In a story that's been largely overlooked (who reads Baptist news during the holidays?), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary unveiled several shipping crates purported to contain remnants of Lottie Moon's rented house from P'ingtu City, China, along with personal possessions and other 19th century antiques from the area.
Seminary president Paige Patterson displayed open crates reported to contain "some of Moon's furniture, such as chairs and a stove, as well as shingles, bricks and other remains from her house in P'ingtu, China," according to the article, which offered no information about how the items were authenticated as being Moon's.
Since Moon is known to have lived exceedingly frugally in a tiny dirt-floored house, the 35,000 pounds of materials reportedly contained in the shipment must have included many tons of bricks and clay shingles, as well as a lot of stuff that never belonged to Moon.
As expected, Patterson used the occasion to praise Moon as a champion of biblical inerrancy, something I've heard him do since the old "School of the Prophets" days at Criswell Bible College back in the 1970s. According to the article, Patterson prefaced his dedicatory prayer over the artifacts with a talk that "explained why Lottie Moon is so significant to Southwestern Seminary and the Southern Baptist Convention 'in the aftermath of the conservative renaissance of the convention.'"
This is nothing short of idolatry---though Lottie Moon indeed is a Baptist hero. Paige Patterson's zeal to prove his beliefs are the only correct ones have clouded his views of Lottie Moon. It is ironic that the fundamentalists believe that women cannot preach the Gospel at home but allow them to preach the Gospel abroad. Anyways what are your thoughts?
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