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Charlotte Diggs “Lottie” Moon (1840—1912) was a pioneering Southern Baptist missionary, teacher, evangelist, and church planter who lived and worked in China for nearly forty years. Although small in stature—just four feet three inches tall—she was a woman of towering intellect, character, and accomplishments. With friendship as the basis of her evangelistic work, Lottie developed strong ties with the Chinese people. She was generous to a fault, giving her own food supplies to starving families. Southern Baptists honor her as a hero because of her profound influence on missionary outreach and giving, especially through the denomination’s Woman’s Missionary Union. Lottie Moon died of starvation on Christmas Eve 1912.
Charlotte Diggs Moon, nicknamed “Lottie,” was born in Albermarle County, Virginia, into a well-to-do family of dedicated Southern Baptists. Although she attended church throughout her childhood, Lottie had become a determined skeptic by age seventeen. In 1858, Moon heard the preaching of Dr. John Broadus at an evangelistic meeting. Later that evening, Lottie’s sleep was interrupted by a barking dog, and her mind turned to a late-night contemplation of Dr. Broadus’ sermon and the words of Scripture she’d had heard all her life. God’s Spirit convinced Lottie of the gospel’s truth, and she decided to devote her life to Jesus Christ that night.
Lottie Moon studied at the Virginia Female Seminary (renamed Hollins College) and Albemarle Female Institution in Charlottesville, where she earned a master’s degree in classics in 1861. Lottie, one of the first Southern women to earn a master’s, was fluent in six languages. After the Civil War ended, she taught school in Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia.
God called Lottie Moon to the mission field when she was thirty-two years old. By then, her younger sister, Edmonia Moon, was already serving as the first Baptist unmarried female missionary in China. A year later, in 1873, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Foreign Mission Board commissioned Lottie to serve in China, where she spent the remainder of her life.
Lottie Moon first sailed to Shantung (now Shandong) Province but later settled in Tengzhou (now Qingdao), where she taught in a children’s school. During a period of loneliness, Lottie came close to marrying a brilliant, missions-focused man. She broke off the engagement because of their incompatible views on evolution and various Christian doctrines.
After twelve years in Tengzhou, Moon moved to P’ing-tu to focus on the work she felt passionately called to do—evangelizing the poor and church planting. Lottie treated the Chinese people with respect and friendship. She wore traditional Chinese clothing, spoke the language, and adopted the people’s customs. She was the first single woman to independently establish a Chinese missionary post. Although her field leaders initially opposed her working as an evangelist, they later recognized that her post was one of China’s most successful evangelistic centers. Through Lottie Moon’s efforts, thirty new churches were planted in P’ing-tu.
Lottie constantly wrote letters home to challenge the men and women of her denomination to support and promote foreign missions work, especially to create an organization to sponsor women in missions. In 1888, she inspired the women of the SBC to begin a yearly Christmas offering for China’s poor, which raised $3,000 in its initial year. After her death, the offering was named the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions and continued to raise millions of dollars annually for overseas missions.
When a national famine caused the daily deaths of thousands of people in China, Lottie opened her pantry to the poor and often went without food herself. She had battled through loneliness, plague, revolutions, wars, disease, and malnutrition. Finally, when she weighed just fifty pounds, fellow missionaries urged her to go home on furlough to recuperate. She set sail in December 1912 but never made it home. On Christmas Eve, Lottie Moon died from complications of starvation onboard a ship anchored in the harbor of Kobe, Japan. She was seventy-two years old.
Here are a few quotes from Lottie Moon’s letters:
“Why should we not . . . do something that will prove that we are really in earnest in claiming to be followers of him who, though he was rich, for our sake became poor?”
“A young man should ask himself not if it is his duty to go to the heathen, but if he may dare stay at home. The command is so plain: ‘Go.’”
“Please say to the new missionaries that they are coming to a life of hardship, responsibility and constant self denial. . . . They will . . . need to be strong and courageous. If the joy of the Lord be their strength, the blessedness of the work will more than compensate for its hardships. Let them come ‘rejoicing to suffer’ for the sake of that Lord and Master who freely gave his life for them.”
