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5 The Contested Legacy of Lottie Moon Southern Bap­tists, Women, and Partisan Protestantism Elizabeth H. Flowers Background When conducting an ethnographic study of Southern Bap­ tist women a few years ago, I heard an ordained pastor involved with Bap­ tist Women in Ministry speak of the “real Lottie Moon.”1 Having grown up in a South­ ern Bap­ tist church and participated in the denomination’s mission group for girls, Girls-­ in-­ Action, I was quite familiar with the late nineteenth-­ and early twentieth-­ century missionary to China. Her named Christmas offering, led by the Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU), culminated my childhood church’s yearly calendar. At ten, I proudly played one of her Chinese pupils in the annual Lottie Moon Christmas pageant. I had even heard Southern Bap­ tists playfully referring to her as “Saint Lottie.” But I had never heard the phrase, the “real Lottie Moon,” and wondered who the imposters might be. As part of my research, I began asking women about their understanding of Lottie Moon. When visiting the WMU’s archives, I also combed the offering’s promotional material, uncovering a plethora of images and portrayals.2 Some were expected; others were quite surprising. As I discovered, Moon’s actual biography was rather ambiguous. Although she was born in 1840 into a large, well-­ known, and slave-­ owning Virginian family, the Moon’s wealth seemed to have dissipated by her adolescence and her father’s untimely death in 1853. After the Civil War, Lottie taught school, eventually founding the Cartersville Female High School in Georgia. Then, at age thirty-­ three, she followed her younger sister Edmonia to China as a Southern Bap­ tist missionary. Within a few years, Edmonia, for undisclosed reasons, returned home. Lottie, however, Contested Legacy of Lottie Moon 113 labored on. A prolific and talented writer, she sent hundreds of descriptive letters to family, friends, churches, and local women’s mission circles, as well as Southern Bap­ tist journals and papers—thereby making hers a Southern Bap­ tist household name. At this point, her story also became more open to interpretation. On the one hand, she appeared a forward-­ thinking maverick. At several points of local po­ liti­ cal unrest and rebellion, Moon refused to follow other missionaries to safer territory. After 1885, she abandoned the Southern Bap­tist compound and her teaching position inTengchow to live as the sole Westerner in inner Pingtu province. Conforming to Chinese dress and lifestyle, she founded a church that attracted more than a hundred members. Writing home, she urged other women to join her in evangelizing the Chinese people. On the other hand, when Moon did return to the States on furlough , she embodied the Southern lady, following the gendered etiquette of addressing audiences of women only. More than once, male denominational officials failed in their attempts to hear her speak. Even more enigmatic , she initially accepted then turned down the proposal of the distinguished and controversial Southern Bap­ tist theologian Crawford Toy. In 1912, fellow missionaries secured Moon’s passage from China to Virginia, citing her frail health. She died aboard the ship as it docked in Japan. While the details remain unclear, the official cause of death was malnutrition .3 If Moon’s narrative was somewhat imprecise, the success of her named offering has been incontrovertible. In 1918, the WMU’s former cor­ re­ spond­ ing secretary, Annie Armstrong, suggested using Lottie Moon’s name for the or­ ga­ ni­ za­ tion’s Christmas Offering for China.4 Not only because its proceeds went to China, where Moon had served, but also because Moon had supported the WMU and died on Christmas Eve. WMU leaders accepted Armstrong’s recommendation, though little about the promotion changed until, that was, the Southern Bap­ tist Convention faced a debilitating budgetary crisis. In 1919, SBC leaders followed the fund-­ raising trends of other Protestant denominations and launched what they called the Seventy-­ Five Million Campaign to raise $75 million in five years. Much to church officials’ surprise and delight, pledges exceeded the $75 million mark by more than $20 million. Agencies and boards, already strapped for cash, were quick to spend the anticipated funds against borrowed bank loans. Exuberance soon gave way to despair, however, as an agricultural recession hit the South, and only $58 million of the $98 million pledged came in. By 1924, the SBC faced financial ruin. Its agencies and boards 114 Elizabeth H. Flowers were bankrupt. Feeling the crisis most acutely...

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