Woman with a mission: Remembering Lotte Moon and the Woman's Missionary Union (Charlotte Diggs Moon).

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation examines the life of nineteenth-century Southern Baptist missionary, Charlotte Digges “Lotte” Moon, and focuses on how she inspired women to support her personal mission cause. Her ability to rally Southern Baptist women proved the catalyst for the formation of a region-wide women's organization, the Woman's Missionary Union (WMU), Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Her call for equality in the conduct of religious work challenged cultural and religious traditions of the nineteenth-century South. Moon's message appealed to Baptist women because she folded together the egalitarian ideas of Christian discipleship with the language of women's rights. This study argues that Moon's discourse and her actions attracted Southern women <italic>because</italic> she questioned the restrictions Baptist men imposed on women. Historians of nineteenth-century white Southern women have argued that they were not interested in questioning their circumscribed public role. This dissertation challenges that conclusion and moves beyond previous scholarship that has overlooked Moon and her followers despite their continued prominence in Southern culture.
Moon's life provides only part of her story. After her death in 1912, the WMU began a campaign to keep her memory alive and raise funds for foreign mission work. Six years later the WMU published a pamphlet depicting Moon as a model missionary, not because of her willingness to challenge prevailing social norms, but because she had “sacrificed her life for the heathen.” What the WMU's pamphlet lacked in factual accuracy it made up for with passionate rhetoric, and donations increased a remarkable 600 percent. Reacting to the overwhelming appeal of this re-packaged Moon, the WMU attached her name to their yearly Christmas offering and built a fundraising industry around their version of her life story. Since 1889 they have raised over two billion dollars through their promotion of the annual “Louie Moon Christmas Offering.” This manipulation of Moon's biography has led the denomination and the WMU to overlook much of their own history. My dissertation remedies this loss by documenting the historical Moon's role in the SBC and Southern culture. It concludes by analyzing Moon as a site where institutional memory is contested and renewed.