Chicago was the world headquarters for the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. During the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, Moody and his associates ran a camp meeting in tents in Jackson Park that drew crowds of up to 150,000 people per week. He delivered his sermons worldwide, as well as publishing collections. Moody drew heavily on anecdotes and examples from Chicago and other cities that he preached in, as in this selection from “Heaven and Who Are There”:

Men who say that Heaven is a speculation have not read their Bibles.... My friends, where are you going to spend eternity? Your life here is very brief. Life is but an inch of time; it is but a span, but a fibre, which will soon be snapped, and you will be ushered into eternity. Where are you going to spend it? If I were to ask you who were going to spend your eternity in Heaven to stand up, nearly every one of you would rise. There is not a man here, not one in Chicago, who has not some hope of reaching Heaven. Now, if we are going to spend our future there, it becomes us to go to work and find out all about it. I call your attention to this truth that Heaven is just as much a place as Chicago.