In our continuing series on the most influential religious people in America we now turn to the "Shakers."
We don't judge whether or not they were right or wrong.
the fact is they had an impact upon Americans.
A community that is on a mission to find simplicity and perfection sounds ideal to be a part of.
Looking for a more personal and emotional religion than the official Church of England, in 1758 she joined a group called the Wardley Society that had left the Quakers.Because the Wardley’s version of religious worship including shakings of the body and motions of the head and arms, they came to be called “Shaking Quakers” and this in time was shortened to Shakers.
Their untraditional mode of worship brought the group much persecution.
Finally one of Ann Lee’s visions directed her to take her followers to America.
The group’s official name, which they used after emigrating to America, was the “United Society of Believers in the Second Coming of Christ.”
In their earlier years they usually referred to themselves as “Believers.”
Many would love to be a part of this community; the only problem is that it is almost not in existence anymore.
After they were persecuted in England, the Shakers moved over to the United States where they were mainly based in New York.
, Through hard work and Ann Lee’s missionary zeal, the group prospered and gained large numbers of converts in the 1780s and 1790s.
Several other communities had been founded and in 1793 there were 12 settlements across New York and New England. By 1800 the Watervliet community numbered 87.
While they continued to be prosecuted, the movement still managed to attract many followers and by the 1800’s there were around 18 Shaker communities spread throughout the United States with over 5000 members.
Shaker life basically consisted of living in a community with no personal possessions and committing oneself to what was best for the community.
They came here from England in search of religious freedom.
The Shakers helped to add to the many developments that our world was experiencing at the time including the clothespin, a saw, and electricity.
Although at one time they were a very rich religious sect with nineteen groups across our country, they did have one major problem – they did not believe in procreation.
They had a strong belief in celibacy.
The Shakers originated in Europe during the seventeenth century. They formed off the already
The founder of the Shakers was a woman named Ann Lee who was born in Manchester, England.
After her and her husband had four children who all died at birth, she decided that this was a punishment from God, so she joined a group of Quakers to repent.
Later because of her beliefs of two things, the second coming of Jesus Christ and celibacy, a new branch of Quakers was formed.
They were so adamant and fearful of the second coming that they would tremble, or shake, when they would talk about it, because of this they were called the Shaking Quakers, which was later shortened to just ‘Shakers.’
Ann Lee became known as Mother Ann because of her preaching and she gained her own followers.
Ann Lee and seven of her followers decided to come to North America in 1780 to pursue a better life.
The Shakers listened to Ann Lee devoutly.
They even saw her as the second coming of Christ.
They believed that the first time that God appeared on Earth, He came in male form of Jesus Christ, and the second time the He came in the female form of Ann Lee.
Ann Lee established a firm set of principles for all of the Shakers to follow.
These principles included celibacy, confession, equality between sexes, common property, and the holiness of labor.
As the Shakers expanded these beliefs by establishing villages throughout the states, they saw Kentucky as a good place to start a colony because of the rich soil that would be beneficial to the farming.
Despite these aspirations and the good land, the Shakers were only in Kentucky from 1805 until 1910.
The Shakers of Pleasant Hill reached their peak 491 members in 1832, only less than thirty years after they were established.
After that, the population began to decline.
By 1910 there were only twelve members remaining.
The realtor agreed that if they gave him the land, in exchange he would take care of them for the rest of their lives with the proper basic as well as medical attention.
After that the village became a commercial town called Shakertown.
This town used the buildings that were built by the Shakers for gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and shops.
This town lasted only until 1961 when the community of Kentucky decided to restore the historical village.
They touched up some of the buildings, but for the most part they had been built so sturdy that they did not need any renovations.
Pleasant Hill was made to look like how it was when the Shakers had inhabited it, and is now open for tours.
Is that what the Shakers of Pleasant Hill would want?
For all of their hard work in creating a spiritual community as well as a physical one too, to be nothing but a tourist site now.
They were unsuccessful in maintaining it because of their idea of creating their perfect world, how they administered themselves, and their refrain from sexual activity.
