Shakers at the Center

Exploring the theological, social, and cultural dimensions of one of America's most ambitious prophetic movements The Shakers' Era of Manifestations ranks among the most astounding events in American religious history. During the 1840s, members of United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing embarked on an audacious project of producing visions, revelations, and other manifestations of the spirit world and convincing both themselves and the world's people of their reality. In this practice, gifted Shakers surrendered their bodies to possessing spirits and celestial beings who, in turn, provided the Believers with an unimaginable number of spirit communications that collapsed time and space, rewrote the Bible, and vastly expanded traditional Protestant theology. The fruits of Shaker spiritualism would gain a permanent place in America's public consciousness. The New Era (or period of Mother Ann's Work), as it came to be known, ranks among the largest outbreaks of visionary and revelatory phenomena in American history. Hundreds of volumes and thousands of pages of inspired writings, music, and art crowd the shelves of a half dozen major research libraries. The archive is so vast, so extraordinary, so seemingly bizarre that few scholars have dared tackle it in its totality. The authors of this volume, specialists in nineteenth-century American religious studies, have collaborated to produce an extensive analysis of Mother Ann's Work. They examine a fascinating range of topics: speaking with the dead; the spectacle of Shaker rituals; race, gender, and family life; and the material culture of physical and spiritual things; as well as manuscripts, books, songs, objects, and art produced during the New Era. Shakers at the Center is the first book to examine all the sprawling elements of the Era of Manifestations together in a single volume. Written for students, scholars, and general readers alike, it will stand for years as the definitive history of the Shakers' most fascinating and vexing historical period. Contributors include the volume editor as well as Emily Suzanne Clark, Brett Malcolm Grainger, Sonia Hazard, Dana Logan, Carol Medlicott, Sally M. Promey, Erik R. Seeman, Ryan K. Smith, and David Walker.