Among evangelicals, we have the category of the “MK” or “missionary kid.” This is a child who grows up as an American on the mission field with parents who are there carrying the gospel. Many “MKs” have grown up to serve the cause of Christ and Kingdom with distinction and honor. This week, however, the world mourned the death of a Methodist MK who articulated a very different gospel from that of John Wesley and the great missionaries of the Methodist past.
Friday’s Los Angeles Times announced the death of Molly Yard, longtime head of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Yard, as many will remember, was the prototype of the angry feminist, often screaming at the top of her lungs on the Capitol lawn. The obituary notes that her first act of feminist defiance occurred when she told her husband she was not going to take his name. Her cause celebre was abortion rights, which she led NOW to keep at the top of its list of priorities.
The obituary also notes that she was “born a feminist,” because she was the third of four daughters of a Methodist missionary family in Shanghai, China. The obituary said that Yard’s father was given a gift by a Chinese family as a consolation for the “tragedy” of having a girl who “didn’t count” in a Chinese culture that “tossed girls away.”
Molly Yard was created in the image of God. Her death, like all death, is a tragedy. Even so, we shouldn’t let go unnoticed what the obituary doesn’t note. That is, we should remember the irony of a sad woman who lived to a ripe old age arguing for the creation of a culture that would toss away girls and boys who, after all, don’t count in Molly Yard’s America.
Molly’s parents understood that the way to combat the Chinese culture of death was to welcome baby girls into life, even if no one else understood why. As we pray for comfort for Molly Yard’s family, let’s pray that the American church might do the same: joyfully receiving and protecting children…even those that
“don’t count.”
