Although

Although this paper presented in detail common elements of so-called heretical religious groups throughout Shaker prehistory, these similarities were not outlined in an effort to imply that the Shakers were merely derivative of earlier groups. Shared tendencies are certainly important motivating factors, as they would be in any radical sect within a strong religious orthodoxy, but the Shaker were nevertheless clearly distinctive. The particular way in which common threads of heretical ideas and practices were combined and interpreted was wholly new in the formulation of the Shaker sect.

The Shakers themselves did not consciously draw from the past. The element of revelation and direct inspiration, so common to heretical sects, motivated early Shakers and Shaker predecessors to disavow their religious history. Analogies to past heresies are relevant only in a retrospective analysis; at the inception of the Wardley Society, the influence of the past served only as negative back drop. To the early Shakers, what had come before was merely evidence of what was not truth.

• basis

• Introduction

• Most modern

• conclusions

• persecution

• communism

• notion

• cohesive factor

• sect and religion

• Medieval heresy