Most modern

Most modern portrayals of the Shakers render them as an odd and singular aberration in Western religious history, one of several unsuccessful attempts at utopia in America. This paper presents and directs research toward a different view of Shaker ideology and practice; it portrays the Shakers as representing a particular combination of recurrent ideas and tendencies that reach back at least to medieval times. This research suggests that the role of the Shaker's central focus and founder, Ann Lee, is one key for understanding the interaction between old and new religious ideas and structure.

There is no dispute that Ann Lee's historical role as leader, integrated with her symbolic role as spiritual Mother, led to the eventual formation of the uniquely American religion of the Shakers. This paper attempts to show that historical, personal, and symbolic influences on Ann Lee and her early religious companions provide a coincident key to understanding the Shaker phenomenon.

• conclusions

• persecution

• communism

• notion

• cohesive factor

• sect and religion

• Medieval heresy

• Although

• basis

• Introduction