Patriarchy has its limits, I suppose

What do we need to think about these  females, that gender-specific group that makes up fully two-thirds of the personnel of our Journeyman force of our wonderful International Mission Board? 

These are mostly single, college graduates who postpone marriage, home, kids, career, family to give two years to the Lord in overseas service, while their gender opposites cruise along on their dating, marrying career paths.

What must we think of this crowd?

I'd start by remembering the considerable history of single females on the international fields, Lottie Moon being the most famous but who is joined by many, many others.

I wrote about a year ago about the most recent Lottie Moon biography, Lottie Moon, the SBC's Most Heroic Figure. Author Regina Sullivan did a good job with this and I recommend it, although you will look in vain in the SBC to find any mention of it. The phrase "speculative feminism" has been used dismissively of modern treatments of our sainted missionary of long past.  Pay no attention to these. Read the book.

One notable thing about Sullivan's book is how Lottie Moon (and others) had considerable difficulty with men missionaries behaving administratively and attitudinaly badly. Read the book,  you will see.

Our current expression of ecclesiastical patriarchy, having been expanded in some SBC circles from "the office of pastor is limited to men" as outlined by the Baptist Faith and Message, is in a state of flux. Thank God those SBC leaders holding responsible denominational positions haven't lowered any patriarchal guns at the Journeyman program. Not a hint of it, but vigilance is the watchword on this.

While we are in the neighborhood: Quickly now, name one male SBC missionary figure of the past. 

Er, ah, ahem....

Lottie and patriarchy aside, because of a network of connections I have known several 'Journeygirls' (a term they use, not of my coining) and seldom find a better expression of Christian commitment and zeal than among them, not that the one-third male Journeymen lack the same.

Because of funding pressures, the appointments in this program can involve locations that entail service with some degree of difficulty and often relative isolation; nonetheless, these females answer the call. God bless them all.

Contrast that with the hotbed of our six seminaries brimming with mostly male students strolling to class, holding high minded theological discussions with fellow neophytes. Some of our seminaries, Southeastern and Midwestern come to mind, have taken to promoting themselves as "Great Commission Seminaries." One might rightly conclude that the "Great Commission" concept has not been fully embraced.

Manifestly, the current SBC emphasis on patriarchy has not filled the IMB with male mission candidates.

Top ten SBC stories of 2011

I recognize that most SBCers think that if it doesn't involve the SBC it's not worth thinking about, so here's my list of top SBC stories for 2011. The rest of Christendom can have their list, but none of that counts here (however, if the world had ended as Harold Camping said it would a couple of times in 2011, I would have been happy to include that non-SBC story in the list).
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1. Bryant Wright appoints an informal, unfunded SBC name change committee. And thereby stirs up the ire of many who resent his ability to do this. Get over it. You will get a direct vote, if it comes to that, next June.

2. Tom Elliff elected as new head of IMB. Whenever our flagship agency has a new leader, that's big news. I wish him every success in leading the SBC's flagship entity.

3. SBC Cooperative Program receipts show a slight increase. The Executive Committee reported this for the fiscal year ending September 30th; however, the next two months showed a steep decrease. Maybe they back-loaded September to make 2010-2011 look good? Whatever...an increase was unexpected.

4. Southern Baptists bash Mormon presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Start with Robert Jeffress, pastor of what used to be the SBC's top church, FBC Dallas. Add a few others and not a few bloggers who display their religious bigotry in foreswearing voting for a Mormon candidate. Perhaps the brethren should start a re-elect Obama SBCers group.

5. State conventions move towards 50/50 Cooperative Program split. State conventions get credit for good intentions; however, Plodder takes the Matthew 24 approach to these - cuts and rumors of cuts, but don't be alarmed, the checks haven't been written.

6. Surry (NC) Baptist Association kicks out church with female pastor. And does so summarily. How dare the church call a female and ignore the association's doctrinal purity and unity? And some in the SBC say that our name ("Southern") is the cause of our bad image.

7. Frank Page puts Calvinism at the top of his list of challenges for the SBC. Since he hears from a lot of Baptists, I'd listen to him on this.

8. SBC annual meeting attendance lowest since 1944. Only 4,814 at Phoenix, a group which didn't include moi (I've already been to Phoenix in 110 degree heat in June). So, it was an off election year and ther was no raging controversy. Still, SBCers used to like to spend some expense money.

