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

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.