Legitimation mechanisms as third-dimension power practices: the case of the Shakers

Abstract

Using source material on the Shakers, an American communitarian religious group with a theocratic system of government, the article charts the sociopolitical development of a religious sect from charismatic to traditional authority. While focusing upon these forms of authority, the article also examines the techniques used by the power holders to establish and maintain the legitimacy of the system (theological justifications, procedures of succession, internal regulations, spiritual ‘manifestations’, etc.), which are interpreted in terms of three-dimensional power practices. The two theoretical perspectives, Weberian and Lukesian, respectively, are combined to facilitate examination and explanation of theocratic mechanisms of 0power.

Keywords:

• charismatic authority
• legitimation of power
• Shakers
• theocracy
• three-dimensional power

Notes

1. Throughout the article the terms ‘Shakers’, ‘Shakerism’ etc. refer to the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, i.e. the English Shakers, not to Indian Shakerism – a syncretic religion combining native and Christian elements that developed among Native Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century.

2. This term is somewhat self-contradictory if ‘utopia’ is to be understood in the common sense of the word. It is nonetheless justified to treat Shakers as a utopian sect in the Wilsonian terminology. Bryan Wilson’s typology of sects is based on the type of response to the outside world the group displays. Utopian sects seek isolation from the world (introversionist element), but at the same time feel the urge to change its evil ways (reformist element) according to some divine project (Wilson 1973, p. 26; for application of this theoretical framework to Shakers see: Whitworth 1975, pp. 4–6).

3. No monograph on the Shaker political system exists that I am aware of, although many studies, including those by Desroche (1971), Whitworth (1975) and feminist scholars, such as Procter-Smith (1985) and Humez (1991), contain excellent passages of political analysis. More recently, Stephen Paterwic has published plenty of valuable work (some of which will be referred to below) concerning, among other things, the government of the United Society. Paterwic’s approach, however, is not that of a political scientist, but of a historian and chronicler.

4. The word ‘supernatural’ can be replaced by ‘religious’, since I define religion substantively (by reference to supernatural beings or powers) rather than functionally. Similarly, most of the time I use words like ‘justification’, ‘sanction’ and ‘legitimation’ interchangeably. ‘Legitimation’ (process) leads to ‘legitimacy’ (state).

5. The question of intentionality in the theory of political power is a classic one and there is by no means a universal consensus (see discussion in Wrong 1980, pp. 3–5). Nonetheless, it can be argued that most participants in the community power debate link power with intentionality, including Lukes, despite his occasionally paying lip service to a more structural approach (Bernhagen 2002, p. 11).

6. Sometimes in between Church and Gathering orders a Junior order is also distinguished, whose members lived in the community of consumption and production, but did not consecrate their property (although they pooled it together for common use) and could regain it on leaving the sect (see Desroche 1971, pp. 188–190, who draws on Evans 1859, pp. 48–49). But, perhaps, it is more correct to treat it as subspecies of the Gathering order, since it did not exist in all villages (Paterwic 2008, p. 165).

7. I use the term ‘totalitarian’ in this purely technical meaning, without implying general similitude between Shakerism and any of the totalitarian state regimes of the twentieth century. The differences are perhaps too obvious to mention; suffice it to say that any adult Shaker was free to leave the community whenever he or she wished and no physical coercion was ever used in Shakerism.

8. The general reliability of Elkins’ account, apart from some licencia poetica he allows himself, was confirmed by the research of Hagen (2004).

9. This sort of control extended also to journals kept by various members of the community. The above mentioned New Lebanon brother Isaac Newton Youngs went as far as encoding some of his entries, notably those containing criticism of his co-religionists, for fear of being disciplined by the Elders (see Matarese et al. 1995, pp. 40–41).

10. Apostasies were also explained away as ‘purging of the Zion’ from false believers – a classic example of adopting rationalization to reduce dissonance.

11. In twentieth century Shakerism, with which we are not concerned here.

12. Technically the book is anonymous, but it is attributable with certainty to Elder Harvey Eads from South Union (Richmond 1977, p. 66. pos. 475).

13. See Green and Wells ([1823] 1848): ‘The visible head of the Church of Christ on earth is vested in a Ministry’. This claim is supported by biblical analogies both from Old (‘Jewish dispensation’) and New Testament (‘gospel dispensation’), such as God’s appointment of Moses and David, who, in turn, nominated, respectively, Joshua and Solomon; and selection of apostles by Christ (p. 66). The democratic election of bishops in the early church was the first sign of its being influenced by the spirit of Antichrist and its degeneration (Ibid.).

14. Feminist theologians are quick to point out that this reasoning is in fact patriarchal, too, if women’s only title to power is the absence of men (Procter-Smith 1985, p. 15). It can also be demonstrated that, despite formal equality, men held positions of power more often, trustees were exclusively male until the late nineteenth century and the traditional division of labour between men and women was retained in Shaker communities.

15. Intriguingly, in an early text by Joseph Meacham, A Concise Statement of the Principles of the Only True Church from 1790, there is no mention of Ann Lee whatsoever. That shows at least that feminine leadership was deemphasized during these formative years after Lee’s and Whittaker’s death.

