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

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Suggested Art By Our Society





THE GIFT TO BE SIMPLE” By Robert Peters

We suggest this read to those of you fellow Shakers, or future Shakers out there. It is a beautiful little novel on the start, and ideals of The Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming. It really emphasizes our need, and wish to remain simple, and love all that is simple, and adhering in life. 














“Let Zion Move” is one of the many songs that our Shaker society truly appreciates. A simplistic collection of harmonious notes, it truly is the most worthy of all religious hymns in our collection.











"The Tree of Love" is the most appreciated pieces of art in The Shaker Society, for it depicts in the most simplistic of manners how straightforward and beautiful life is. Much like the trees in the Garden Of Eden, this is untainted by sin, and preserved by the very good nature of us Shakers. It also depicts how love can be sustained and everlasting, without  sin, as committed by Adam and Eve.

Famous Shakers

One of our most famous members are Issachar Bates. He was the musician who wrote the song “Come Life, Shaker Life”, In 1805, he left from New Lebanon, New York for an extended trip with two other Shaker missionaries, John Meacham and Benjamin S. Youngs. Their travels took them to Kentucky and Ohio where the camp meeting revivals had taken place. Bates was the musician who sang at the first official Shaker meeting in the West at Turtle Creek, Ohio on May 23, 1805.
Before he joined the Shakers in 1801, Bates had served in the American Revolution as a young fifer and had learned many of the tunes of that time. He used one of these tunes in his early Shaker hymn, "Rights of Conscience,” a ballad hym that pays a tribute to George Washington, and founder of Shakers, Ann Lee, all to the tune of “The President’s March.”
Later on, Bates became a prominent Shaker church leader, and served mainly at Watervliet, Ohio. He wrote many Shaker spirituals, including an anthem, "Mount Zion," and the hymn, "Ode to Contentment," with words by Elder Richard Pelham from the Shaker community at North Union, Ohio.
Bates returned to New Lebanon, New York in 1835 and the following year completed his lively and informative autobiography. He remained at New Lebanon until his death on March 17, 1837. As per his request, "Almighty Savior," a hymn which he had composed, was sung at his funeral.

Can You Be a Shaker?

The Shakers are ordinary people who chose to give up their families, property, and worldly ties in order “to know, by daily experience, the peaceable nature of Christ’s kingdom.” They are welcomed into “holy families” where men and women live as brother and sister, where all property is common property, and where each participates in the rigorous daily farming necessary to both survival and their religious tenets. Besides leading a simple but comfortably self-sufficient existence from the fruits of their land, the Shakers are known for their innovative inventions, architecture, crafts, and furniture.

Our Current Members

Although we are celibate and do not marry or bear children, we take great care of the young ones in our community. We educate all our children in math, reading, and writing, and teach them the writings of God. Alongside those academic skills, we teach our children practical work such as harvesting, tending to animals, needlework, and cooking, to prepare them for a lifetime of serving our Lord.

Seventy-five years before the emancipation of the slaves and one hundred fifty years before women began voting in America, we were practicing social, sexual, economic, and spiritual equality for all members. Men and women hold equal power in positions of religious, political, or economic power; our society is the most progressive in terms of social progressiveness. We do not discriminate against Native or African people because all of God’s children were created equal.

We aren’t greedy or materialistic, but we strive towards perfection. Hard work is the only way to be restored to God, and we work hard every day in our community. Our gardens, furniture, and villages are renowned for their invaluable craftsmanship, and we produce our goods at such a rate to accommodate both those who are willing to pay and those who are unable. We, like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, believe everybody deserves a chance.

The Primary Settlement

The Shakers are a religious sect founded by an illiterate English factory worker named Mother Ann Lee, who came to America in 1774 with eight other pilgrims in order to spread her gospel and guide others with the divine visions and signs of God she had received. They call themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but because of their ecstatic dancing, they came to be known early on as the Shakers.  They stress simplicity and equality for all, celibacy, separation of the sexes, and agrarian communal living. The first Shakers settled near Watervliet, New York, in the frontier wilderness northwest of Albany, as well as in New Lebanon, New York. Mother Ann embarked on a series of missionary journeys throughout New York and New England, gathering many converts to this new Christian movement.

Why The Society Was Created

The first Shakers arrived in America on the eve of the Revolution, having left England in pursuit of religious freedom. They became an order in 1787, the same year Shaker women were officially given equal rights, as well as the year the Constitution was signed and went into effect. In 1817 the Shakers’ southern societies freed their slaves and  began buying black believers out of slavery. The Shakers are one of the most interesting socio-religious movements in American history. They are also one of the longest lived, and are considered by many to be the most successful of the hundreds of communal groups and utopian societies that have flourished in this country since before the Revolutionary War. At their height in 1840 more than six thousand believers lived in nineteen communal villages in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.  Tales of their peaceful and prosperous lives impressed the world’s utopians, but their religious experiment has all but died out by 1940 due to celibacy’s toll. Today, just a few Shakers still live at the community in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

How It All Started

Mother Ann Lee
The Shaker religion was founded by Ann Lee (1736-1784), an illiterate blacksmith’s daughter, in Manchester, England who was baptized and married in the Church of England. After an unfulfilling marriage and at least four miscarriages and four unsuccessful childbirths, she was imprisoned for disrupting Anglican Church services. During her imprisonment she experienced a series of visions, in which she was enlightened, that  sexual activity was the root of all sins; that she herself was Christ's Second Coming; and that it was her duty to carry the God's word to the New World. Ann Lee threw herself into her religion, and developed a group called the United Society of Believers in the Second Appearing of Christ who saw religion and life as a duality with a male and female counterpart.  She spent fifteen years with the sect, before, facing religious persecution, upon which  Mother Ann and her followers left England iin 1774 when she received a vision from God in which she was told that "a place had been prepared" for them in America.Here, she settled down in New York.