9. New biography of Lottie Moon published. Regina Sullivan's new bio is the first in about three decades. It calls into question the use of Lottie's starvation death narrative as a fund raising tool but what good are facts if they don't get the money flowing? SBCers should read the book.

10. Plodder resigns his church and retires. Well, this one is pretty big news around my house if nowhere else. I reserve the right to undo this one if the Lord leads.

Lottie Moon, SBC's most heroic figure

Because of the offering in her name, Charlotte Digges Moon, Lottie Moon to all of us, is the SBC's most heroic figure.

If SBCers would take an excursion away from the usual Christmastime abstract of her life found in International Mission Board materials and repeated in church Lottie Moon Christmas Offering promotional stuff and read her biography, they would probably join me in my assessment.

Regina Sullivan wrote the latest biography of LM (cover image is shown here). A previous biography, 1980, was written by Catherine Allen. I bought the former and was generously sent a copy of the latter by Wanda Lee, WMU president. I read Sullivan's but haven't had time to read Allen's.

Moon was an inspiring example, serving in China. Pioneering work, alone, in some parts of the interior. Living through the Boxer Rebellion. Vigorously contenting for the faith, pleading for support. Read the book.

One of the popular blog sites interviews prominent SBCers and always asks them who some of their heroes are. I think my memory is correct when I say that Lottie's name has yet to be mentioned. The current SBC is manifestly gender-sensitive, a euphemistic way of putting it. Serious gender issues are meant to be subsumed under the sterile vocabulary of "complementarianism" and "egalitarianism" issues for another day on my blog.

I wouldn't have any hesitation in naming Lottie Moon as one of my heroes in Christian ministry.

One side note. Why the IMB continues to use the unattractive "schoolgirl" photograph of jut-jawed Lottie in their promotional materials is beyond me. , Regina Sullivan told me that she saw a letter from LM to the board asking that they not use that photograph. There are certainly others available. You would think that they would use a photo of Lottie from her time in the field. The "schoolgirl" photo is almost certainly prior to her time in China.

I'm praying that the LMCO shows an increase this year.

WMU on the new Lottie Moon book

I asked the WMU in Birmingham a couple of questions about the new Lottie Moon book by Regina Sullivan, you know, the book that labels Lottie's death story a "myth".

On the picture of LM above. The WMU archivist dates it at 1877. I had some question about its authenticity but I'm satisfied with that. So, how about we archive the jut-jawed, Lottie Moon schoolgirl photo shown below in favor of this picture.

                                             

                                              

Let's let Lottie be a grown-up and not a schoolgirl.

I also asked for comment on the death "myth" and Wanda Lee, WMU president, said they were confident in the story as related by Catherine Allen in her 1980 biography of Lottie Moon. Further comment to come later, I would guess.

Any way you slice it or picture it, Lottie Moon's story is an inspiring one.

Picturing Lottie Moon

What did Lottie Moon look like? How about several different pictures of her?

                                             

                                              

Here is the photo I've seen most often.

This is what the International Mission Board uses most frequently. It is featured on her IMB bio page and is her Facebook profile photo. According to Regina Sullivan's new book on Lottie, the photo is commonly dated around 1870 about the time of Lottie first went to China. Sullivan notes that the "hairstyle is that of a schoolgirl, which suggests that the photo was taken in the 1860s." I'm with Sullivan on this and think that we can do better than this as our main image of dear old Lottie. What's she got in her mouth anyway?

This is from The New Georgia Encyclopedia. I assume it is from Lottie's time in Cartersville, GA where she was called to foreign missions. It's better than the schoolgirl photo.

This headshot was lifted from a 1905 photo of lottie with two other missionaries in China. I like it. Lottie would have been about 65. She is clearly a formidable woman.

This one is in the WMU archives. I don't know if it is authentic or not. Looks about right. If it is authentic, why does the IMB and WMU prefer the schoolgirl one?

The photo for the cover of Sullivan's book is a charcoal portrait, date unknown. Looks like someone photoshopped Lottie to make her a woman of the 21st century.



Any of these are preferable to the schoolgirl photo.

What do you think?

Time to drop the Lottie Moon starvation myth?

The use of Moon’s death as a means to shame Southern Baptists for their financial neglect of the Foreign Mission Board proved effective in the latter half of the twentieth century as it had been in the early decades.

