“An Africa of Religious Life”: Fredrika Bremer’s American Faith Journey, 1849–1851

Abstract

Despite the considerable scholarship devoted to the exploration of the Christian faith, belief, and practice of women involved in movements for social reform and women’s rights in nineteenth-century Europe and America, inter-denominational and transnational explorations in the pursuit of women’s rights and personal spiritual fulfillment have received surprisingly little attention. This article focuses on Fredrika Bremer’s Homes of the New World (1853), the Swedish novelist’s sympathetic account of her journey to America in 1849–51, to explore her faith encounters with Unitarians and Quakers in the northeastern U.S. and with African American Christians in the southern states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana. The article discusses Bremer’s volumes as a work of theological engagement, profoundly connected to her concern for women’s legal and spiritual freedoms in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.