Shakers (United Society of Believers, historical)

The Shakers split from English Quakerism in the 1740s under James and Jane Wardley, with Ann Lee (1736–1784) emerging as their charismatic leader after her 1770 Manchester prison vision. Lee taught that she was the female embodiment of the second coming of Christ — the necessary feminine counterpart to Jesus's masculine first appearance — and that procreative sexuality was the original sin. Lee and a small band emigrated to America in 1774 and established the New Lebanon, New York colony in 1787 under Joseph Meacham. By the 1840s the Shakers numbered approximately 6,000 across 18 colonies in eight states, having survived an unusual structural challenge: lifelong celibacy meant the community could grow only through adult conversion and adoption / indentured care of orphans. Doctrinally the Shakers practised four foundational principles: virgin purity (celibacy), Christian communism (full surrender of personal property to the colony), confession of sin (regular ritual confession to elders), and separation from the world (limited but not absent contact with non-Shakers). The community's egalitarianism was institutional: men and women held parallel leadership roles, identical labour was differently allocated, and theological language used dual gendered metaphors for the divine. Industrial and craft contributions — Shaker furniture, oval boxes, herbal medicines, the flat broom, agricultural seed packaging — outlasted the community's demographic decline. The colonies dissolved one by one through the late 19th and 20th centuries; by 2017 only Sabbathday Lake remained, and the death of Brother Arnold Hadd in 2017 left two active members.