New book on SIL’s vision for scholarship

Click cover to go to ebook. 

Pike Center is pleased to announce the availability of a new ebook that tells the story of scholarship as a key part of SIL’s vision and strategy. When SIL was established in 1934, our founder articulated a threefold purpose which wove together scholarly research, Bible translation, and integral development in service of language communities on the margins of society. In addition to discussing the role of scholarship in that founding purpose, the book relates the history of how Kenneth L. Pike came to be the key player in turning the founder’s vision into a reality. This book, edited by Pike Center director, Gary Simons, has its genesis in the efforts to found Pike Center and helps to explain why we have established it.

We feel very privileged that Mark Noll, one of the leading scholars of our time on the history of Christianity, agreed to write the Foreword for the book. In it he offers the following commendation:

The story of how SIL has sustained a commitment to its three founding goals deserves wide attention because of the encouragement it can provide others who believe that Christian faith requires intellectual and cultural, as well as religious, commitment. It also deserves attention because of contemporary currents in many spheres of life far beyond linguistics that still pose true faith and disciplined intellectual endeavor as incompatible.