16. Since the latter was mentioned in the context of social control (see above 2.3.), the following discussion will focus on covenants only.

17. The earliest covenants might allow withdrawing members to regain their original property, but not to claim lost wages. In the Gorham, Maine, covenants of 1804 apostates are even entitled to ‘a just proportion of what the family hath gained after their coming together’ (Gorham Covenant 1804), but it is an exception, nullified by the 1810 covenant. Normally apostates were entitled to neither the property they consecrated on joining the sect nor remuneration for their work.

18. Such was the fate of Alonso Gilman, Elder of the Poland Hill, Maine settlement. Accused of embezzling the community’s money, he refused to yield to the Ministry’s authority. Having reluctantly retired to Alfred village, he continued to cause trouble until finally being expelled from the Society in 1873 despite his old age. After futile efforts to discipline him, Elder Otis Sawyer of Maine Ministry reported to Central Ministry, Elders and brethren gathered and ‘in unanimous voice decided that he has violated his covenantal obligations’ thus ‘forfeiting his right to a home among believers’ (Sawyer 1873).

19. This point was brought to my attention by br. Arnold Hadd. The attempt turned out to be unsuccessful, since David’s brother Joseph ultimately prevailed.

20. Humez claims incorrectly that Lucy Wright did not designate her successors and that ‘New Lebanon Church leaders offered the headship of the Society to Father Job Bishop of the Canterbury, New Hamsphire, Ministry, on the ground that he was the last surviving «Parent» in the eastern communities’ and only when he refused did they institute the ‘carefully gendered-balanced quartet’ (Humez 1991, p. 12). Quoting a passage from a letter of 22nd March 1821 from New Lebanon leaders to Job Bishop of Canterbury Ministry (Western Reserve Shaker Collection, New Lebanon Correspondence, IV–A:34): ‘We believe it to be your right to come first, if it is your choice’, she misinterprets it as inviting him to the supreme position in the Central Ministry, while in fact it refers merely to his coming physically to visit New Lebanon, as the rest of the letter makes perfectly clear. Furthermore, the book of records of the New Lebanon Church Order contains the following entry under the date of February the 12th 1821 (directly after Lucy Wright’s death): ‘Previous to her decease Mother [Lucy – M.P.] has chosen and appointed Elder Ebenezer Bishop, Br. Rufus Bishop, Sister Ruth Landon and Sister Asenath Clark to stand as her successors in the Ministry, releasing Elder Abiathar Babbit’ (Records 1780–1855). This is further confirmed by Calvin Green in his biography of Lucy Wright (‘She had a particular gift concerning her successors in the Ministry’ Green 1861, entry of February the 4th 1821).

21. This is further evidenced by White and Taylor (1905, p. 69): ‘for a time Elder Joseph felt the silent opposition of the people of the place who were in attendance. The oppression was so great that at the grave he shook and trembled from head to foot, and than spoke under the influence of the Spirit with such power that even Believers marvelled’.

22. In the early Christian church, one of the crucial steps leading from personal charisma to the charisma of office (of bishops) was, I think, the crushing of the Donatist schism.

23. As is well known from the history of many tribal communities (e.g. Germanic tribes of the early Middle Ages), a leader who lost his charisma (because he was unsuccessful at war, could not prevent a drought or epidemic, etc.) faced being overthrown (see Tymowski 1999).

24. MacLean’s account is obviously sympathetic to McNemar, but it is nonetheless based on source material and there is no reason to doubt its credibility. McNemar’s biography by Philips (1972) adds little that is new since, in writing about McNemar’s last years, she draws heavily on McLean’s book, without, sadly, sufficiently acknowledging it.

25. This is also the opinion of Paterwic (2008, p. 137) and Stein (1992, p. 188: ‘The instruments at Union Village became pawns in the struggle’).

26. Glendyne Wergland distinguished certain stages or conditions in the process of manifestation validation, some of them of a political nature. The Central Ministry approved the initial outbreak of manifestations in Watervliet and their continuation (stages 3 and 6), got them authenticated by their envoy (stage 4), censored the sceptics, e.g. by means of changing the journal-keeper (stage 10) and controlled the content of spiritual communications by discarding pieces of false revelation (stage 11) (Wergland 2006, pp. 120–130).

27. A slightly different version of this letter was sent the same day to Central Ministry at New Lebanon (see: Stein 1985, pp. 120–124). Similar demands for appointments to be made by majority vote rather than by decision of the ministry were put forward in Union Village, Ohio around the same time (Andrews 1953, p. 236).

28. As Humez (1991, p. 10 ff.) points out, however, Smith’s expulsion was due, in part, to general opposition to female leadership in the Society as a whole and in Pleasant Hill in particular. If this is the case, then it may be argued that not only the person of ‘Mother’ Lucy Smith, but also the gender parity rule that she embodied was challenged, and thus elements of institutional delegitimation were present, too.

29. Stein (1992, p. 467, n. 24) identifies this pamphlet as A New View of Society. Owenites published Whitbey’s book in their newly purchased community of New Harmony (Stein 1992, p. 128).