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Lottie Moon: A Southern Baptist Missionary to China in History and Legend
Legendary Southern Baptist missionary Charlotte "Lottie" Moon played a pivotal role in revolutionizing southern civil society. Her involvement in the establishment of the Women's Missionary Union provided white Baptist women with an alternate means of gaining and asserting power within the denomination's organizational structure and changed it forever. In Lottie A Southern Baptist Missionary to China in History and Legend Regina Sullivan provides the first comprehensive portrait of "Lottie," who not only empowered women but also inspired the formation of one of the most influential religious organizations in the United States.Despite being the daughter of slaveholders in antebellum Virginia, Moon never lived the life of a typical southern belle. Highly educated and influenced by models of independent womanhood, including an older sister who was a woman's rights advocate, an open opponent of slavery, and the first Virginian female to earn a medical degree, Moon followed her sister's lead and utilized her extensive education to successfully combine the language of woman's rights with the egalitarian impulse of evangelical Protestantism.In 1873 Moon found her true calling, however, in missionary work in China. During her tenure there she recommended that the week before Christmas be designated as a time of giving to foreign missions. In response to her vision, thousands of Southern Baptist women organized local missionary societies to collect funds, and in 1888, the Woman's Missionary Union was founded as the Southern Baptist Convention's female auxiliary for missionary work.Sullivan credits Moon's role in the establishment of the Woman's Missionary Union as having a significant impact on the erosion of patriarchal power and women's new engagement with the public sphere. Since her initial plea in 1888, the Missionary Union's annual "Lottie Moon Christmas Offering" has raised over a billion dollars to support missionary work.Lottie Moon captures the influence and culminating effect of one woman's personal, spiritual, and civic calling.
- GenresBiography
277 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 3, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 9, 2018
This book is biography of renowned 19th century Southern Baptist Commission (SBC) missionary Charlotte Digges "Lottie" Moon, followed by a limited consideration of the historical memory of this missionary within the 20th century SBC. These concerns are connected by Dr. Sullivan's apparent opposition to the biblically-based complimentarianism of the SBC, both historically and in the present.
Having become a member of an SBC congregation as an adult due to developed convictions, I've had the impression that Lottie Moon was a very dedicated missionary to China in the 1800s who died from starvation. Her name and example are part of the SBC's efforts to raise funds in via the Lottie Moon Offering in many SBC churches, in a direct attempt to support the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Regina Sullivan has placed Lottie Moon's life story in the context of American history and provides a fascinating and complex story.
Moon was born in pre-Civil War Virginia into a deeply religious family that was also part of that state's slave-holding elite. That white Southerners sought to defend the morality of racial slavery in part based on misuse of the Bible remains a painful reminder of this terrible part of our nation's history. In fact, the SBC was born of a split with northern Baptists before the Civil War, as northern Baptists rightly insisted slave owners should not serve as missionaries.
While most elite white Southern slave-owning families provided a reasonable degree of education to their daughters, Moon and her sisters were given much more than was average. She was able to obtain the equivalent of a M.A. in foreign languages at a women's educational seminary whose classes were equal to that followed by male students of the University of Virginia. Also surrounded by relatively independent women, Moon's older sister became a doctor. Both sisters initially rejected evangelical Christianity, before converting from unbelief during their teen years.
After the Civil War, in 1873, Moon became an SBC missionary in China. In China, Moon eventually rejected the limitations placed on female missionaries, especially single women. She was not content to operate a school for girls in a city, knowing so many Chinese people lacked any knowledge of the gospel. Instead, she eventually set up a house in a rural area, living in the Chinese manner, rather than providing an example of Victorian middle-class living standards. In this manner, she became much more effective than other SBC missionaries and developed an enhanced respect for Chinese culture.
In this regard, she continually challenged the SBC to provide male missionaries and male pastors. Moon contended that, since the denomination's men were shirking their Biblical duty to serve as pastors, she had to preach and teach groups including men, in defiance of Biblical standards, SBC teachings, and social expectations. In many instances, Moon melded orthodox Biblical Christianity with the women's rights language which might seem to derive from the reformers of the earlier Second Great Awakening and the American women's rights advocates of the 19th century.
By the 1880s, Moon continued to struggle with having sufficient funding and missionary workers. When the SBC's Foreign Mission Board did not take up the challenge, she worked tirelessly through women's missionary societies in various American states to take up the slack. The SBC's male leadership did not succeed in inhibiting the development of the Women's Missionary Union as the denomination's female missionary auxiliary, either in Moon's lifetime nor in the 20th century Conservative Resurgence.
In 1912, Lottie Moon died early during a trip to the United States for a furlough, a common practice among American overseas missionaries every several years. Her death took place after the war-torn Chinese nation's Qing Dynasty had been overthrown.
