Doug Winiarski

But they saw their movement as going beyond the Bible and in several different ways.

One, which we've talked about with the idea of the Christ spirit, that Christ could come again, this time in female form.

And the Shakers will, in the 19th century, their theology will emerge to suggest that Anne Lee completes the work of salvation that's begun with Jesus of Nazareth.

So Jesus begins the process of teaching people the road to salvation.

Anne Lee, with her doctrine of celibacy, completes that process.

They also believe that God is dual as well, so that God has both a male aspect and the female aspect.

They call that female aspect Holy Mother Wisdom.

So the Shakers recognize that there is more to be learned about the Christian tradition than what's contained in the Bible, and that explains the quirks of their theology.

Democracy, individualism, capitalism, these are all things that are coming at the turn of the 19th century and the Shakers benefit from all of them.

The idea that you can have an individual religious experience and you can seek out people that have that same experience is one thing.

The idea that you can shake off your established religion and choose your own.

The idea that there are different religious traditions to choose from, different denominations.

These are all the hallmarks of modern American religion.

The emergence of a competitive religious marketplace of religious traditions.

And Anne Lee is an aggressive marketer of her faith.

And she capitalizes on basically spiritual shoppers, people who are looking for something new, something that capitalizes on their own individual faith experiences.

So in some ways, the idea of Shakerism is something that goes very closely related with those developments of modern America, individualism, capitalist market, economy, and political democracy.

The Shakers sort of capitalize on all of them.

They faced both physical violence and legal actions.

So we saw earlier that Ann Lee experienced a lot of mob violence.