Shakers
The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a millenarian restorationist Christian sect founded in England and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. They were initially known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.
Espousing egalitarian ideals, the Shakers practice a celibate and communal utopian lifestyle, pacifism, uniform charismatic worship, and their model of equality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in their society in the 1780s. They are also known for their simple living, architecture, technological innovation, music, and furniture. Women took on spiritual leadership roles alongside men, including founding leaders such as Jane Wardley, Ann Lee, and Lucy Wright. The Shakers emigrated from England and settled in British North America, with an initial settlement at Watervliet, New York, in 1774.
During the mid-19th century, an Era of Manifestations resulted in a period of dances, gift drawings, and gift songs inspired by spiritual revelations. At its peak in the mid-19th century, there were 2,000–4,000 Shaker believers living in 18 major communities and numerous smaller, often short-lived communities. External and internal societal changes in the mid- and late 19th century resulted in the thinning of the Shaker community as members left or died with few converts to the faith to replace them.
By 1920, there were only 12 Shaker communities remaining in the United States., there was only one active Shaker village: Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, in Maine. Consequently, many of the other Shaker settlements are now museums., there were three members.
History
Origins
The Shakers were one of a few religious groups which were formed during the 18th century in the northwest of England; originating out of the Wardley Society. James and Jane Wardley and others broke off from the Quakers in 1747 at a time when the Quakers were weaning themselves away from frenetic spiritual expression. The Wardleys formed the Wardley Society, which was also known as the "Shaking Quakers".Future leader Ann Lee and her parents were early members of the sect. This group of "charismatic" Christians became the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. Their beliefs were based upon spiritualism and included the notion that they received messages from the Holy Spirit which were expressed during religious revivals. They also experienced what they interpreted as messages from God during silent meditations and became known as "Shaking Quakers" because of the seizure-like convulsions they acted out in their worship services. They believed in the renunciation of sinful acts and that the end of the world was near.
Meetings were first held in Bolton, England, where the articulate preacher, Jane Wardley, urged her followers to:
Other meetings were then held in Manchester, Meretown, Chester and other places near Manchester. As their numbers grew, members began to be persecuted, mobbed, and stoned; Lee was imprisoned in Manchester. The members looked to women for leadership, believing that the second coming of Christ would be through a woman. In 1770, Ann Lee was revealed in "manifestation of Divine light" to be the second coming of Christ and was called Mother Ann.
Mother Ann Lee
Ann Lee joined the Shakers by 1758, then became the leader of the small community. "Mother Ann", as her followers later called her, claimed numerous revelations regarding the fall of Adam and Eve and its relationship to sexual intercourse. A powerful preacher, she called her followers to confess their sins, give up all their worldly goods, and take up the cross of celibacy and forsake marriage, as part of the renunciation of all "lustful gratifications".She said:
Having supposedly received a revelation, on May 19, 1774, Ann Lee and eight of her followers sailed from Liverpool for colonial America. Ann and her husband Abraham Stanley, brother William Lee, niece Nancy Lee, James Whittaker, father and son John Hocknell and Richard Hocknell, James Shephard, and Mary Partington traveled to colonial America and landed in New York City. Abraham Stanley abandoned Ann Lee shortly thereafter and remarried. The remaining Shakers settled in Watervliet, New York, in 1776. Mother Ann's hope for the Shakers in America was represented in a vision: "I saw a large tree, every leaf of which shone with such brightness as made it appear like a burning torch, representing the Church of Christ, which will yet be established in this land." Unable to swear an Oath of Allegiance, as it was against their faith, the members were imprisoned for about six months. Since they were only imprisoned because of their faith, this raised sympathy of citizens and thus helped to spread their religious beliefs. Mother Ann, declaring herself as the "second coming" of Christ, traveled throughout the eastern states, preaching her gospel views.
Joseph Meacham and communalism
After Ann Lee and James Whittaker died, Joseph Meacham became the leader of the Shakers in 1787, establishing its New Lebanon headquarters. He had been a New Light Baptist minister in Enfield, Connecticut, and was reputed to have, second only to Mother Ann, the spiritual gift of revelation.Joseph Meacham brought Lucy Wright into the ministry to serve with him and together they developed the Shaker form of communal living. By 1793 property had been made a "consecrated whole" in each Shaker community.
