This book is dedicated to one of the great Southern Baptist Missionaries, Lottie Moon. If you are a Southern Baptist you are accustomed to the annual Christmastime tradition of taking up the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions. The Lottie Moon offering is specifically important to Southern Baptists because 55% percent of all of the money that is raised by the denomination every year comes from this one offering. And while most Southern Baptists know that Lottie Moon was a missionary to China, few know, because their denominational leaders no longer wish to tell the story, that before becoming a missionary, Lottie was a spy for the Confederacy during the War Between the States. Another inconvenient truth is that the Moons were one of Virginia's most prominent slave-owning families. After the War, Lottie would choose to go to China as a missionary because it was preferable to her than living under the cruelty of Yankee occupation. Unable to live in a free Southern nation, she chose instead to live as a "free" Southern woman in the harsh land of China rather than as a slave in her beloved but Yankee occupied Southland that had been overrun by carpetbaggers and re-constructionists. And thus she gave her life, inspiring millions. Also noteworthy is the fact that unlike the many Southern Baptist leaders insistent upon apologizing for Lottie and others of her generation, Lottie herself never once apologized for having been a Southerner. Never once did she apologize for the fact that her family owned a plantation, or slaves. Nor did she ever apologize for her dangerous service to the Confederate nation of which she still considered herself a citizen even at life's end. The author is NOT writing this book to impugn the testimony of Lottie Moon. She has been, and she remains, one of his heroes of the faith. Rather, the author rightly points out that while slavery was horrible, equally horrible is to judge Lottie Moon, John Broadus, or other faithful Christians of the antebellum period by the standards and morality of a future time in which they did not live. May you be inspired as you read the testimony of one of God's most special and unique servants.

Legendary Southern Baptist missionary Charlotte "Lottie" Moon played a pivotal role in revolutionizing southern civil society. Her involvement in the establishment of the Women's Missionary Union provided white Baptist women with an alternate means of gaining and asserting power within the denomination's organizational structure and changed it forever. In Lottie Moon: A Southern Baptist Missionary to China in History and Legend Regina Sullivan provides the first comprehensive portrait of "Lottie," who not only empowered women but also inspired the formation of one of the most influential religious organizations in the United States. Despite being the daughter of slaveholders in antebellum Virginia, Moon never lived the life of a typical southern belle. Highly educated and influenced by models of independent womanhood, including an older sister who was a woman's rights advocate, an open opponent of slavery, and the first Virginian female to earn a medical degree, Moon followed her sister's lead and utilized her extensive education to successfully combine the language of woman's rights with the egalitarian impulse of evangelical Protestantism. In 1873 Moon found her true calling, however, in missionary work in China. During her tenure there she recommended that the week before Christmas be designated as a time of giving to foreign missions. In response to her vision, thousands of Southern Baptist women organized local missionary societies to collect funds, and in 1888, the Woman's Missionary Union was founded as the Southern Baptist Convention's female auxiliary for missionary work. Sullivan credits Moon's role in the establishment of the Woman's Missionary Union as having a significant impact on the erosion of patriarchal power and women's new engagement with the public sphere. Since her initial plea in 1888, the Missionary Union's annual "Lottie Moon Christmas Offering" has raised over a billion dollars to support missionary work. Lottie Moon captures the influence and culminating effect of one woman's personal, spiritual, and civic calling.

After becoming the most educated woman in the American South, Lottie Moon (1840-1912) spent thirty-nine years in China. As she watched her fellow missionaries fall to disease and exhaustion, she became just as dedicated to educating Christians about the often preventable tragedies of missionary life as she was to educating Chinese people about the Christian life. Today, an annual missionary offering taken in her name continues to enable countless others to give their all for the gospel.

Fully revised and expanded, this new work is the first major revision of the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in more than 40 years! It is the official revision of Lesser Feasts and Fasts and authorized by the 2009 General Convention. All commemorations in Lesser Feasts and Fasts have been retained, and many new ones added. Three scripture readings (instead of current two) are provided for all minor holy days. Additional new material includes a votive mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, many more ecumenical commemorations, plus a proper for space exploration. For years the oft revised volume, Lesser Feasts and Fasts (LFF), has served parishes and individuals mark part of the holiness of each day by providing Scripture readings, a collect, a Eucharistic preface, and a narrative about those remembered on the church's calendar that day whose lives have witnessed to the grace of God. Holy Women, Holy Men (HWHM) is a major effort to revise, but also to expand and enrich LFF. Where LFF provided two readings (gospel and other New Testament) plus a psalm, HWHM adds an Old Testament citation. Where LFF was limited to few non-Anglicans in the post-reformation period (and few non-Episcopalians after 1789), HWHM dramatically broadens appreciation for other Christians and their traditions. Over-emphasis on clergy is redressed by additional laity, males by females, and "in-church" activities by contributions well beyond the workings of institutional agendas. These almost daily commemorations occupy over 600 of the book's 785 pages, by far the lion's share of its content. Remaining sections address: principles of revision and guides for future revision; liturgical propers for seasons (Advent/Christmas, Lent, and Easter); and new propers for a miscellany of propers usable with individuals (or events) not officially listed in the formal calendar. Two cycles of propers for daily Eucharist are also included, one covering a six week period, the other a two year cycle.

"When the author's father died, Marc Jolley decided that he needed to write something for his sons about what was important in his life. The result, while not a full autobiography, deals with three things in his life that have shaped it more than others; it is about what he loves: baseball, God, and family, but not necessarily in that order all of the time. This memoir, then, is about what the author "knows" and to that extent, each sentence is true in the best tradition of Hemingway. Safe at Home is both a phrase used in baseball and an expression that captures the importance of family." "This story is about how faith, family, and baseball have intersected in his life, an intersection that occurs at home. Critical moments of Jolley's life have seen God, baseball, and family impact at very important times in his life. Whether losing game after game in little league, watching the World Series with his father, or quitting the high school team, the presence of family and his faith shape how he overcomes disappointment or celebrates the sheer joy of playing. Collecting baseball cards in 1968 provides him with a lesson in race and his mother's faith that opens his eyes to a world he never knew."--BOOK JACKET.