(Readers may recall that there had been much reasonable resentment in China in later 19th century due to western nation's forcing China, due to their relative military weakness, to allow western nations to set up trading cities on China's east coast and to allow Christian missionaries into China).
According to Sullivan, the elderly and weakened Moon seems to have had a stroke or other medical event impacting her mental faculties before her trip. She does not think the evidence supports the story told by Moon's nurse for the trip that Moon had given away all her food to help Chinese people during this period of privation and literally starves to death.
After her death, Sullivan asserts, the SBC has not shown Moon to be the women's rights advocate that she thinks Moon was. She suggests Moon might be better understood as standing somewhat
closer to those who have left the SBC due to the Conservative Resurgence over the past few decades. However, there was no evidence presented that Moon rejected the inerrancy of the Bible. In fact, the evidence suggests that one reason Lottie Moon declined the offer to marry was that the one man she considered marrying, Dr. Crawford Toy, Ph. D, her college professor and later professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, came to reject Biblical inerrency and to seemingly embrace Darwinian evolution. The author does not address this matter with depth, in my view. In this regard, perhaps the author, who noted that she left the SBC as a result of the Conservative Reassurance may be reflecting at least in part on her own views of the matter.
In any case, this is a very well-done book and well worth the reader's time.
Having become a member of an SBC congregation as an adult due to developed convictions, I've had the impression that Lottie Moon was a very dedicated missionary to China in the 1800s who died from starvation. Her name and example are part of the SBC's efforts to raise funds in via the Lottie Moon Offering in many SBC churches, in a direct attempt to support the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Regina Sullivan has placed Lottie Moon's life story in the context of American history and provides a fascinating and complex story.
Moon was born in pre-Civil War Virginia into a deeply religious family that was also part of that state's slave-holding elite. That white Southerners sought to defend the morality of racial slavery in part based on misuse of the Bible remains a painful reminder of this terrible part of our nation's history. In fact, the SBC was born of a split with northern Baptists before the Civil War, as northern Baptists rightly insisted slave owners should not serve as missionaries.
While most elite white Southern slave-owning families provided a reasonable degree of education to their daughters, Moon and her sisters were given much more than was average. She was able to obtain the equivalent of a M.A. in foreign languages at a women's educational seminary whose classes were equal to that followed by male students of the University of Virginia. Also surrounded by relatively independent women, Moon's older sister became a doctor. Both sisters initially rejected evangelical Christianity, before converting from unbelief during their teen years.
After the Civil War, in 1873, Moon became an SBC missionary in China. In China, Moon eventually rejected the limitations placed on female missionaries, especially single women. She was not content to operate a school for girls in a city, knowing so many Chinese people lacked any knowledge of the gospel. Instead, she eventually set up a house in a rural area, living in the Chinese manner, rather than providing an example of Victorian middle-class living standards. In this manner, she became much more effective than other SBC missionaries and developed an enhanced respect for Chinese culture.
In this regard, she continually challenged the SBC to provide male missionaries and male pastors. Moon contended that, since the denomination's men were shirking their Biblical duty to serve as pastors, she had to preach and teach groups including men, in defiance of Biblical standards, SBC teachings, and social expectations. In many instances, Moon melded orthodox Biblical Christianity with the women's rights language which might seem to derive from the reformers of the earlier Second Great Awakening and the American women's rights advocates of the 19th century.
By the 1880s, Moon continued to struggle with having sufficient funding and missionary workers. When the SBC's Foreign Mission Board did not take up the challenge, she worked tirelessly through women's missionary societies in various American states to take up the slack. The SBC's male leadership did not succeed in inhibiting the development of the Women's Missionary Union as the denomination's female missionary auxiliary, either in Moon's lifetime nor in the 20th century Conservative Resurgence.
In 1912, Lottie Moon died early during a trip to the United States for a furlough, a common practice among American overseas missionaries every several years. Her death took place after the war-torn Chinese nation's Qing Dynasty had been overthrown.
(Readers may recall that there had been much reasonable resentment in China in later 19th century due to western nation's forcing China, due to their relative military weakness, to allow western nations to set up trading cities on China's east coast and to allow Christian missionaries into China).
According to Sullivan, the elderly and weakened Moon seems to have had a stroke or other medical event impacting her mental faculties before her trip. She does not think the evidence supports the story told by Moon's nurse for the trip that Moon had given away all her food to help Chinese people during this period of privation and literally starves to death.