Shakers developed written covenants in the 1790s. Those who signed the covenant had to confess their sins, consecrate their property and their labor to the society, and live as celibates. If they were married before joining the society, their marriages ended when they joined. A few less-committed believers lived in "noncommunal orders" as Shaker sympathizers who preferred to remain with their families. The Shakers never forbade marriage for such individuals, but considered it less perfect than the celibate state.
In the 5 years between 1787 and 1792, the Shakers gathered into eight more communities in addition to the Watervliet and New Lebanon villages: Hancock, Harvard, Shirley, and Tyringham Shaker Villages in Massachusetts; Enfield Shaker Village in Connecticut; Canterbury and Enfield in New Hampshire; and Sabbathday Lake and Alfred Shaker Village in Maine.
Lucy Wright and westward expansion
After Joseph Meacham died, Lucy Wright continued Ann Lee's missionary tradition. Shaker missionaries proselytized at revivals, not only in New England and New York but also farther west. Missionaries such as Issachar Bates and Benjamin Seth Youngs gathered hundreds of proselytes into the faith.On April 12 of 1805, Benjamin Youngs and two companions held the first ceremony west of the Allegheny Mountains. It was held at the cabin of James Beedle, East of Lebanon, Ohio. In 2019, the cabin was relocated, by the Warren County Historical Society, to its current site next to Harmon Museum in Lebanon, Ohio, the 1795 Beedle Log Cabin.
Mother Lucy Wright introduced new hymns and dances to make sermons more lively. She also helped write Benjamin S. Youngs' book The Testimony of Christ's Second Appearing.
Shaker missionaries entered Kentucky and Ohio after the Cane Ridge, Kentucky revival of 1801–1803, which was an outgrowth of the Logan County, Kentucky, Revival of 1800. From 1805 to 1807, they founded Shaker societies at Union Village, Ohio; South Union, Logan County, Kentucky; and Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. In 1806, a Shaker village, named Watervliet, after the New York town that was the site of the first Shaker settlement, was established in what is today Kettering, Ohio, surviving until 1900 when its remaining adherents joined the Union Village Shaker settlement. In 1824, the Whitewater Shaker Settlement was established in southwestern Ohio. The westernmost Shaker community was located at West Union on the Wabash River a few miles north of Vincennes in Knox County, Indiana.
Era of Manifestations
The Shaker movement was at its height between 1820 and 1860. It was at this time that the sect had the most members, and the period was considered its "golden age". It had expanded from New England to the Midwestern states of Indiana and Ohio and Southern state of Kentucky. It was during this period that it became known for its furniture design and craftsmanship. In the late 1830s a spiritual revivalism, the Era of Manifestations was born. It was also known as the "period of Mother's work", for the spiritual revelations that were passed from the late Mother Ann Lee.The expression of "spirit gifts" or messages were realized in "gift drawings" made by Hannah Cohoon, Polly Reed, Polly Collins, and other Shaker sisters. A number of those drawings remain as important artifacts of Shaker folk art.
Isaac N. Youngs, the scribe and historian for the New Lebanon, New York, Church Family of Shakers, preserved a great deal of information on the era of manifestations, which Shakers referred to as Mother Ann's Work, in his Domestic Journal, his diary, Sketches of Visions, and his history, A Concise View of the Church of God.
In addition, Shakers preserved thousands of spirit communications still extant in collections now held by the Berkshire Athenaeum, Fruitlands Museums Library, Hamilton College Library, Hancock Shaker Village, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, New York State Library, the Shaker Library at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, Shaker Museum Mount Lebanon, Western Reserve Historical Society, Williams College Archives, Winterthur Museum Library, and other repositories.
American Civil War period
As pacifists, the Shakers did not believe that it was acceptable to kill or harm others, even in time of war. During the American Civil War, both Union and Confederate soldiers found their way to the Shaker communities. Shakers tended to sympathize with the Union but they did feed and care for both Union and Confederate soldiers. President Lincoln exempted Shaker males from military service, and they became some of the first conscientious objectors in American history.The end of the Civil War brought large changes to the Shaker communities. One of the most important changes was the postwar economy and its growing mechanization, which produced goods much cheaper than the Shakers' traditional methods.