Betty Miller is producing a Mabaan dictionary

Christian missionaries have been favorite whipping boys of some cultural elites, who blame missions for destroying the culture of minorities. With Darfur so much in the headlines, perhaps people realize that politics and other forces can be much to blame for the destruction of ancient cultures.

While we cannot deny that Christians have at times unwisely interacted with culture, evangelical missionaries have been in the fore of preserving culture. Take, for instance, SIM's Betty Miller. At age 83, she is producing a Mabaan dictionary and so far has 5,180 entries. Her project will appear on the Internet, placed by a linguist in Cambridge, England, who heard of the project.

People have heard about tribes in Darfur, currently in the news, but probably not about groups such as the Mabaan and neighboring Uduk in other areas of Sudan. For decades the culture of these minority groups within sight of the Ethiopian highlands has been threatened by Islamization and urbanization. SIM entered the area in 1938. One of the Sudan Interior Church's first pastors helped Betty Miller's colleagues Betty Cridland and Mary Beam translate Scripture portions into his language, Uduk.

	Uduk women and girls participate in a literacy class while living in a refugee camp in Ethiopia due to the civil war in Southern Sudan. Now, the war has ended, and thousands of refugees are returning to their homeland.

I'll never forget sitting beside an Uduk campfire as villagers sought to ward off any revenge from the spirit of a marauding leopard they had just killed. Men and women, clad only in their "birthday suits," swayed around the fire, lewdly jerking their bodies at each other. They uttered guttural sounds that, to me, seemed impossible to spell. But pioneers Betty and Mary knew that the language was precious.

But didn't missionaries teach villagers not to fear leopard spirits, and to respect their bodies, created in the "image of God"? What did that do to their culture? Those pioneers taught the Word of God and left it to the new Christian believers to sort out the degenerative elements, while preserving their unique culture. That has indeed happened, resulting in strong and growing churches among those peoples—even in the midst of conflict. Today the continuing effort of people such as Betty Miller consolidates that growth while helping to preserve culture.

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Harold Fuller's book, Run While the Sun Is Hot, SIM, 1967, describes cultures in that area of Sudan.