Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community

BYU Studies Quarterly Volume 44 | Issue 1 Article 4 1-1-2005 Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community J. Spencer Fluhman Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq Recommended Citation Fluhman, J. Spencer (2005) "Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 44 : Iss. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol44/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the All Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in BYU Studies Quarterly by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact , . Fluhman: Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community /. Spencer Fluhman P olly Knight's health was failing as she and her family trudged toward western Missouri. Having accepted Joseph Smith Jr. as God's prophet on earth, the Knights left their Colesville, New York, farm and joined with other Mormon converts at Kirtland, Ohio, in 1831. Finding a brief respite there, they again set out, this time for the city of "Zion" that Joseph Smith said they would help build in Jackson County, Missouri. Worried that Polly was too ill to complete the trek, her family considered stopping in hopes she might recover. But "she would not consent to stop traveling," recalled her son Newell: "Her only, or her greatest desire was to set her feet upon the land of Zion, and to have her body interred in that land." Fearing the worst, Newell bought lumber for a coffin in case she expired en route. "But the Lord gave her the desire of her heart, and she lived to stand upon that land."1 Latter-day Saints, though, were not the only Christian sect in the early nation to treasure the notion of a fellowship with other believers in a life apart from the world. A generation earlier, converts had come together to live as one in the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. New converts, calling themselves Believers but commonly known as Shakers, gathered into communities in Massachusetts, New York, and other parts of New England. As this society expanded, Shaker leaders and converts traveled from established communities in New England to newly formed frontier communities in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Despite poverty, persecution, and the difficulties of frontier settlement, many reacted as did David Rowley, a Vermont cabinetmaker who converted to Shakerism in 1810, who wrote "that I never have seen one movement since I set out in this blessed way but that I felt thankful for it; & can with confidence BYU Studies 44, no. 1 (2005) Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2005 79 1 BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 44, Iss. 1 [2005], Art. 4 80 '---' BYU Studies recommend it to all souls who are sick of the vain world & are seeking . . . a way of true life & imperishable love."2 Such was the attachment of many Latter-day Saints and Shakers to the idea of living in a holy community. Throughout the nineteenth century, conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or to the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing was virtually synonymous with "gathering." Indeed, the search for a workable holy community serves as a unifying theme for the early history of both these movements. Historians have long noted similarities between the two J. Spencer Fluhman My interest in Shaker communities stems from my stint as a research fellow in the "Archive of Restoration Culture" project sponsored by the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University. Under the direction of Richard L. Bushman (Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University), we fellows spent the summer of 1999 placing prominent LDS concepts in their earlyAmerican cultural context. I was struck then, and now, by "gathering" as practiced by the early Saints and sought possible analogues in early American religious history. The Shakers were an obvious choice for comparison. Not only had earlier scholars noted similarities between the two movements but, as I sifted through early Shaker documents, I began to comprehend intersections not only between the groups' communitarian impulses but in their prophetism, patterns of spirituality, and apocalyptic dispensationalism. My interest in comparing Shaker and Mormon theology continued into my graduate studies in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and resulted in this extended analysis. I find that my D&C students here at BYU enjoy comparing the early Shaker and Mormon communities and reading the groups' lively descriptions of each other. —J. Spencer Fluhman, Brigham Young University https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol44/iss1/4 2 Fluhman: Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community Early Mormon and Shaker Visions of Sanctified Community <—• 81 groups; Stephen Marini has gone so far to say that the Latter-day Saints were among the Shakers' "direct successors."3 Similarities notwithstanding, some nonhistorians might fail to associate the two movements, given the demographic trajectories each has followed since its respective founding. Mormonism experienced dynamic growth throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, n artl v the result of a vigorous proselytizing program and high birth rate. Over half of the Church's members today live outside the United States, establishing Mormonism as a world religion. Shakers, too, experienced periods of explosive growth in their early history, but seasons of intense proselytizing were interspersed with spans of official suspension of evangelism. Moreover, the Shakers' celibate life ensured a modest growth rate. Shakerism attracted adherents after the U.S. Civil War, but the number of followers has steadily dwindled since the mid-nineteenth century. A small handful of Believers now tend the remaining Shaker village in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.4 Historians are thus more likely to call attention to the longevity of the Shaker experience than its size. Indeed, more than two hundred years of Shaker communal life have earned the sect the renown of being history's most successful communal society.5 These dissimilar histories notwithstanding, early Shakers and Mormons offered similar responses to the rapid transformations of the early American republic. Christians had long been accustomed to the notion of coming "out of the world" (1 Cor. 5:10), but most did not see that ideal in literal terms as did early Mormons and Shakers. Most of their Christian contemporaries no doubt felt that they, too, had been "chosen" out of the world (John 15:19), but they probably would have insisted that their faith or piety was enough to separate them from the profane and ungodly; they could live and work among the unregenerate without being "of the world." Mormons and Shakers, however, shared a conception of their c (...truncated)