After her death, Sullivan asserts, the SBC has not shown Moon to be the women's rights advocate that she thinks Moon was. She suggests Moon might be better understood as standing somewhat
closer to those who have left the SBC due to the Conservative Resurgence over the past few decades. However, there was no evidence presented that Moon rejected the inerrancy of the Bible. In fact, the evidence suggests that one reason Lottie Moon declined the offer to marry was that the one man she considered marrying, Dr. Crawford Toy, Ph. D, her college professor and later professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, came to reject Biblical inerrency and to seemingly embrace Darwinian evolution. The author does not address this matter with depth, in my view. In this regard, perhaps the author, who noted that she left the SBC as a result of the Conservative Reassurance may be reflecting at least in part on her own views of the matter.
In any case, this is a very well-done book and well worth the reader's time.
February 16, 2018
Seems to be two pages for same book. I just started this book. It appears the author is a feminist and is spewing man hate feminist crap. I want to read about this lady not read woman's study university crap. I will read another 5 pages and if this carrys on the book goes in the garbage can. Save your $30.
January 29, 2025
This is an excellent story of the true life of Lottie Moon. It tells how she went from a rich young southern belle to a devoted missionary to China.
December 14, 2016
"When asked by a new missionary in 1909 for the secret to her long success in China, Moon replied simply, 'Early to bed and do not worry.'" Lottie Moon could hardly be accused of taking it easy. This book was a fascinating look into the life of Lottie Moon, Southern Baptist "saint" and namesake of the "Lottie Moon Christmas Offering". She was an activist for women's rights during a period of time when women were little expected to do much else than take care of the home. Women at the time not only wanted the right to vote but also the right to serve (including organize and strategize) as God leads them whether at home or overseas. If you are looking for an in-depth look at her day-to-day missional strategy and Chinese living, you won't find much here. The focus of the book is on Lottie Moon's lasting but oft overlooked contribution: the beginnings and eventual formation of what is now known as the Women's Missionary Union.
It was fascinating to see Lottie as a sort of "forced egalitarian." She served in areas where there were no male ministers, and thus had no choice but to share the gospel to every woman and child...and didn't turn away men who showed up at the meetings. She tirelessly wrote to the Board that more workers were needed for the field.
A rather interesting fact that I didn't know was that the story of "Lottie's starvation for the needy of China" has been admittedly embellished over the years. She actually died at age 72 of an illness (meningitis?) which led to dementia and starvation during her final days.
The author puts it succinctly: "An actually remembered Moon would be a female activist who preached, argued for female equality, and helped bring the WMU into existence. Yet such activities conflict with the traditional understanding of the female role for Southern Baptists. So Moon remains a female saint who evinced Christ-like qualities by sacrificing herself—refusing to take food so that famine sufferers might have more and so that she would not increase the Foreign Mission Board debt. ...That this story of sacrifice is not true has not prevented it from achieving a deep resonance for Southern Baptists over nearly a century."
While I hold to a complementarian view of scripture, I appreciate the author's honest look at the workings/struggles of society and internal politics during the early days of the FMB and SBC. I especially appreciate how the author highlights some of the same recurring themes today.
Lottie Moon spent the majority of her life in harsh conditions (no Taobao back then :) for the sake of the gospel is an incredible testimony of her being faithful to what God called her. For that reason alone, I would gladly donate to the fund inspired by her life.
It was fascinating to see Lottie as a sort of "forced egalitarian." She served in areas where there were no male ministers, and thus had no choice but to share the gospel to every woman and child...and didn't turn away men who showed up at the meetings. She tirelessly wrote to the Board that more workers were needed for the field.
A rather interesting fact that I didn't know was that the story of "Lottie's starvation for the needy of China" has been admittedly embellished over the years. She actually died at age 72 of an illness (meningitis?) which led to dementia and starvation during her final days.
The author puts it succinctly: "An actually remembered Moon would be a female activist who preached, argued for female equality, and helped bring the WMU into existence. Yet such activities conflict with the traditional understanding of the female role for Southern Baptists. So Moon remains a female saint who evinced Christ-like qualities by sacrificing herself—refusing to take food so that famine sufferers might have more and so that she would not increase the Foreign Mission Board debt. ...That this story of sacrifice is not true has not prevented it from achieving a deep resonance for Southern Baptists over nearly a century."
While I hold to a complementarian view of scripture, I appreciate the author's honest look at the workings/struggles of society and internal politics during the early days of the FMB and SBC. I especially appreciate how the author highlights some of the same recurring themes today.
Lottie Moon spent the majority of her life in harsh conditions (no Taobao back then :) for the sake of the gospel is an incredible testimony of her being faithful to what God called her. For that reason alone, I would gladly donate to the fund inspired by her life.
February 16, 2018
I had high hopes for this book. I am into like 5 pages. It seems this author is a feminist and is spewing feminist/anti-man crap about this lady. Typical university woman's study crap. I may read another 5 pages than throw book in the garbage can. Save your $30.00
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews