Spirit Possession and Popular Religion

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The description is outstanding. Nowhere else can one find such a succinct and eminently readable account that places Shakerism in its broadest context. Garrett makes character and personality come alive throughout the book, from the Prophets' strange gyrations to Mother Ann Lee's drinking problem."--Journal of American History"The most successful study yet written of transatlantic spiritual enthusiasm in the century of the Enlightenment."--Jon Butler, Yale UniversityPietists, Methodists, and sectarian groups such as the Shakers all shared the conviction that God touched the individual directly and visibly, manifestations of spirit possession, accompanied by prophecy, visions, and ecstatic seizures, became outward signs of an inner expedience, a kind of sacred theater as believers acted out their possession before others. Clarke Garrett follows this "sacred theater"back to the Camisards of southeastern France, an ecstatic Protestant group whose doomed rebellion against Louis XIV led to their dispersal among Huguenot exiles. Then, Garrett writes, "in a form that the Huguenots themselves would probably not have recognized, a dozen English ecstatics, who in their native Manchester had been known as Shakers, brought Huguenot spirit possession to America in 1774."The Shakers emerge as the culmination of the century's religious quest, preserving the immediacy of spirit possession while making it the basis for the formation of an ideal Christian community."ÝUnravels" the subtle links among such apparently divergent manifestations of popular religion as that of the Camisards and French Prophets of the seventeenth century, German pietism, the early Methodists in England, the revivalsof the Great Awakening, the Amana community, and the Shakers... Garrett's study deserves the attention of all who would understand the history and nature of ecstatic experience and its continuing presence in Western religion."--Church History"Shaker buffs will not find thi