Shakers at the Center: Manifesting Spirits & Spectacles in Nineteenth-Century America

Exploring the theological, social, and cultural dimensions of one of America's most ambitious prophetic movements The Shakers' Era of Manifestations ranks among the most astounding events in American religious history.During the 1840s, members of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing embarked on an audacious project of receiving visions, revelations, and other manifestations from the spirit world and convincing both themselves and the world's people of their reality.Gifted Shakers known as "instruments" surrendered their bodies to possessing spirits and celestial beings who, in turn, provided the Believers with an unimaginable number of revelatory communications that collapsed time and space, rewrote the Bible, and vastly expanded traditional Protestant beliefs and practices.The fruits of Shaker spiritualism would gain a permanent place in America's public consciousness.Hundreds of volumes and thousands of pages of inspired writings, music, and art from the New E