by Gene Scarborough » Thu Jul 21, 2011 6:51 am
This reference is "sketchy," at best. Here is the actual LSU site on the new book:
I have several concerns which have been expressed in the last year:
1) SWBTS somehow got the ramains of her mission itself and articles of whatever they now house and claim to be perusing.
2) It seems the more logical place for these to be would be WMU Headquarters.
3) The story about her relationship with Toy could be full of redacdtions as Patterson contends he was a Liberal of his day and Lottie could not continue the relationship with his theology---who really knows!
4) Catherine Allen did an extensive biography and my contact with her indicates nothing appeared in her findings.
This I know for sure. I pastored the FBC of Bishopville, SC, in the 70's. Two elderly women told me how Lottie served as a teacher for a plantation owner just north of town. The house and little outlying building used for the children's education still stood at the time. I photographed the exterior of the house and shared how Lottie was supposed to occupy the SW corner bedroom on the second floor before she landed in Rome, GA. The exterior and cluttered interior of the outbuilding were sent to Ms. Allen for inclusion in her book for later editions. I don't know if a historic marker has been placed on the site, but the house was abandoned and in poor repair in the 70's.
I was next at the Noonday Baptist Church just south of Woodstock, GA---and some 40 minutes via I-95 from Rome. My church had its minutes dating to the early 1800's bound and laminated so I could peruse them. I decided to go back to the time of Lottie's first letter back to Rome requesting a special offering and see if it might have filtered to Noonday.
The minutes showed nothing, but there was an interesting record at the time of a lady who was a member at Noonday who was accused of "deserting the faith." Lottie, as you may remember, got her idea for an offering request from fellow Methodist missionaries. She made her request at Christmas time thinking people would be more open to giving then than the mid-summer time used by the Methodists.
Anyway, back to Noonday where they sent 3 men to talk with the lady deserting her faith. They reported back to the next church conference in a month. The minutes read: "Sister ____________ has, indeed, deserted the faith---She has become a Methodist!!!!!" They promptly kicked her out!
Back then, like now, if you weren't "exactly committed" to the Baptist church, you were bound for Hell. The other religions of the day were incorrect and Baptists at Noonday were having none of it.
Curtis Freeman at Duke's Baptist House of Studies loved it and asked for a copy of the story. We are fraught with mythes these days and the current CR bunch is doing their best to "prove" they are right and anyone seeing things differently is dead wrong. This particularly applies to Mohler / Patterson / and a new Professor of Baptist History at SEBTS, Nathan Finn.
Beware the redactors and let's hope we get at the truth indicated for the new book!
Gene Scarborough