This is Regina Sullivan’s conclusion in her new book on Lottie Moon. What that sentence doesn’t say is that the common account of Moon’s death, that she stopped eating as a protest to the FMB’s inability or reluctance to help with Chinese famine relief and in order to send all of her own money to those Chinese who were suffering, belongs in the realm of myth and legend, not fact.

Sullivan reviews Moon’s death along with the reactions to it and traces the story of the sacrificial death myth. She attributes it to Cynthia Miller, the missionary nurse who was accompanying Moon on her journey home and who was with her when she died in Kobe, Japan harbor on Christmas Eve, 1912. Later in that journey from Japan to the states, Miller met with one of Moon’s friends, Jennie Snead Hatcher, in Honolulu. Based on her conversation with Miller, Hatcher wrote a full-page remembrance of Moon that was published in the Virginia Baptist newspaper. That remembrance was a sacrificial death narrative coupled with an emotional fund-raising appeal.

Hatcher wrote of Moon, that...

...after months of heroic exertion and unexampled self-sacrifice, she broke down and sank into a melancholy state, refusing food that the hungry might be fed. The indebtedness of the [Foreign Mission] Board also preyed upon her mind until the very last.

It's not difficult to go from there to statements such as this one from the "Lottie Moon is Starving Again" promotional theme of the 1988 Lottie Moon Offering:

Lottie Moon literally starved to death...So she gave all she had to give from her food to her last ounce of strength.

Well, not true, but what a tale.

The facts of Moon’s death included a refusal to take solid food, a wild, demented, and irrational concern for her own money and that of the FMB, depression, and a rather severe and deep boil behind her ear on her neck that was thought to have affected her mental and physical condition. She became sick, rapidly declined, and died at 72 - a tragedy and great loss to the missionary work in China.

Evidence against the starving-herself-to-death narrative are contemporary accounts from her missionary colleagues who did not note such things, the fact that she died with plenty of money in the bank and had lived with FMB money problems for decades, obituaries which didn’t so explain her death, and, most notably, errors passed along from the nurse to Moon’s friend Hatcher.

We Baptists, back then and today, are certainly pragmatists. We know and like something that works, especially if it brings in the shekels. If the facts don’t quite support the story, well, we are loath to give up such an effective story. What’s the harm in a little legend if it helps the flow of money for good causes?

Sullivan writes that Moon’s biographer, Catherine Allen, was faced with those who wanted the myth corrected in her new book but also those who “advised her not to ‘tamper with the precious story.’” Allen decided to leave the implication of the death narrative myth intact, while not directly stating it. Like I said, we like a good fund raising story and hate to give it up.

It’s time to give this one up.

Lottie Moon’s 39 years on the mission field is far more significant, much more thrilling, and vastly more inspiring than the events of the last few months of her life.

The old, old story: Lottie Moon and Crawford Toy

I was introduced to the story of Lottie Moon and Crawford H. Toy at one of the SBC annual meetings during the contentious years of the Conservative Resurgence. During that time, one of the marquee conservative preachers (Criswell?) told the story of our beloved Baptist saint and revered icon and her romance but ultimate break with the brilliant, but liberal Southern Seminary professor Toy.

The narrative went like this: Pioneering SBC single missionary, Lottie Moon, was in love with the learned professor Crawford H. Toy. Marriage was planned and the couple planned to serve on distant oriental mission fields. Toy, though, migrated to more distant and foreign theological fields, those of higher biblical criticism and Darwinism. When Lottie learned of this she broke off the relationship, returned to China, and continued until her death the work for which she is known, remembered, and revered. Toy continued down the path of liberalism eventually leaving the SBC and even orthodox Christianity.

The lesson for SBC conservatives in the 1980s was plain - Lottie Moon recognized liberalism and fled from it a century before SBC conservatives recognized it.

So, is this part of Conservative Resurgence mythology? Did conservatives dredge up this obscure part of Lottie Moon's life and dramatize it to their advantage? Or, is it factual?

Much of the story is not in dispute: Lottie Moon and Crawford Toy were engaged to be married. They did not marry. Moon did serve out her life on the mission fields of China. Toy was indeed a brilliant scholar but one whose views became more and more liberal. He died a Unitarian.

