The Shakers Explained

in 1774 an English woman arrived in New York City ready to launch a revolution and I'm not talking about the American Revolution no her Revolution was a religious one according to her later followers she was Christ incarnate fulfilling the biblical Prophecy of the second coming and her name was Anne Lee known by her friends and followers as mother Anne now yes everyone was expecting a man but through divine revelation mother Anne and her followers understood the Christian God as equally male and female and both aspects needed to incarnate before the apocalypse could begin anley was a charismatic leader of an American branch of protestant Christianity known as the Shakers short for shaking Quakers mother and her fellow devotees practiced a form of ecstatic Worship in which they quite literally Shook and quaked believing to be in Union with God capitalizing on a period of major social unrest and the Christian Revival known as the first Great Awakening mother Anne became a traveling preacher going around building a movement that they called the United Society of believer in Christ's second appearing as their numbers grew members formed utopian communes throughout the rural areas of Upstate New York and New England as an apocalyptic movement the Shakers didn't expect to be around long if Mother Anne was the second coming then the world was going to end shortly anyway so makes sense that a core tenant of their belief was celibacy to renounce lustful gratifications and marriage so what inspired them to claim an Lee was Christ incarnate and what can we learn about their unique approach to worship and communal living now anley was not the founder of the Shakers they emerged in England sometime in the mid 1700s as an offshoot of another Protestant group the Quakers the Quakers also got their name from their ecstatic practices that involves quaking shaking or trembling inspired by the Holy Spirit but while the Quakers were trying to phase out this practice by the mid 1700s others wanted to continue this group came to be known as the shaking Quakers as the historian Steven Stein writes it was reported that sometimes their heads jerked so rapidly that their facial features were not distinguishable they screeched disturbing whole neighborhoods at some distance with the commotions late in the meetings the frenzy of the fits gave way to singing and dancing these gatherings closed when the strength of the participants was exhausted anley was a native of Manchester England and she joined the Shakers there in the late 1750s and within a few years she became a leading member as with many radical Protestant movements of the 17th and 18th centuries a small group of shakers left for the North American colonies because of religious persecution at home and there they became a more organized sect so what did her group believe historical caveat here we actually don't know a ton of information about the Shakers from this earliest age of the founders as historians call it and Lee was illiterate and she and her fellow shakers did not trust the written word for this reason historians do not have contemporary writings from mother an herself after she died the group became more institutionalized and the next generation of shakers compiled teachings that they attributed to her but the historian Steven Stein says that these basically amount to a rich body of traditional lore that was eded in the early 1800s in other words these are not exactly rigorous historical accounts so the best evidence that we have comes from disgruntled former members who left the group and other Outsiders who hated the group but piecing together the available evidence from the 1770s and ' 80s we can summarize the first shakers as apocalyptic sectarian and ecstatic the Shakers believed that a new era had begun and the final judgment was already underway this makes the Shakers what Scholars call a millenarian group an apocalyptic group expecting the imminent transformation of the world which leads to their sectarianism shakers taught to renounce the world outside of their own United society and to purify their bodies minds and souls as they awaited the Judgment of God this also meant renouncing all Earthly possessions and biological Family Ties this is where the celibacy factors in in order to separate from the world and prepare for the apocalypse converts pledged to be celibate and condemned marriage doesn't make sense to have any kids at the end isy in a statement attributed to Anne Lee you must forsake the marriage of the flesh or you cannot be married to the lamb the early shakers taught that you could not be saved outside of their society only the Shakers were the true church and they condemned other churches as corrupt and worldly early critics of the group also claimed that they rejected the Christian rituals of baptism and the Lord's Supper which they said were not needed in these final days all of this made the Shakers a costly group to join which in turn made it a tightly bonded community these Outsider accounts also attacked the Shakers for allowing women to have authority apparently it was a highly egalitarian society with a fairly egalitarian theology as we'll see shortly they also engaged in ecstatic or mystical practices they believed in miraculous Gifts of healing and Visions from God they practiced communication with spirits and angels and of course there was the shaking a report from 1778 spoke of the members dancing in extravagant postures and whirling with inconceivable rapidity before falling lifeless on the floor another hostile account from 1783 claims that they were demon-possessed writing a new sect of religionists appeared in the state of New York in 1779 who have commonly gone by the name of shakers from the unnatural motions and convulsive contortions of the body these shocks of nature were attended with so much violence and pain as to afford ground to conclude them the issue of some diabolical influence but what Outsiders viewed as diabolical influence the Shakers believed to be communal bodily experiences of the Divine the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit would take over one's body while in worship bodies would Shake tremble and dance and was joyous evidence of being God's child now it's not entirely clear how an Lee fit into Shaker theology at this time early accounts from this era refer to her as the elect mother the mother of Zion the Queen of Heaven and Christ's wife Reports say that she had the fullness of the godhead within her and that no blessing can come to any person but only by and through her Outsider sources say that shakers believed mother Anne to be the mother mentioned in a prophecy from The Book of Revelation 12 so clearly they viewed her as something more than just a leader instead viewing her as some sort of divinely blessed agent but then she died and Lee died in 1784 and you'd think this would mean the movement died with her but it didn't the next generation of shakers eventually came to view her as the second coming of Christ himself or I guess herself see after anle died new leadership took took over who helped the Shakers set down Roots during a period known as the Gathering they organized into small communes across New England later expanding out west to the Midwest keeping with their sectarianism there was a clear separation between Shaker settlements and what shakers themselves referred to as the world meaning everyone else the Shakers were encouraged to dress plainly and Village Life was centered around self-sufficiency and hard work this included craft business ventures shakers were the first mass farmers of medicinal herbs in the US and they were known for their apothecary and shakers are especially remembered for their Furniture chances are even if you have never heard about the Shakers you have sat in a shaker style chair today they sell for hundreds of dollars from luxury furniture brands every member worked men women and children and yes there were children even though sex was considered morally corrupt and men and women lived in separate dorms converts would bring their kids into the community who were then raised as shakers until they turned 21 at which point they were given the option to leave new members pledged themselves to the society and signed a covenant all of this was was done out of a sense of utopianism Believers saw their Villages as Heavenly meaning that they were living in this world the exact same way that they would live in heaven now along with this Evolution and organizational structure their beliefs and practices also evolved including a massive elevation in the importance of mother Anne Lee one might even say an apotheosis of mother Anne before 1806 mother Anne apparently did not feature much in Shaker missionary Outreach but by the early 1800s they started publishing theological statements that def B and Lee as an agent of redemption of equal if not greater importance in Salvation history than Jesus of Nazareth now as we said shakerism was surprisingly a galarian for its time and this extended to their theology the common Christian understanding of God says that he exists as a trinity of three persons God the Father God the son and God the Holy Spirit but for the Shakers God was male and female based on their interpretation of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis so God created man in his own image male and female he created them for shakers this meant God's Own image was both male and female in equal parts Jesus was the Incarnation of God's fatherly nature and God's motherly nature was embodied in an Lee according to one of their theological documents published in 1808 called the testimony the man who is called Jesus and the woman is called mother Anne are the two First Foundation pillars of the Church of Christ the two anointed ones the two first Heirs of Promise between whom the covenant of eternal life is established we could call this a form of adoptionism a type of Christian theology popular in the earliest centuries of Christianity that argues Jesus was not a pre-existent Divine being but was rather adopted or elevated to Divine status in Shaker theology there's Christ who incarnated as Jesus and that same Christ then thousands of years later incarnated as an Lee in fact shakers attacked the historically Orthodox position that Christ was fully God and fully human Shaker worship practices also evolved during this period in the early 19th century Shaker's introduced dances with groups of men and women facing each other and dancing in unison also influenced by the growing Evangelical movement Shaker started to add hym singing into their worship incorporating an Lee theology into their hymns one Shaker hymn reads the Blessed son and daughter completely joined in one the father and the spirit have sent the Blessed two to visit the creation and teach us what to do now Shaker worship during this period still involved more ecstatic charismatic practices a report from Ohio in 1815 says that a Shaker Gathering burst out in the speaking of tongues another report read that their Gatherings were so loud that the explosion of Cannon or heavy peels of Thunder could not be heard at a small distance but while ecstatic worship didn't disappear entirely this was still a period of settling down codifying theology in books establishing a more formal style of worship and settling down in literal settlements in many respects the history of shakerism is a perfect example of what the sociologist of religion Max vber called the routinization of charisma now what do I mean by this when mother Anne was first winning converts as a traveling preacher there was no doubt that people were drawn to her her message her Zeal and her Visions she epitomized charismatic authority sociologists of religion use charismatic authority to refer to a rare type of leader who embodies Supernatural superhuman or exceptional powers and qualities which set that individual apart from regular people these qualities exert a kind of magnetism on people around them now when talking about religion the word charismatic usually doesn't just refer to the type of Charisma that makes a kid popular at school or enables a politician to give a decently good speech when we say charismatic this generally means the individual is believed to have Supernatural gifts they can perform Miracles receive Visions from God gods or Spirits or they're beli to be divine themselves so in that context check out a description of mother Anne by one of her followers she possessed remarkable powers and faculties of mind which were greatly enlarged and strengthened by the gift of God at times when under the power and operation of the Holy Ghost her countenance Shone with the glory of God and her form and actions appeared divinely beautiful and very Angelic the power and influence of her spirit was great beyond description and no one was able to gainsay or resist the authority by which she spoke according to Max vber a charismatic leader is granted Authority by virtue of what seems to be divine gifts new religious movements are often sparked by charismatic leaders who assume moral Authority by challenging traditional authorities and Norms claiming a higher knowledge or a better way to live or to attain salvation in his famous essay the nature of charismatic Authority and its routinization vber also argued that charismatic movements often do not survive past the life of the charismatic leader in order to continue a different type of authority needs to take over establishing rules doctrines Creeds and oversight into place by that time what was new and electric about the charismatic movement has since become p and largely ingrained in the community in other words new leaders get organized or routinized to use vaper's fancy term Scholars such as Dr Martha stws have convincingly analyzed the Shakers through the lens of vaper's theory when mother Anne died in 1784 a man named Joseph meum succeeded her as one of the movement's leaders even prior to her death some of the more ecstatic practices that shakers were known for were becoming more subdued or formulaic when other shakers had a Divine Vision they were not immediately trusted as authoritative rather there was now a central Ministry headquartered in New York that would vet the visions this was a leadership team consisting of two men and two women who considered the testimony and decided if the vision was an authentic gift from God and whether the Visionary was what the Shaker's called a true instrument of God now as we've seen Shaker worship was no longer as spontaneous by the early 1800s it became more rote more routinized if you will whereas kids and women had formerly received more Visions by the 1830s it was mostly male leadership historians have attributed this routinization to the work of the central ministry as it took on more power and instituted new rules for daily living and were responsible for authorizing Divine Visions citing Max vber the historian Steven Stein called this an evolution from an apocalyptic sect into a millennial church it's kind of like when a disruptive startup evolves into a big business as it hires more employees gets office space takes on investors or goes public and is governed by a board of directors before it's eventually acquired by a big Tech conglomerate throughout this whole process the business grows more bureaucratic Dr stws argues that part of this routinization process was a shift to more traditional male leadership the sect depended on the leadership of a woman an Lee and boasted an equality of power relations between the Sexes the church on the other hand increasingly turned to its leadership from its male theological Elite this was reversed somewhat in the 1840s and 50s during What's called the era of manifestations which coincided with the Second Great Awakening this was a time when American protestantism exploded in the US Rowdy Evangelical revivals were all across the country charismatic preachers traveled around preaching to outdoor crowds leading altar calls for people to be born again and causing church membership to Boom especially among women among the Shakers worship returned to that more spontaneous style kids and especially young girls started to receive more Visions during this period some created drawings and paintings of visions that they had from mother Anne and were traveled among Shaker Villages that mother and spirit would visit each village Dr Schwartz argues that all of this Charisma flowing through the villages threaten the leadership status quo and so the central Ministry routinized these new ecstatic experiences by setting down new and clearly delineated rituals which they wrote down and circulated again Charisma was routinized she goes on to argue that the era of manifestations forged a wedge between Shaker men and women with the emergence of a theological Elite in the society who wrote and carried on the apologetic task of the institution relationships of power between the Sexes shifted subtly and irrevocably during the age of manifestation the Shakers hit their Peak membership around four or 5,000 people across 19 Villages and they quickly lost members as they aged and died but were no longer attracting converts as they had before in 1957 the remaining Elders at the Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire decided to close the Covenant in essence they decided that the Shakers would no longer accept new members and that the group had run its course nearly all of the Shaker Villages were disbanded and turned into living history museums which you can visit today and I say nearly all the villages because as of 2022 there are two remaining shakers not Shaker Villages individual shakers they're living in the Sabbath day Lake Community in Maine given that there's no longer oversight they are now accepting converts if you're interested maybe we'll see a third charismatic era of Shaker history I'm excited to introduce you to today's sponsor sacred and profane a podcast produced by the religion race and democracy Lab at the University of Virginia it's an academic podcast featuring and hosted by Scholars of religion and dedicated to the critical study of Religion each and every episode of sacred and profane explores the ways religion shapes how we think about the world one episode of explores how a lot of Americans view founding documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as sacred texts both in a figurative and literal sense another explores the religious roots of American environmentalism what does it mean to view nature as something sacred and set apart from humans that must be protected from them to be preserved or their episode American iconoclasm which examines the removal of Confederate statues in the US over the past few years what can we learn when we view patriotism environmentalism or public 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Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

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Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024