Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries

Foreword

ix This volume examines two high-tension religious movements in the nineteenth -century United States that adopted distinctive strategies for dealing with the definition and maintenance of the boundaries that separated them from the rest of American society. These two outsider religious groups—the Shakers and the Mormons—have attracted a great deal of attention across time from both the scholarly world and the larger American public. This is the case despite the contrast in their situations in the twenty-first century: the Mormons, or Latter-day Saints, are a worldwide religious tradition numbering in the millions, whereas the Shakers are today a mere handful of believers. Stephen C. Taysom’s volume is a creative comparative study, an exercise in historical sociology in the tradition of the work of Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of Commitment and Community, although his conclusions are substantially different from hers. He accepts received notions of the importance of boundary maintenance for dissenting, alternative, or “sectarian” communities, but he demonstrates how the Shakers and the Mormons employed different options for defining and maintaining their boundaries. The two most striking social contrasts appear in the area of family arrangements, namely, the practices of Shaker celibacy and of Mormon polygamy or plural marriage. These distinctive arrangements governing the relationships between male and female members became defining features of the two communities during the nineteenth century. Both celibacy and polygamy were the focus of sustained criticism and violent opposition from other Americans in the period. These Foreword x · foreword diverse sexual arrangements have also occupied historians writing about these two communities in the nineteenth century as they have sought to identify the aspects of community life that set these religious groups apart from the rest of American society. Taysom’s comparative study also involves an examination of the structural effects of particular regulations and communal statutes on religious life in these two communities. A document called the Millennial Laws governed most aspects of daily life in Shaker villages during the nineteenth century, prescribing the roles of Shaker brothers and sisters and setting their life patterns in the community in sharp contrast to the common prevailing routines in the larger non-Shaker society. Similarly, the Mormon Word of Wisdom, dietary principles articulated by the founder, Joseph Smith, set Latter-day Saints’ foodways apart from those of their contemporaries, thereby contributing to the establishment of identifiable LDS boundaries. The rules governing daily activities and the regulations concerning dietary practices played major roles in enabling the Shakers and the Mormons to maintain themselves apart from other Americans. These same rules and regulations also fueled direct opposition and violence from nonbelievers, and affliction, injury, and distress frequently accompanied membership in these alternative religious communities. Both founders—Ann Lee and Joseph Smith—knew violence firsthand. Suffering and persecution have been commonplace experiences for members of religious communities that have consciously pursued a strategy of outsiderhood. Taysom also examines the substance of the religious experiences of the Shakers and the Mormons during the nineteenth century. He investigates the effects of the Shaker Era of Manifestations, a special time of abundant outpouring of spiritual gifts among the believers. He offers insight into the Mormon Reformation and into the Latter-day Saints’ deployment and redefinition of Zionic ideals. He exploits systematically the historiographic traditions surrounding these two religious communities , demonstrating how the scholarship devoted to them, generated both by members and by others outside, has contributed to an understanding of these religions but at times has also led to mistaken judgments. Taysom’s examination of the Shakers and the Mormons sheds light on the larger patterns that have characterized alternative religious communities in the past and that continue to do so in the present. In other foreword · xi words, although this volume is a focused historical examination of two outsider religious movements in the nineteenth century, it has implications for understanding the expanding numbers of such religious groups in contemporary America. The United States has been and remains a fertile seedbed, a secure and inviting situation for new religious movements (NRMs) that wish to prosper outside the boundaries set by historic and well-established religious communities. The principle of the free exercise of religion articulated in the First Amendment and the historical situation of open space have created a legal and geographic context conducive to the growth and development of such alternative religious communities. Yet these NRMs have faced immense challenges, including opposition from established...