Legacy, Pearl S. Buck and the Gospel
We live our lives in history’s continuum. Pearl S. Buck honored her missionary mother and father by writing biographies about them. Even with her Godly heritage, being raised by missionaries to China, Pearl S. Buck really had no faith in the gospel at all. This is both unfortunate and instructive. Ruth Tucker writes that Buck’s mother, Carie Sydenstricker, was a victim of serious sexual discrimination and oppression in the family [her husband was, in Tucker's words, "embued with the Pauline doctrine of the subjection of the women to the man"]. This produced resentment in Carie. One must ask the question, did this obvious violation of the freedom of the Gospel turn Pearl S. Buck away from the gospel itself? Indeed, we live our lives in a continuum of history.