A lengthy article by Dan Kent in 2003 says of Lottie's break with Toy: “Eventually, she began to hear of the [Toy] controversy. "She obtained books which were representative of Toy's position which she studied. She became violently opposed to his views, broke off the engagement, and never married." (47) "Toy's family understood that there was an engagement which was broken because of religious differences." (48)

Kent relies on Pope A. Duncan ("Crawford Howell Toy: Heresy at Louisville," in American Religious Heretics: Formal and Informal Trials, 1966) for the first part of that paragraph and Catherine B. Allen’s 1980 WMU biography of Moon for the second. I can't determine excactly where Kent got that Lottie "violently" reacted to Toy's views.

Concerning the relationship and cancelled wedding plans, Regina Sullivan in her new book on Lottie Moon ("Lottie Moon") conducts a more exhaustive examination of the source materials. The Moon/Toy relationship takes up only three pages and Sullivan concludes that evidence is lacking and the reason is unclear why the marriage never occurred. She notes that there are no letters between Toy and Moon extant and that there is a gap in correspondence between Moon and Foreign Mission Board head H. A. Tupper for a critical time when marriage was planned but Moon was in China and Toy stateside. If she "violently" opposed Toy's views, that description must have come from secondary sources. We have nothing from Lottie herself on this.

It is quite clear from Sullivan's research that Moon maintained her relationship with Toy for years after his forced resignation from Southern seminary and during the period when Toy's views were hotly criticized in the Baptist papers. What was Lottie writing to her fiance during this time? We don't know and probably never will.

Sullivan offers two possibilities for the cancelled wedding.

“The first is that Moon realized that if she married Toy her career as a missionary would be over” Toy being unacceptable to the Foreign Mission Board because of his views. The second is that “Toy’s views had finally moved too far from what Moon considered orthodox, causing her to reconsider the marriage.”

Since both of these pivot on Crawford Toy’s theology, I don’t see how the CR narrative needs much adjusting other than to drop the references to Moon's emotions. If it looked like his theology was such that he anticipated appointment by the FMB, he and Moon might have married and both served in China or Japan. If he had not gone as far theologically as he did by the early 1880s, perhaps he would have remained acceptable to Moon and they could have married.

Sullivan says that Moon's later actions "suggest that she allowed some variance in doctrinal matters." She bases this primarily on Moon's intercession with FMB head Tupper in behalf of a missionary colleague who resigned over theological questions. Moon wrote and asked Tupper not to accept the resignation and allow the missionary time to think about and work out the unspecified theological issues.

Interesting, but not compelling.

So, how can the Moon/Toy narrative be truthfully told?

While we don't know and cannot say exactly what Lottie was thinking, the evidence points to the accuracy of the standard narrative: Moon and Toy were to be married. They did not marry either directly because of Toy's liberalism or indirectly because his views made him unacceptable for missionary appointment. Moon goes on to become a Southern Baptist saint. Toy has a distinguished career at Harvard but dies outside of orthodox Christianity.

Moon's journey continued in faithfulness and for the faith once delivered to the saints. Toy journeyed away from the same and died outside orthodox Christian faith.

Let the reader judge which path was superior.
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Read Al Mohler on Toy with links for the Toy/Moon matter: Heresy is not heroic which has a link to Kent's article.

Previous discussion by plodders like me may be found: here.

So, Lottie Moon didn't starve herself to death...

...and every December we've been promoting a myth about her all these years?

Such is the conclusion of Regina D. Sullivan in a new book on Lottie, Lottie Moon
A Southern Baptist Missionary to China in History and Legend.

Quote below from ABP's article Opinion: Lottie Moon, a missionary in history and legend

The legend of Moon’s death from starvation on the mission field has played a central role in how she has been remembered, especially since the myth of her Christ-like sacrifice is essential to Southern Baptist mission fund raising. Through painstaking research I was able to locate the origins of this mythology and explain how it formed and bloomed into legend.

Moon did not starve herself to death nor did she give all of her money away to famine relief, as has been popularized in denominational publications since the early 20th century. It is, indeed, ironic that Moon’s active life, her call for female equality and her support for female organization have been overlooked in favor of the starvation myth.

Heavens! What would the SBC be without our cherished myths?

I look forward to reading this book. I presume that the author will be straightforward about Lottie's breaking her engagement with Crawford Toy over his liberalism.