Anti-Shakerism
overview of dicrimination against Shakers
Anti-Shakerism refers to negative attitudes concerning the Shakers. At their peak in popularity in the first half of the 19th century in the United States, the Shakers had approximately 4,000 to 6,000 members. Anti-Shakerist critiques of Shakers often concerned their celibacy, millenarianism, and views on race and gender. Anti-Shakerism declined along with Shakerism in the 20th century.
Issues
Perhaps most significant to the hostility towards Shakers concerned their celibacy, millenarianism, and views on race and gender. The main current writer on anti-Shakerism compares allegations against them as similar to other celibate religious groups like Roman Catholic monks and nuns, although there are also similarities with hostility to Mormons or Masons. People who formerly resided in Shaker communities even wrote anti-Shaker tracts as some former, or allegedly former, nuns did.
Their millenarian views drew ire. Under Joseph Meachem, beliefs concerning God coming to destroy the Anti-Christ and create a better world grew more pronounced. The Shaker convert Frederick W. Evans in 1888 wrote an essay, based more on his enthusiasm than mainstream Shakerism, called a Shaker reconstruction of the American Government.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anti-Shakerism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.