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Mother's First-Born Daughters: early Shaker writings on women and religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Kern, Louis J. An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (University of North Carolina Press, 1981) online Archived July 8, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
The Shakers are a sect of Christianity which practices celibacy, communal living, confession of sin, egalitarianism, and pacifism. After starting in England, it is thought that these communities spread into the cotton towns of North West England, with the football team of Bury taking on the Shaker name to acknowledge the Shaker community of Bury.
Shaker beliefs are aligned heavily with those of the Quakers, such as gender equality, community and pacifism; however, the Shakers differ from the Quakers in their belief in celibacy. Lee believed that celibacy was preferable to marriage, and within marriage, sex was only appropriate for the procreation of children.
The society was a strong believer in the equal rights of both men and women, citing that God had created both sexes. A stereo view of the Mt. Lebanon, New York Shaker community, about 1870.
Rebecca Cox Jackson (February 15, 1795 – May 24, 1871) was a free Black woman, known for her religious feminism and activism and her writing. Her autobiography was published in 1981 as Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Cox Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress, edited by Jean McMahon Humez.
Wright moved to the Shaker community at Watervliet, New York, where Ann Lee mentored the young woman and she became a leader among her peers. [8] Ann Lee died in 1784. By late 1788, the society’s new leader Joseph Meacham had had a revelation that Shakers should practice equality of the sexes, or gender equality.
Watervliet Shaker village, Albany, New York, c. 1870, Courtesy of Shaker Heritage Society. The Shaker movement was at its height between 1820 and 1860. It was at this time that the sect had its most members, and the period was considered its "golden age". It had expanded from New England to the Midwestern states of Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.
[1] Mace, along with White and Leila S. Taylor, became one of the primary Shaker spokeswomen for women's rights in the early 1900s. Mace spoke to groups outside the Shaker community that she believed shared some of the Shaker philosophy. [10] Notably, she spoke to a BaháΚΌí Faith audience in Eliot, Maine in July, 1904. [1]