The Shakers

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The Shakers
Overview of the Shakers
The Shakers, also known as the United Society of Believers, obtained the name due to the trembling, ecstatic, and quaking that their worshippers involved in when they were praying. They were one of the several unorthodox Protestant religious unions that came up in England during the last mid of the 18th century (Marshall 13). Those who did not follow the Shakers’ tenets, also known as the World’s People, referred to them as Shakers as a result of the trembling and spinning and other jubilant campaigns that would occasionally overwhelm the Believers when they were praying (Herzberg 12). Dancing was a vital manifestation of Shakers’ holiness and was always defined as a physical and spiritual way by which the Believers could get rid of their immoralities. The Shakers were not the only society that applied the dance as a means of prayer or worship because there were also many other religious groups that integrated the style of dance into their ceremonies. Accordingly, Muslims, Christina, Hindus, and Jews all documented the dance in their holy books or applied it when they were praying and worshiping (Herzberg 13).
The Shakers were founded in Manchester city by James Wardley and his wife, Jane. An uneducated textile employee, called Ann Lee, propagated the group. She was a tall, outstanding, charming woman who got engaged with the Shakers in 1758 and popularized their traditions, often experiencing local aggression.

(Herzberg 15). Lee ensured that the movement reached several populations across the British society and other parts of the world, and in 1774, she guided a small team of Believers to America as per the Shakers’ teachings. The group settled in Watervliet, formerly called Niskayuna, close to Albany, New York. (Marshall 24). The believers maintained that God had both female and male spirit. Ann, who was renamed Mother Ann was the female spirit or the second embodiment of Christ. Mother Ann died in 1784, and by this time, the Shakers movement attained above 1,000 converts (Herzberg 18). The influence of the Shakers increased in America in following years. Lucy Wright and Joseph Meacham, two followers of Mother Ann, assumed the leadership of the union after her death, establishing its organizational design and structure and spiritual rank and developing the first official Shakers community in 1785, in New Lebanon, New York (Herzberg 19).
The Tenets and Popularization of the Shakers
The Shakers campaign was especially attractive to large American households, who were absorbed by the religious values, the independent lifestyles, and sometimes the truth that women were comfortable with the parallel status with men within the village. Provided that one follows the Shakers doctrines, he or she was welcome. The tenets of the movement encompassed open acknowledgment of sins, chastity, mutual possession of property, detachment from the external world, and high professional ethics. Furthermore, Shakers movement propagated through New England and south and west to Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio (Herzberg 22). Mother Ann trusted that every member of the Shakers village had a responsibility to work. Every member of the village had specific tasks that they are qualified to perform, most of which contributed to the significant surplus of farm and material products that the Shakers yielded for trade to support themselves (Marshall 32). Mother Ann informed the members to work hard as they will live for thousands of years, and as if they were to die the following day (Herzberg 23). Their beautiful arts and crafts, architectures, and landscapes have, as a result, frequently depicted both the concern and superiority that they applied in their duties and the usefulness and uncomplicatedness that their life required.
Moreover, the Shakers match the utopian exemplary, just as the Puritans. With the help of Mother Ann and other leaders’ ongoing dreams, there was an establishment of the Shakers’ Covenant with God. Also, through their moral works and living, the Shakers perceived that they could keep this promise and obtain faultlessness (Herzberg 25). One of their establishing creeds was their mutual living, and they upheld this doctrine via their hard work. They felt that by distinguishing themselves from the society as a whole they could create a model that would direct other community members to the restoration that they yearned to achieve. Indeed, their endurance relied on the redemption, and, as one of their beliefs was chastity, they had to draw new members to unite (Marshall 44). Ann Lee had an original dream from God, which stated that the Shakers’ land was to the West in the New World, in which they will get the model area to establish their utopian villages. The Shakers reached the climax of its popularity by 1840s, with at least 4,000 Believers settling in 16 villages in eight nations (Herzberg 30). In the half of 1800s, with fewer households coming to the hierarchies, the Shakers started drawing many orphans, most of whom opted to remain in the village as adults (Marshall 71).
To the external regions, the Shakers popularized not to a large extent for their religious principles as their sophisticated, simple tactic of organizational structure. They were renowned for their classic farms, organized villages, furniture, architecture, decorative arts, and for their several innovations, which involved the automatic washing machine, apple corer, circular saw, automatic spring, and common wooden clothespin (Andrews 87). Nevertheless, by the late 1800s, the Shakers campaign had started to disintegrate. Members were progressively drawn into the modern world lifestyles. The extensive development of government-operated children homes after the Civil War deprived the continent Shakers of their main ways of refilling their statuses. The people got older and dropped and by 1947, just three villages stuck to the beliefs of the Shakers (Andrews 89). In the modern society, the only functioning Shakers community that remains is at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine. The community that was founded in 1783 once accommodated above 170 Believers. There are eight Believers between the age of 32 and 81 today (Andrews 90). The community aims at furthering the heritage of the Shaker, under the leadership of Brother Arnold Hadd and Sister Frances Carr (Andrews 90). Accordingly, the members of the village no more relapse to the world as their antecedents did. They teach at local schools, document a quarterly circular, manage a website, and remain welcoming recruits.
The Significance of the Shakers
The Shakers’ groundbreaking Christianity surprised their generations. They confronted nearly all dominant model of American society during their era. The Shakers trusted in community possession, nonaggression, dancing in prayers and worship, chastity, gender equality, and simple lives (Marshall 74). Many Protestants of the time determined that it was a disrespectful practice to incorporate dancing, clapping, and twirling into a holy place and uplifting it above the word of God, and as expressed by an appointed priest (Andrews 93). However, the Shakers believed that the dancing denoted a mutual, not individual, association with God that was a powerful sign of the cultural structure of the Shakers. In spite of the reclusive features of their villages, the Shakers were not basically an introspective religious community. The founder of the Shakers, Mother Ann, mentioned that they dedicated their efforts to hearts and work to God (Andrews 94). They trusted in the society ownership, yet they were fast-growing entrepreneurs, establishing different sectors of the economy after another, creating and implementing new technologies and machinery and reinvesting the incomes in the community businesses to promote greater expansion and productivity of the whole society (Herzberg 32). At their climax, the Shakers stiffly competed with other enterprises and outside world. For instance, the Shakers at Canterbury were had plenty of structures, capital, land, livestock, wood lots, industry, agricultural or farm produce, community skills and expertise, and community ownerships, by 1830s (Andrews 95). The Shakers’ image speedily became popularized for honesty, quality, and dependability. They also took care of the poor and utilized the scarce resources and earnings for the social welfare.
Conclusion
The influence of the Shakers was significant as it spread across many regions of the world, including the American society. Several museums have been created, which explain the Shakers’ traditions and values. For example, the museum at Canterbury describes several years of the religious principles of the Shakers via its structures, exhibitions, gardens, tours, and programs. Some of the museums also contain series of the Shakers’ objects, pictures, and manuscripts, as well as the remaining architectures from all times of its existence. While the Shakers were challenged by the outside world due to their inclusion of dancing, twisting, and trembling in worshiping, they acquired many converts.

Works Cited
Andrews, Edward D. The People Called Shakers. Courier Corporation, 2012.
Herzberg, Lesley. The Shakers: History, Culture, and Craft. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
Marshall, Katherine. Global Institutions of Religion: Ancient Movers, Modern Shakers. Routledge, 2013.