Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) became known to evangelicals nationwide after her first husband, missionary Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make contact with the Waorani people of eastern Ecuador. She later spent two years as a missionary among the people who had killed him, and her account of his death, Through Gates of Splendor (1957), became an evangelical touchstone. Her later writing turned to womanhood. Let Me Be a Woman (1976), written as notes to her daughter on the meaning of womanhood, defended distinct, God-given roles for men and women. Passion and Purity (1984), part manifesto and part memoir of her courtship with Jim, taught single Christians to wait on God's timing and bring their 'love life under Christ's control.' It influenced Joshua Harris's I Kissed Dating Goodbye (1997), the central text of purity culture, and with it helped popularize 'courtship' as an alternative to dating; later editions carry a foreword by Harris. From 1988 to 2001 she reached a daily audience through the radio program Gateway to Joy. Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez links Elliot to the holiness tradition of Hannah Whitall Smith, which promised happiness through surrender, and gives her a sustained critique, arguing among other things that her teaching let men off the hook for sexual wrongs. Elliot's admirers regard her as a model of costly faithfulness, and her books remain in print.

Themes this entry appears in

• Patriarchy
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections from Elisabeth Elliot

• influenced → Purity Culture (1997) — Elliot's Passion and Purity (1984) influenced Joshua Harris's I Kissed Dating Goodbye (1997), purity culture's most influential text, and the two books together popularized 'courtship' as the alternative to dating. Later editions of Passion and Purity carry a foreword by Harris.

Connections to Elisabeth Elliot

• Patriarchy & Gender: Before 1940 influenced (1976) — Du Mez traces a line from Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life (1875), which taught that total surrender to God brings happiness, to later evangelical women writers including Elisabeth Elliot, whose Let Me Be a Woman (1976) taught acceptance of God-given feminine roles.

Sources

• Elisabeth Elliot — Wikipedia (2026)
• Passion and Purity — Wikipedia (2026)
• Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control — Elisabeth Elliot (1984)
• Let Me Be a Woman — Elisabeth Elliot (1976)
• Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2026)