Turning from Conversion: Shakers, Anti-Shakers, and the Battle for Public Opinion

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Authors

Miller, Daisy S.

Issue Date

2015

Volume

17

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Journal Article

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Abstract

The Shakers, a small ecstatic religious group, found themselves at the center of controversy in the early nineteenth century when a number of apostates published accounts accusing the sect of all variety of malfeasance. This forced the Shakers to publish responses, and the resultant public battle had a number of interesting features. In this article I examine how these attacks mask a general national anxiety regarding religious identity. Anti-Shakers sought to vilify the group by employing captivity and conversion narratives to a nineteenth century audience weaned on such tales. However by manipulating established tropes, these anti-Shakers over-played their hand, and the Shakers proved remarkably adept at reversing the terms of the argument.

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Citation

Miller, Daisy S.. (2015), Turning from Conversion: Shakers, Anti-Shakers, and the Battle for Public Opinion. Journal of Religion & Society, 17.

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Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke Center, Creighton University

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CC-BY 4.0

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http://hdl.handle.net/10504/65453

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https://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/toc/2015.html

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1522-5658

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Journal of Religion and Society