This article examines the connection between religion and literacy efforts on behalf of girls and young women in the early nineteenth-century United States by looking at the rapid proliferation of Catholic convent academies and the anti-Catholic sentiment that spurred the growth of proprietary academies, such as those of Mary Lyon and Catharine Beecher. It also examines how religious rhetoric influenced the curriculum in both Catholic and proprietor schools. (Contains 3 figures and 10 notes.)