Lydia Maria Child and the Urbanity of Religious Cosmopolitanism in Antebellum New York City

Abstract

Lydia Maria Child’s writing on the religious experience of urban life challenges scholarship that only considers the anti-urbanism of antebellum Protestantism. Child’s Letters from New-York considered the possibility of the city as the basis for her own religious experiences and as the frame for encountering other religions. Through the new perspectives offered by the city, Child developed an urban-centric ideal of religious cosmopolitanism.