The sad story of the failed engagement between missionary Lottie Moon and academic Crawford Toy is interesting only for what it reveals about the view of marriage and unthinking self-abnegation urged upon believers by fundamentalists. Moon, who ended the engagement because Toy doubted the literal truth of Genesis, was tormented by loneliness her entire life and died alone and mad in Japan. Toy married somebody else and died a highly respected scholar on the faculty of Harvard University.
The subsequent mythology has it that Moon was amongst the finest human beings who ever lived, and Toy amongst the worst, and Pious Al Mohler ain’t letting anybody say different.
Something deeply disturbing recently appeared at EthicsDaily.com, the Web site for the Baptist Center for Ethics. Tony Cartledge, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School and former editor of the Biblical Recorder, recently contributed an article that makes the astounding claim that both Lottie Moon and Crawford H. Toy should be considered “Baptist heroes.”
The problem with Toy, we learn, is that he went around having his very own personal unauthorized thoughts.
Neither Mohler’s piece, nor those he cites, add much to what is already a well-known story, but this little controversy is well worth a read for what it reveals about the resolutely inflexible mindset that guides these characters, and which the pastors they train are taught to take to, and urge upon, their congregations.
loading...
