a great and unusual Christian pioneer.”
“Kenneth Pike occupied multiple worlds: he was a man of deeply held evangelical faith, and also a gifted intellectual and scholar in the field of linguistics. Along the way, Aldridge broadens our understanding of twentieth-century evangelicalism, and adds a gentle hero to its pantheon of stars.”
“Aldridge tells the compelling story of a young Ken Pike, gifted by God with an ear and a mind for phonetics, discovering the wonderful world of Mixtec languages in Mexico, and using those gifts to become one of a handful of world-renowned linguistic scholar-philosophers in the twentieth century. . . . Pike mentored and influenced hundreds of young men and women to careers of academic scholarship for the kingdom of God. I was one among so many that responded to God’s invitation through Ken Pike.”
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