Lottie Moon: A Southern Baptist Missionary to China in History and Legend

04 Creating a Female Public: 1889-1899

4 Creating a Female Public: 1889–1899 This is the work of a woman, unaided by any man. he woman’s missionary union began advertising the Christmas offering for North China only months after forming in 1888. Their first collection allowed the Foreign Mission Board to send three women to Shantung province, but Lottie Moon would not leave China for three more years. Although her health was weakening, she refused to return to Virginia until she was confident that her small group of followers had not only female teachers but also a permanent minister. The Saling villagers, to whom she felt the strongest obligation and emotional ties, formed their own church in 1889. In the years to come, the Pingtu district would provide the denomination with its greatest number of converts in North China. Moon’s achievement, though, would be jeopardized only months after her departure. The threat came not from Chinese suspicious of this foreign doctrine now taking root in the area, but from Moon’s oldest colleague, T. P. Crawford. The ensuing crisis shook the foundations of the Foreign Mission Board itself and reverberated through the denomination for years before ultimately leading to its split. During this difficult period, the Woman’s Missionary Union provided the denomination with increased financial support and proved unwavering advocates of the beleaguered Foreign Mission Board. As the WMU Executive Committee endeavored to build a sustainable organizational structure in the early 1890s, the Southern Baptist Convention faced a twofold crisis: a T 115 Creating a Female Public severe economic depression and Crawford’s direct challenge to the Foreign Mission Board’s legitimacy. Both damaged the board’s fund-raising ability and weakened the denomination. During these crises, the new women’s organization was able to raise the funds necessary to keep the FMB afloat. The WMU also provided public support for the board through the state Baptist newspapers, the Foreign Mission Journal, and the Central Committees . In the 1890s, Southern Baptist women saved the FMB from financial disaster and ensured that it retained grassroots support. As the organization grew, the Executive Committee used the SBC structure as a model. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, women would move from primarily holding local society meetings to regularly organizing large gatherings at the associational and district levels, just as the men did. Since women were barred from participating in official SBC business, the WMU afforded them an alternate means of creating and exerting power within their denomination .1 During its first decade, strengthened organization and successful fund-raising increased the women’s power and assured the WMU’s legitimacy . By the end of the nineteenth century, Southern Baptist women had moved firmly into the public realm, asserting power in a denomination that would come to dominate the southern cultural landscape.2 ∫ ∫ ∫ In the spring of 1889, the Woman’s Missionary Union presented Christmas offering funds exceeding $3,500 to the Foreign Mission Board. This money, a full $1,500 over their original goal, allowed the board to send out the three female missionaries specifically designated to help Lottie Moon. In May 1889, the board approved the first, Fannie Knight, who would arrive in China by the fall. Two months later, they appointed Mary Thornton and Laura Barton. All three young women volunteered for the highly publicized assignment of relieving Moon. In late 1889, the board also appointed a young pastor and his wife to the North China station, George and Bertha Bostick. The Bosticks joined another young couple that had been appointed the previous year, T. J. and Florence League. While the Shantung mission community awaited these reinforcements, the demands of their work continued unabated. Moon was pushing herself as she had never done. Lottie Moon: A Southern Baptist Missionary to China in History and Legend 116 Having watched missionaries younger than she fall ill and die, Moon had always guarded her health closely. But due to the exciting advances in the Pingtu district, she now gave herself over wholly to the work, spending eight- to ten-day stretches in Saling teaching for twelve hours straight while boarding in native housing.3 When she returned to Tengchow in the spring of 1889, Martha Crawford noted that Moon was “very much run down, and greatly needing recuperation.”4 Moon’s efforts in Saling, however, were not in vain. In October, she decided that some of the villagers, who had been asking for...