Last November, John Allen Chau, a 26-year-old missionary from Vancouver, Wash., was killed in attempts to to convert the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island to Christianity.
Related: Washington Missionary Killed on Remote Island Had Spent Years Preparing for Trip
Chau's death sparked countless think pieces, debates and jokes on the evils of evangelism and colonialism. Chau's father, in interviews, blamed evangelicalism for his son's demise. And reporting after Chau's death painted a picture of a young man with extreme religious views, who spent years preparing to impart Christianity on an island where outsiders were prohibited entry by law.
A new essay from Outside Magazine gives perhaps the most in-depth look into Chau's life, and death, and the circumstances that led him to become a martyr.
Author Alex Perry chronicles Chau's home and family life—his father Patrick Chau, a physician, had failed at dissuading his son from evangelism and was busted by the feds and for falsely prescribing narcotics just before Chau departed for North Sentinel Island.
The rift, in addition to Chau's already extreme Christian beliefs and whimsical fantasies about missionary work, mobilized the recent college graduate.
Excerpts of Chau's journal entries show that he was prepared to be killed by the islanders, but believed it was his purpose to "declare Jesus to these people."
"John had been alone in the world. Now he was alone at the end of the world," Perry wrote. "He knew how the story ended."
The full story—which includes detailed interviews with Chau's friends and family and the Indian police who investigated his death, as well as a study of the lure of the Sentinel Island—is worth reading in full here.