Shaking Quakers

D.W.Kellogg lithograph, ca. 1838

It was a merging of both Quaker and French Camisard beliefs that created the Shakers. The Quakers were founded in England in 1652 by George Fox. Stressing the "Inner Light of Christ," the early Quakers taught that direct knowledge of Christ was possible to the individual without a Church, priest or book as the final word of revelation. While no official creed holds the Quakers, or Society of Friends, together, the belief that God exists in all people caused many Quakers to be sensitive to injustice and degradation. They have a long history of pacifism, and this belief was found also among their spiritual descendants, the Shakers. During the 1740s, the Quakers changed their process of worship where their violent tremblings and quakings, from which they derived their name, predominated. One group in Manchester, England, retained this form of worship, and it was during the 1740s that the "Shaking Quakers," or Shakers, came under the influence of some exiled French Camisards. This group split off from mainstream Quakerism in 1747, and developed along their own lines, forming into a society with Jane and James Wardley as their leaders. Ann Lee, the founder and later leader of the American Shakers, and her parents were members of this society.

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