Don Richardson

Don Richardson (June 23, 1935 – December 23, 2018) was a Canadian Christian missionary, author, and pioneering missiologist. With his wife Carol and infant son, he went in 1962 to the Sawi tribe of what was then Dutch (later Indonesian) New Guinea — a Stone-Age cannibal-headhunter people who culturally valued treachery as an ideal. The fundamental missiological challenge: in Sawi cultural framework, Judas (not Jesus) was the gospel's hero. Richardson's breakthrough came through discovering the Sawi cultural-religious practice of the "peace child" — where a chief would offer his own infant son to a rival tribe, and as long as that child lived, peace endured between the tribes. Through this culturally-resonant pattern, Richardson articulated Christ as the ultimate Peace Child whose continued life enables eternal peace. The Sawi New Testament was eventually published; most of the tribe became Christian. Richardson developed the "redemptive analogy" missiological framework — the principle that hidden in tribal cultures are practices or understandings that prefigure Gospel realities and can be used to communicate Christ in culturally-resonant terms.

• Cost of Following — Substantively documented through life-work — the Richardson family lived among Sawi cannibal-headhunters with their infant son; sustained physical-cultural cost across decades.
• Creation Framework — *Eternity in Their Hearts* documents what Richardson treats as evidence that the one true God has placed witnesses in every culture (Romans 1, Acts 17). The framework operates as cumulative-evidential apologetic for biblical Christianity's truth-claims.
• Cultural Engagement Posture — "Redemptive analogy" — Christianity engages cultures by discerning God's preparatory work rather than imposing Western-Christian-cultural overlay. The framework respects cultural integrity while articulating gospel truth in culturally-resonant terms.
• Unreached Peoples Priority — Substantial; the "redemptive analogy" framework is foundational missiology aimed specifically at unreached cultures. The framework has substantively shaped post-1980 evangelical-missiological practice.