E. J. Barnes
SPX Table E11B
$5.00
Published by Drowned Town Press
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In 1774, “Mother” Ann Lee, along with eight followers, arrives in the British colony of New York to bring the Shaker Gospel from her native England – a millennial message of celibacy, equality of the sexes, and property held in common, declaring both God and Christ to be both Male and Female. In 1805, her successor in Shaker leadership, “Mother” Lucy Wright, hears news of millenarian Christian revivals in Ohio and Kentucky, manifesting shaking, trances, and other “signs and gifts of the spirit”. She sends three Shaker missionaries to those states, closer to the United States frontier. One of their first converts is former Presbyterian minister Richard McNemar, who joins the celibate, communal order with his family, friends, and many of his parishioners. In the years to come, he works tirelessly to found new Shaker villages in the West, travels east to meet the Shaker leadership in upstate New York, and goes on to be one of Shaker music’s most prolific composers. In honor of Mother Lucy, he adopts the pseudonym of Eleazar Wright. In 1839, the anticipated Millennium has not arrived. A new
generation of Shakers has entered the faith. Young Sisters and Brothers are starting to have visions, and receive spirit messages from Mother Ann and her successors…to mixed responses from older Shakers…such as 68-year-old Richard McNemar.