SHAKERS, an American celibate and communistic sect, known as "The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing" and as "The Millennial Church." Some of the leaders prefer the name "Alethians," for they consider themselves chil dren of the truth. The society had its beginning in a Quaker revival in England (1747) which resulted in the organization of a sect of which Jane and James Wardley were the leaders. They were succeeded by Ann Lee. The distinctive merit of celibacy became an original tenet of the Shakers in England. They did not prohibit marriage but refused to accept it as a Christian in stitution and considered it less perfect than the celibate state.
Under stress of persecution and in response to a revelation, "Mother" Ann led a band of six men and two women to America. They arrived in New York city on Aug. 6, 1774, and after two years' stay there, settled in the woods of Watervliet, not far from Albany, N.Y. In 1780 there was a religious revival in New Lebanon, N.Y., and some of the converts became disciples of Ann Lee. At this place, in 1787, the first Shaker society in the United States was organized; the society at Watervliet organized immediately afterwards. Ann Lee went from place to place preaching her new doctrine and became known as a faith-healer. At the time of her death (1784) she had disciples in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
A group of Shakers came out of the Kentucky revival of 1800-02. The community at Mount Lebanon, N.Y. sent three of their number to Kentucky to bear witness to the people. Though at first bitterly opposed, these Shaker preachers made a sufficient number of converts to found five societies, "two in Ohio, two in Kentucky and one in Indiana." In 1894 the Mount Lebanon Society, N.Y., founded a colony at Narcoosee, Fla., called the Union Village Society. In 1910 it went into the hands of a receiver.
The Shakers held that God was both male and female, that Adam, having been created in the image of God, had in him the nature of both sexes, that even angels and spirits are both male and female. Christ, they believe, was one of the superior spirits and appeared in Jesus, the son of a Jewish carpenter, representing the male principle. In Mother Ann, daughter of an English black smith, the female principle in Christ was manifested, and in her the promise of the Second Coming was fulfilled. Christ's king
dom on earth began with the establishment of the Shaker Church.
The practical ideals of the community are the common posses sion of property, a life of celibacy, confession of sin, without which no one can become a member of the community, power over physical disease, and separation from the world. Disease they regard as a sin against God. Their separateness from the world is indicated by their manner of living in families of 3o to 90 in dividuals. Each family has its own house, the storeys being divided between the men and women. They make no room for adornments in the way of pictures or other works of art. In their prescribed mode of dress for men and women, they also protest against the fashions of a vain world. For a time they made their own clothing and wove their own cloth. They made leather in New York for several years; but were more successful in selling herbs and garden seeds, and in making apple sauce, weaving linen and knitting underwear. Many of them, however, considered it a mistake to have left agriculture and entered into manufacturing.
In 1874 there were 58 Shaker communities with 2,415 souls, owning 100,00o ac. of land; in 1905 the membership was reduced to about 1,000.