Description:
While old tales of God's harvest workers have their place, it is time for a new generation of Christians to be awestruck by a new "great" in the missionary hall of fame--and as the most influential Bible translator in church history and the mother of modern missions, Katharine Barnwell is just the woman for the job.
Brief description: Russell D. Moore is dean of the School of Theology and senior vice president for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also serves as professor of Christian Theology and Ethics. He is the author of several books including The Kingdom of Christ, Adopted for Life, and Tempted and Tried. Moore and his wife have five sons.
Review Quotes: "With this deeply researched and dramatic portrait, Monson introduces a woman whose life marks both the end of an era and the dawning of a new one. There may never be another Katharine Barnwell, precisely because her legacy has created a world that thrives not on a single, larger-than-life hero, but on a thousand ordinary servants."
--Andy Olsen
Senior Writer and Editor, Christianity Today
-- Harold Netland
Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Intercultural Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School "Katharine Barnwell is one of the greatest Christian biographies written in the twenty-first century. Never heard of her? After you read Jordan K. Monson's beautifully crafted account, you will add Mama Katy to your top ten list of truly admirable and important modern heroes. I can't remember the last time I read a new book that was this inspiring."
-- Timothy Larsen
McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College "Katherine Barnwell is an extraordinary Christian you need to meet, and you can trust master story-teller Jordan Monson to introduce you. Prepare to be inspired by this crisp and inviting account of Barnwell's remarkable life and ground-breaking career in Bible translation. Because the Chrisitan life is irreducibly social--never just me and Jesus, but us together on the Jesus way--getting to know Barnwell through Monson's able pen is a gift."
-- Kent Eilers
PhD, Professor of Theology (Huntington University); author of Reading Theology Wisely (Eerdmans 2022) among other books "Jordan Monson writes, 'The equality of all people, the charge to help the least fortunate as a service unto Jesus himself, is a distinctly Christian idea.' Few people have embodied this idea as powerfully in the 20th and 21st centuries as Katy Barnwell.' Many of the foundations of the modern Bible translation movement--from training programs and exegetical resources to the recognition that local believers, rather than expatriate missionaries, should be in the driving seat of translation work--can be traced back to Katy Barnwell. When you read this excellent biography, you'll realize why Katy Barnwell is known as the mother of modern Bible translation, and even of 21st century missions."
-- Steve Nicolle
Senior Linguistics Consultant at SIL Global and Professor of Linguistics at Canada Institute of Linguistics and Trinity Western University "Pike, Longacre, Levinsohn, Nida, Newman, Gutt ... the list goes on, but how many women appear among the renowned pioneers of modern Bible translation theory and practice in the latter 20th century? Professor Jordan Monson expertly fills the gap in this captivating, fact-filled biography of Dr. Katharine (Katy) Barnwell, who, in addition to teaching, training, mentoring, and motivating translation personnel in Africa and worldwide for over half a century, authored one of the discipline's most widely used tutoring textbooks, Bible Translation (4th ed., 2020). Having had the inspirational privilege of knowing, learning from, and working with Katy for much of this time, I am grateful to Monson for bringing her multifaceted legacy to light in such an illuminating manner. She is verily the 'Mother of Bible Translation.'"
-- Ernst R. Wendland
Dept. of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa