Shaker

Shaker, member of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, a celibate millenarian group that established communal settlements in the United States in the 18th century. Based on the revelations of Ann Lee and her vision of the heavenly kingdom to come, Shaker teaching emphasized simplicity, celibacy, and work. Shaker communities flourished in the mid-19th century and contributed a distinctive style of architecture, furniture, music, and handicraft to American culture (see also Shaker furniture). The communities declined precipitously in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with fewer than five members in the first quarter of the 21st century.

History

The Shakers derived originally from a small branch of English Quakers founded by Jane and James Wardley in 1747. They may have adopted the French Camisards’ ritual practices of shaking, shouting, dancing, whirling, and singing in tongues. The Shaker doctrine, as it came to be known in the United States, was formulated by Ann Lee, a textile worker in Manchester. “Mother Ann,” as she was known to her followers, had a troubled marriage and had suffered difficulties while pregnant (she had four children, all of whom died young), and in 1758 she converted to the “Shaking Quakers.” After enduring persecution and imprisonment for participation in noisy worship services, she had a series of revelations, after which she regarded herself—and was so regarded by her followers—as the female aspect of God’s dual nature (e.g., male and female) and the second Incarnation of Christ. She developed an elaborate theology and established celibacy as the cardinal principle of the community.

In 1774 Mother Ann came to America with eight disciples, having been charged by a new revelation to establish the millennial church in the New World. Settling in 1776 at Niskayuna (near Watervliet), New York, the small group benefited from an independent revival movement that was sweeping the district, and within five years it grew to several thousand members.

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After Mother Ann’s death in 1784, the Shaker church came under the leadership of Elder Joseph Meacham and Eldress Lucy Wright. Together they worked out the distinctive pattern of Shaker social organization, which consisted of celibate communities of men and women living together in dormitory-style houses and holding all things in common. The first Shaker community, established at New Lebanon, New York, in 1787, retained leadership of the movement as it spread through New England and westward into Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. By 1826, 18 Shaker villages had been set up in eight states.

Beliefs

According to Shaker belief, salvation is merited by righteous conduct and work. As the embodiment of the feminine aspect of God’s dual nature, Ann Lee was believed to have ushered in the millennium of the Second Coming. Shaker communities were thus understood as living out the 1,000-year reign of the saints on earth. Celibacy for all members is a noted requirement and an emulation of the celibate Christ. Shaker members are prohibited from marrying or having biological children, and even physical touch between men and women is not allowed. Communal buildings, such as meetinghouses, typically feature separate doors for both genders, and men and women would sit at separate tables to eat.

Like the Quakers, Shakers are dedicated to pacifism and personal communication with God. Although they were originally committed to a strong separation from the outside world, this relaxed somewhat over time with the rise of the communities’ cottage industries. Visitors were welcomed and even encouraged to observe or participate in worship services. To grow their ranks, Mother Ann and other leaders carried out extensive missionary endeavors, though they were often met with violence and beatings and were forced to move along.

In many ways Shakers were pioneers of religious egalitarianism. Gender equality was striking. Community leadership in each village was typically provided equally by men and women, called elders and eldresses. The movement’s headquarters in New Lebanon, New York, was similarly headed by both men and women at the highest levels. Members referred to one another as brother and sister. In addition, members were admitted regardless of race. Free Black Americans joined a number of northern communities, and beginning in the early 1800s Shakers in southern villages freed enslaved people belonging to members and were even known to purchase the freedom of enslaved believers. Documents from that time suggest that Black members were esteemed as equals and were respected members of Shaker society.

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Worship: Dancing, music, and gift drawings

The distinctive group dancing that characterized the Shakers was called “laboring” and has been compared to the animated worship of the later Pentecostal movement. Laboring was gender-separated and featured rhythmic swaying, shuffling, skipping, ecstatic movements, and hand gestures. Worship services, held in homes and later in meetinghouses, would sometimes last for hours. Between the late 1700s and mid-1800s, laboring shifted from spontaneous dancing to choreographed worship and back to more spontaneous movements. Laboring had ceased altogether in Shaker worship by the end of the 19th century.

Decades after Mother Ann’s death, a wave of spiritual excitement moved through the Shaker villages beginning in the late 1830s. This period, known as the Era of Manifestations, was marked by the creation of many Shaker songs and hymns. Of these, “Simple Gifts,” which was made more broadly famous by composer Aaron Copland in the 1940s, has become one of the most enduring musical legacies of the movement. Shaker dances and songs are considered to be genuine folk art.

The Era of Manifestations also spurred the creation of delicately penned spiritual gift drawings, or inspiration drawings. These symbolic drawings, considered gifts from the spiritual world, were somewhat unusual in a movement that had little tradition of visual art and taught that decoration and embellishment distracted the mind from religion. They arose in two Shaker communities (Hancock, Massachusetts, and Mount Lebanon, New York) where mostly women, serving as “instruments of the Lord,” pictorially elaborated on Holy Mother Wisdom, the female counterpart of God the Father. These beautiful visual testimonies represented visions, dreams, and spiritual experiences and were likely not considered works of art by their creators. Some are renderings of another person’s vision or spiritual encounter, and many included text that echoed messages delivered orally by Shaker visionists. Shaker inspiration drawings, similar to needlework samplers, often included a patterned border, a symmetrical composition, and readily legible subjects. Common motifs included trees, birds, crosses, vines, flowers, moons, eyes, and hearts.

Economics

Before the decline of the movement, Shaker villages were typically financially stable and often prosperous. Although often persecuted for pacifism or for bizarre beliefs falsely attributed to them, the Shakers won admiration for their model farms, orderly communities, and fair dealing with outsiders. Their self-sufficient economy was grounded in agriculture, including crop farming, animal husbandry, milling, and timber production, and Shakers developed a reputation for quality products and honesty. In addition to the revenue made by these activities, the Shaker movement was supported by the sometimes substantial donations of farms and other properties signed over when new members joined.

Their industry and ingenuity produced numerous (usually unpatented) inventions, including the screw propeller, babbitt metal, a rotary harrow, an automatic spring, a turbine waterwheel, a threshing machine, the circular saw, and the common clothespin, among other things. They were the first to package and market seeds and were once the largest and most respected manufacturers of medicinal herbs in the United States. At least some communities are reported to have produced opium from their poppies.

Furniture

The simple beauty, functionalism, and honest craftsmanship of Shaker meetinghouses, barns, and artifacts have had a lasting influence on American design. The greatest example of such influence is Shaker furniture, which is characterized by austerity of decoration and truth to materials. Deeply dedicated to ideals of communal living and asceticism, the Shakers designed and constructed furniture that reflected their belief that to make a thing well was in itself an act of prayer and their conviction that the appearance of a thing should follow upon its function. Each item was fashioned solely to serve its intended use, and all superfluous decorations, such as inlays and moldings, were eliminated.

Today original pieces can garner thousands of dollars at auction, and “Shaker” is sometimes more associated with furniture than the religious movement. In response to this overshadowing, Sister Ruth Mildred Barker, a modern Shaker who died in 1990, famously quipped, “I don’t want to be remembered as a chair.”

Decline

The Shaker movement reached its height during the 1840s, when about 6,000 members were enrolled in the church. It later declined, however, because of changes in spiritual needs and the church’s insistence on celibacy and its opposition to childbearing. In 1874 the society was advertising for members, emphasizing physical comfort as well as spiritual values. By 1905 there were only 1,000 members. Many of the closed villages have been maintained as museums. By the first quarter of the 21st century there was only one active Shaker village—Sabbathday Lake, near New Gloucester, Maine—remaining in the world; it had three members in 2025.