From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Thu Dec 04 2003 - 07:57:44 EST
On 03/12/2003 17:48, Christopher John Fynn wrote:
>Peter
>
>My message to Edward was off-line and he mistakenly replied to the list.
>Apologies for any misunderstanding.
>
>The source of my information about SIL being backed by "very wealthy Christian
>Evangelists" was someone who is probably the world's leading expert on
>Himalayan Languages & Professor of Linguistics at one of the most prestigious
>Universities in Europe. He even named some of the patrons.
>
>While in Bhutan, I met someone from SIL who was visiting there and came to
>visit the department I was working for and he confirmed to me that a purpose of
>SIL was to enable the spread the gospel in minority languages. Of course this
>work also does a huge amount to advance literacy & computing in minority
>languages in less developed countries - and SIL deserves a great deal of credit
>for that. Very few other organisations are freely contributing in the same way
>and probably no one on the same scale.
>
>If I'm wrong about the motivation of SIL or their patrons, I'm happy to stand
>corrected. Not that there is anything wrong with the motivation I attributed to
>them.
>
>With best regards
>
>- Chris
>--
>Christopher J. Fynn
>
>
>
>
Thank you, Chris. This is a fair summary of the work of SIL. See also
http://www.sil.org/sil/history.htm and the rest of the www.sil.org site.
As far as the "very wealthy Christian Evangelists" are concerned, there
are a lot of stories going around the Internet, some but not necessarily
all spread by conspiracy theory nuts and/or by those with a clear
anti-Christian agenda. I'm sure there is some truth there, and also a
lot of exaggeration and faulty logic. For example, some of the arguments
I have seen take a fact that A and B once had a meeting together as
implying that A is the chief financial backer and secret controller of
B's organisation.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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