conclusions

The English Shakers were judged fanatical by their contemporaries, just as were other groups that fled to America in pursuit of religious or other personal freedoms. If the early Shakers were 'fanatics,' they came from a long line of fanatical predecessors: religious ancestors who interpreted the very beliefs and actions that earned them heretical notoriety to be direct communication with divinity.

• persecution

• communism

• notion

• cohesive factor

• sect and religion

• Medieval heresy

• Although

• basis

• Introduction

• Most modern