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A few weeks ago I watched a Ken Burns documentary about the Shakers. I came across them in my readings on spiritualists like the Dukhobors, the historical Jesus, early Christianity and the religious imaginary's role in mysticism. I had heard of the Shakers when much younger (I remember the Shaker furniture fad occured in my early teenage years), but not in a sympathetic light (they were seen as wierd or heretical by Evangelicals), and I could not understand the Spiritualist or mystical religion they practiced.
The Shakers came out of a religious milieu of mystical or ecstatic religion: the Quakers in England, and the Camisards in France. The Camisards were the descendants of persecuted French Protestants that fled to Manchester, in the UK. They had a charismatic or ecstatic type religion. This is the kind of religious environment that the founder of the shakers, Anne Lee, would have been exposed to. The Camisard worship involved spirited singing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, and their religion was shaped by an apocalyptic imagination.
This is a reproduction of what an early Shaker worship meeting might have been like. The building used is an actual Shaker meeting hall that has been preserved in Kentucky.
The Shakers came out of a religious milieu of mystical or ecstatic religion: the Quakers in England, and the Camisards in France. The Camisards were the descendants of persecuted French Protestants that fled to Manchester, in the UK. They had a charismatic or ecstatic type religion. This is the kind of religious environment that the founder of the shakers, Anne Lee, would have been exposed to. The Camisard worship involved spirited singing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, and their religion was shaped by an apocalyptic imagination.
This is a reproduction of what an early Shaker worship meeting might have been like. The building used is an actual Shaker meeting hall that has been preserved in Kentucky.
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