Mother Ann Lee: Morning Star of the Shakers

Summary

The definitive biography of the founder of the Shaker movement, whose remarkable life is the subject of a new film, The Testament of Ann Lee.

This acclaimed, accessible, and thoroughly researched biography documents the life of Ann Lee, a controversial, religious leader and early feminist figure. Lee established the Shaker movement in 1770 in Manchester, England. The core principles of the Shakers were radical: in an era when wives were the possession of their husband, Lee proclaimed the equality of men and women. The Shakers were dedicated to beliefs in absolute pacifism, equality of the sexes, absolute celibacy, and the cleansing of sin through dancing and chanting to shake away the past.

The Shakers sought inner peace and harmony, but their unusual beliefs, including total abstinence from sex and their exhibitions of mystical ecstasy were considered suspect and led to the imprisonment of Lee and her followers. While jailed, Lee experienced a blinding, soul-splitting vision which reaffirmed her belief in celibacy and named her the second coming of Christ. Seeking religious freedom, she led her followers, known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, from England to settle in upstate New York, near Albany.

Mother Ann Lee died in 1784, but her movement continued to grow into the nineteenth century with at least eighteen utopian Shaker communities in Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Ohio. Today many of those Shaker settlements are museums. The last remaining Shaker community is at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village near Poland, Maine. The Testament of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried, drew on this book among other sources to tell Lee’s story.