The Shakers viewed the outside world as spiritually and physically dangerous.
They also believed that the entire human family had been stamped with wickedness.
When they talk about the outside world they referred to it in terms of enemies, wickedness, and evil.
So because of this dislike of the outside world and non-Shakers, they lived in their own colonies, separate from the rest of the world.
They did not believe in procreation because their leader, Ann Lee, saw sexual intercourse as the foundation of human corruption.
This idea of hers came from a revelation that she had about the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve giving into temptation.
Ann Lee was adamant that sexual intercourse made the heart not pure, and she stated that “no soul could follow Christ while still wallowing in the lustful gratifications of the flesh”.
Lee saw her belief of celibacy as a way to be free from sin and as a way to acquire perfection.
She came about believing that celibacy is what is right because of her interpretation of a passage that is in the New Testament.
This passage is from Mark 12:25 reads, “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.”
The Shakers took this verse literally when they were trying to create a heaven on earth, and so they inferred that the Bible was saying that in heaven there will be no marriage, so participate in marriage or procreation here on earth, even though it is necessary for the human population to be able to continue.
In order to have a community there must me a way for people to continue the beliefs and interests. Naturally, as humans we will all die eventually.
If you want your principles to be carried on, since you are going to die, you need to have someone follow in your footsteps to continue on what you started.
Since the Shakers did not believe in procreation, they could not reproduce and have any children through themselves.
They only way they could continue to have a Shaker population was to either allow converts to join them, or to adopt children who had been neglected or abandoned.
When these adopted children turned twenty-one they were given the choice to stay a Shaker, or to leave the village.
This is a faulty way of carrying on a community because there is no consistent way to know what those individuals will choose.
What happens if none of the children who turn twenty-one decide to stay?
Then all the hard work that they had put into creating this lifestyle of theirs does not count for anything.
This is what happened to the Shakers here in the United States.
The Shakers were a very unsuccessful religious sect for many reasons; they had a dream that was unattainable, they did not have a fair way of governing themselves, and they had absolutely no definite way of how they were going to bring in new members without reproducing.
Ann Lee’s experiment of making a heaven on earth was ineffective because it is not possible to attain the dreams that she was trying to solidify.
With less than a dozen members left remaining, it is hard to believe that the Shakers once peopled eighteen thriving communities in several states.
In 1850, they numbered almost 4,000 members, and, over the 200 years that they have been established in the United States, more than 20,000 Americans have lived a least some of their life as a Shaker.
Before her death, Mother Ann had a vision that the community would be renewed once its membership had dropped to five members.
The last of the Shakers are awaiting the renewal and continuing to live their Utopian lives according to the visions that Ann Lee received over 225 years ago.
The Shakers came under a spiritual revival called the Era of Manifestations, which lasted from the late 1830s to about 1850.
According to Shaker tradition, heavenly spirits came to earth, bringing visions, often giving them to young Shaker women, who danced, whirled, spoke in tongues, and interpreted these visions through their drawings and dancing.
Because of their ecstatic dancing the world called them the Shakers.
Shakerism has a message for this present age--a message as valid today as when it was first expressed.
It teaches above all else that God is Love and that our most solemn duty is to show forth that God who is love in the World."
Today, just a few Shakers still live in a single village in Maine.
To all appearances these are the last Shakers.
But the living Shakers faithfully assert that their religion will never die.
One afternoon I was at a neighbor’s house when two young women attired in Shaker costumes appeared at the rear door. They said the Shakers always lived according to their profession, were honest and upright, but that they did not wish to live a celibate life any longer. A strange sensation seemed to creep over me, and something like a voice said, “Why listen to them? Go to the Shakers. See for yourself who and what they are.”
-- Eldress Antoinette Doolittle, 1824
Shakerism is a system which has a distinct genius, a strong organization, a perfect life of its own, through which it would appear to be helping to shape and guide, in no small measure, the spiritual career of the United States.
-- Hepworth Dixon, 1867
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