Do you really KNOW Lottie Moon? She's not well known outside of Southern Baptist circles, but within those circles she is. There is even an annual offering dedicated in her memory, of which every cent goes to the International Mission Board to be used in the field. None goes to operations.
Coming from a tepid Methodist background, and it not the fault of Methodism but of me, I had never heard of her until introduced to her at Briar Hill Baptist Church in Florence, MS. I attended BHBC when courting the woman (Shelia) with whom God blessed me as my wife and life companion for what will soon be 49 years (I hit a home run, she barely got on base) one Sunday when the church was (I thought) raising money for her. I thought she must have some dread disease and no health insurance or some such. Shelia quickly disabused me of that notion, and filled me in that Margaret Lackey and Annie Armstrong would also have offerings of a similar nature taken up during the following year. (They were not ill, either.)
I learned a little about Lottie Moon but never really knew a whole lot about her beyond she died on the mission field in China, and that if the SBC ever decided to beatify and canonize a saint, she would likely be the first. Then I ran up on this book several years ago, from which I took "ten fun facts."
Ten fun facts about Lottie Moon
(source: The New Lottie Moon Story by Catherine B. Allen)
1. She was born into pre-Civil War southern aristocracy. An uncle on her mother’s side bought Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, in 1832. He sold it three years later at a great loss because (1) it cost like rip to maintain it and (2) he considered it a tad ostentatious in light of his growing conviction that God was calling him to go to China as a missionary. He never made it and, in fact, later joined up with the “Campbellite” movement (the Disciples of Christ and the Church of Christ). Lottie herself was born and reared at Viewmont, a venerable old Virginia plantation, in 1840.
2. While her parents were fairly committed Baptists, Lottie (real name Charlotte Diggs Moon), as late as 1856 (when she was 16 years old), “had flippantly professed not to care for the fate of her soul, excusing herself on the basis of not having thought about it.” And when once asked what her middle initial D stood for, she said “devil.”
3. In December of 1858, when she was 18, she went to a revival being conducted at FBC Charlottesville by John Broadus (the “Broad” of Broadman Press whose theology was both fervently evangelical and solidly Calvinistic) to scoff. But instead she engaged in earnest conversation with Rev. Broadus, prayed all night as a result, and was saved. A school mate noted she appeared to be “God’s chosen vessel. In his own time, he brought her to his feet, meek, submissive, ready to do any work the master assigned.”
4. She had two cousins, one also named Charlotte and called Lottie, the other named Virginia, both of whom served as Confederate spies during the Civil War. Virginia promised sixteen different Confederate soldiers she would marry them when the war was over to keep their morale up. The cousin named Lottie had been engaged to marry an army officer named Ambrose Burnside before the war, but she changed her mind at the altar. Burnside was later a Union general during the war, and when Lottie was arrested as a spy and presented to him as a prisoner, he chivalrously released her.
5. She supported the concept of “deaconesses” and believed it was biblical. Even paid ones. She also believed that single women missionaries should have an equal voice with men in mission business. She was irked to hear people in comfortable pews theorizing about the proper role of women in the church. More than once she preached the gospel to men because no qualified man was available.
Part of a letter she wrote from China, published in the Religious Herald newspaper, read: “More than a year ago, in your collective wisdom, you advised the women of the Virginia Baptist Churches as to what stand they should take with regard to foreign mission work. As a Virginia Baptist woman, I come to you now with a practical question.”
In her question she outlined a typical situation where she and another female missionary were asked by men to teach them and to conduct worship. Should they oblige, or should they permit unbaptized and perhaps unconverted men to take the lead?
“You see our dilemma,” she wrote. “To do men’s work or sit silent at religious services conducted by men just emerging from heathenism. I beg that (the) brethren, ministerial and lay, will take the matter into consideration and give me the benefit of their judgment.” She further asked that they answer through the columns of the same paper that published her letter. There was no response.
6. She supported the concept of periodic furloughs for Baptist missionaries at a time when there was no such thing for Baptist missionaries (but Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries benefited from such). Baptist missionaries were expected to leave home and never come back, dying on the field as a testimony to their dedication, and thought less of if they didn’t do that. (And that’s basically what she did.)
7. She was at least once (and possibly twice) engaged to marry Crawford Toy, an eminent Southern Baptist who was booted out of Southern Seminary for heresy and who later became a Unitarian. But she broke it off both times. (Toy’s sister, Julia, was one of Lottie’s closest friends and also the first president of Woman’s Missionary Union in Mississippi.)
8. She once said “Preaching in a city chapel has a fine sound and looks like work. In point of fact, it is the easiest and least productive kind of missionary work.” (Her words, not mine!)
9. She strongly advocated for financing God’s work through tithes and offerings, and did not permit women’s groups working on her behalf to raise money by entertainments and gimmicks.
She was a giant of woman, standing every bit of four feet three inches.
Glynn Kegley is a Rankin County southsider. He is the owner and sole employee of a think tank. Sometimes he sits and thinks, and sometimes he just sits.
