Shaker Spirituality and Theology in the Context of the Second Great Awakening



Heaven on Earth: Shakers, Religious Revival, and Social Reform in America 

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, better known as Shakers, arrived in America in 1774. Under the able leadership of the charismatic Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784), the Shakers established their first separatist Christian communal society outside of Albany, New York. The settlement was intended as a refuge from the extremes of wealth and poverty that these immigrants had known in Manchester, England, the heartland of the Industrial Revolution.



In 1780 New York authorities arrested Mother Lee and several of her followers for “pacifist agitation.” The experience jolted the Shakers out of seclusion. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, Shaker preachers (men and women) took to the road to share the radical tenets of their faith including celibacy, gender equality, and communitarianism. They attracted converts in quick succession and founded new communities at New Lebanon, New York (1787) and Hancock, Massachusetts (1790).



American Shakerism was vital, growing and expansive by the 1830s when approximately six thousand Shakers lived in nineteen communities that stretched from Kentucky to Maine. Sweeping changes to the American economy and society facilitated the growth of the movement. Commercialization, industrialization, urbanization, and migration brought new economic opportunities but also challenged how antebellum Americans understood themselves and their world. Convinced that the nation had lost its moral compass, some sought refuge in separatist utopian communities.

Other Americans found a new direction in the Second Great Awakening and the doctrine of Perfectionism espoused by Charles Grandison Finney. Perfectionism directed Christians to conquer sin – the sins of individuals, of communities, and of the nation. The preponderance of reform movements for temperance, abolition and Sabbatarianism, among other causes, prompted Alexis de Tocqueville to comment that reform, philanthropy, and the perfection of society had become a “kind of profession” in antebellum America.



American Shakerism thrived in this context of economic and social tumult. Shakers strived to create a distinct culture and to reform society. They lived by and advocated for the values commonly associated with the religious and social reformers of the antebellum era: pacifism, racial and gender equality, communitarianism, and spiritualism.



Shaker theology regards God as fully male and female and Shaker women assumed leadership roles within the movement. As religious leaders Shaker women challenged the prevailing standards of femininity in antebellum America as well as the notion of separate spheres for men and women. Similarly, the Shaker model of family questioned the conflation of womanhood with motherhood. Shaker children were raised collectively. Children who entered the community with their biological parents were treated no differently than children who were “adopted” by the community from orphanages and charitable organizations. 

Jenn Dorsey