1835-1922
Congregational Minister, Writer, Editor

Outlook.

As the 1910s opened, Lyman Abbott was seventy-five years old and had already fit several careers into a single lifetime. He had ended the nineteenth century by resigning from his position as pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Congregational Church in 1899. His life in the twentieth century was focused on writing and editing his enormously successful and influential paper Outlook; lecturing at universities; and shaping public debate on a variety of political, social, and religious topics of the turn of the century. Under Abbott's direction Outlook had grown from a circulation of 15,000 (when it was known as the Christian Union) in 1876 to 30,000 in 1893, to 100,000 in 1900, and to a peak of 125,000 in 1910, when Theodore Roosevelt was a member of its staff. It was among the strongest voices in political, social, and religious thought. Through it Abbott was a strong supporter of liberal causes...