in classics in 1861. This was Lottie Moon, the Southern Baptist icon and namesake of the annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, promoted vigorously each year to supply funds for the denomination’s mission efforts.
In time, her life came to be mythologized by Southern Baptists and her name invoked in order to raise money for missions.
But the current IMB website continues to perpetuate the myth of Lottie Moon with statements like these:And, largely because of her story, Southern Baptists have given more than $1 billion to international mission work through the SBC Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.Sullivan has done Southern Baptists a great favor by pulling back the curtain of misinformation that has surrounded Lottie Moon’s story since her death.The publication of this book by Louisiana State University Press in its “Southern Biography Series” speaks to the quality of her research and the integrity of Sullivan’s work as an academic.Moon’s defiance of the SBC Foreign Mission Board when she moved alone from the established mission compound in Tengchow to pioneer work as a single woman in Pingtu is a historical fact that cannot be ignored or rehabilitated to fit Victorian or contemporary notions of a woman’s “proper place.”The legend that she starved herself to death because she gave all her food and money to feed the Chinese is not correct.For the same reasons today, Lottie Moon would not be eligible for appointment by the current International Mission Board (IMB).While she did teach women and girls, she also taught and preached to men and boys out of necessity and in defiance of SBC Foreign Mission Board rules for female appointees.This carefully worded IMB statement tries to perpetuate the Moon myth, but carefully decouples the connection between Lottie Moon’s death and the famine in China.But Moon’s story is even more wonderful because she was a true pioneer.
Impeccably footnoted and referenced, the endnotes, bibliography and index comprise a quarter of the book’s volume.That account appears to have originated with articles written after her death by those who were not present with her on the mission field and for the purpose of raising additional funds for missions work.Chuck Warnock is pastor of Chatham Baptist Church in Chatham, Virginia.Moon’s sister, Orianna, was the first woman in Virginia to study medicine and be granted a medical license. Moon’s sister, Edmonia, preceded Lottie to China as a missionary, and Lottie joined her and others there in 1873.Why spoil such a wonderful story?
The truth is that in her last days Lottie Moon suffered from an abscess behind her ear. The legend holds that Moon starved herself to death as a sacrifice so that more money and food could be used by the Chinese, who were suffering from a great famine.
This carefully worded IMB statement tries to perpetuate the Moon myth, but carefully decouples the connection between Lottie Moon’s death and the famine in China. We’re indebted to Regina Sullivan for uncovering the real story of Lottie Moon that we in Southern Baptist life have been unable, or unwilling, to see previously.Moon did this by writing compelling articles for SBC and other missions publications.Sullivan contends that many of the hagiographic details of the “Lottie Moon story” were embellished by others in a misguided effort to bolster missions funding and to camouflage Moon’s advocacy of women’s rights in SBC life.Working from primary sources that have never been surveyed comprehensively, Sullivan researched SBC archives at current SBC institutions but also expanded her inquiries to other institutions such as the University of Virginia, Drexel University, Yale Divinity School and many other non-Baptist sources.Who but Lottie Moon starved herself to death because she gave all her food and money to feed the Chinese around her?Those questions comprise the legend of Lottie Moon as generations of Southern Baptists have come to know her.Rather, Sullivan has positioned Lottie Moon in the ranks of significant Southern women.
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