The One About Quakers and Shakers

Category: weekleez

The One About Quakers and Shakers
October 10, 2001

hi kids, firstly, thanks to all of those who wished the weekly a happy 100th birthday! er, i mean, a happy 1st birthday!

secondly, this is probably the longest, most boring weekly i’ve ever sent, and for that i’m sorry.  i didn’t want to split it into two separate weekleez because by next week i would have been bored with the subject and would have wanted to write about something else, heck, anything else. so anyway, sorry about the length.

thirdly, i’ve got to “shout out” to some “peeps”. word!  i would like to thank leslie “i like the wizard of oz” martin for ganking some kind of “milkshake” type thing for me that’s supposedly easy on the tummy and chock full of protein, so’s i won’t die from eating oatmeal.  thanks les! and keep up that 5 finger discount!  also, i’d like to thank andy “magic bus” powell for buying me some Oatmeal For Girls.  thanks andy! that’s the sweetest thing ever.  you two are the first members of the “give something cool to jaimie and get a cool nickname” spy club, which will have a cooler name as soon as i can think of one.  er, look for it on the website soon. andy’s new nickname (code-name) is “mr. beard”.  and you must wink your right eye as you say “mr. beard” to give it that really secret code-name kinda look. leslie’s nickname is “mademoiselle montague” but her friends call her “mad monte”.

now, i don’t want any of you to think that i’m doing all of this just to get loads of free stuff or anything.  because if there’s one thing i don’t need, it’s loads of free stuff, or me having to “come up with” tons of cool spy names.  but you know, if you do want a cool spy name, now you know how to get one. right, moving on.

some of you weekly readers had mentioned to me that i needed a message board on the site so’s that all of you can talk back and forth and meet each other and basically get into trouble.  and so, since the weekly recently turned 100 years old, um, 1 year old, the lovely peeps at kNETics set up such a place for all of you to meet and greet and make much mayhem.  so have fun! (the link is at the end of the weekly).

ok, finally the weekly can “start”.

so after i sent out The One About Oatmeal i received an e-mail from my cousin, erick “an engineer type person” allen, who hails from the grand state of “ohio”.  his e-mail was basically him wanting to know the difference between Quakers and Shakers.

now, i know some of you are wondering why anyone would ask me a question about antiquated religious sects. well, in this case, cousin erick did the right thing by asking me that question.  because y’see, i eat at least one bowl of instant quaker oats everyday and i figure if that doesn’t make me a full card carrying quaker then it at least makes me an expert on all things quaker. AND since shaker rhymes with quaker, obviously i’m an expert on shakers too.  and sure i’m just a “self-proclaimed” expert, but that’s better than not being an expert at all. and what i mean by that is, do not believe a word i say.

since i am also the Queen of the Mad Researching Skillz (also self-proclaimed), i figure i won’t lead you guys too astray in what i’d like to call:

The One About Quakers and Shakers for Normals, Half-wits, and Cousin Erick

the Quakers were invented in England in the mid 1600s. there were all kinds of things going on in England during this time and most of it had to do with the civil war and social revolutions.  and at this time the Quakers were a loose group and had no specific goals and were harassed as being “radical puritans”.  yeah i know. oxymoron.

meanwhile there was another loose group of “radical puritans” who called themselves the Seekers. and seeing as how both of these groups had no direction and were unhappy with the Church of England, they decided to band together.  and under the guidance of George Fox (the “father of quakerism”) they now had a unified ideal and goals.  this newly formed group called themselves the “Camp of the Lord”  but we call them “Quakers”, and they lived in a communal atmosphere (hippies) and did loads of missionary work. they would call their new converts, “the Children of Light”. in 1660, the English monarchy was restored and so was the church, and so the Quakers were persecuted and mostly imprisoned.  during this time they started to refer to themselves less and less as the Camp of the Lord and more and more as the “Society of Friends” which is what they call themselves today.  they became more strict and simple in their ways of life, and they moved to the New World.  in the 1800s the Quakers split into 3 groups.  and no one cares, so we’ll move on.

now the Shakers were invented in the mid 1700s in Manchester, England.  they were first called the “Shaking Quakers”.  because they would, y’know, shake during their services.  a wee bit later they were considered “radical” because they would shake and commune with the spirits of the dead. tomato, tomahto.
as one can imagine, the Shakers were then pretty much persecuted by everyone. the first Shaker leader was a dude named James Wardley and he was all into millennial french prophets.  but no one cared. the next Shaker leader was a freaky chick named Ann Lee.  now, i’m not going to call her a total wack-job or anything, because who am i to judge, right? but let’s just say she was “kinda loony”.  and seeing as how she grew up a child laborer in the textile mills and then had 4 kids who all died very young, well, i mean, maybe there’s a reason she was crazier than an outhouse rat, y’know?

anyhoo, “Mother” Ann would see all kinds of visions, and Christ often spoke to her. and one day, whilst doing a stint in prison, she had a “revelation”.  turns out, she was the Second Coming of Christ and was the “vital female component” of “God the Father-Mother”.

now, i wouldn’t go so far as to say, non compos mentis, here or anything, mainly because i have no idea what that means, but it does make me question what kind of mold was growing on her bread at the time.

it was shortly after Mother Ann’s revelation that the Shakers moved to the New World (1774).  and let’s just say that in America, the Shaker movement went over like a lead balloon. a crazy, demented, misguided, lead balloon.

ok, back to the Quakers. now the Quakers were a simple folk, loyal and honest, hard working, and simple.  they believed that everyone has an inner light, and that the light is from Christ and that the simpler your life is the easier it is to focus on the light.  they were also big into experiences.  they felt that it was more important to experience God than it was to accept the words and practices that had been decided upon by other churches.  and since everyone has an inner light, they didn’t see any point to racism, sexism, or any other intolerable-ism.  also, they opposed war and the death penalty.  a quiet, peaceful folk to say the least.

right, now the Shakers. the Shakers also preferred first-person religious experiences as well as simplicity in their daily lives.  another very firm, strict belief was their emphasis on celibacy.  in fact, they were wicked-emphatic about it. even married couples were not allowed to, you know, be not celibate.  Mother Ann did come up with a very complicated theological reason for the celibacy thing, but most people think that she made up the rule ’cause she was stark, raving mad.
another example of Mother Ann’s unbalanced, schizomania was the theory of not a holy trinity, but a holy duality, where there was a male and female, god father-mother.  and while i could go on and on, making fun of “Crazy Ma Ann” has become tiresome and boring.

as of today, there are about 500,000 Quakers all over the world and doin’ their thang. the Shakers on the other hand, well, what with that whole “celibacy thing” um, er, well, there are less than 10 Shakers today.  and uh, even they aren’t “real” Shakers.  they’re more like a tourist attraction.  kinda like the Amish, and of course, nothing like the Amish.

the thing that gets me is that i read all this stuff about Quakers and not one article told me why they were called Quakers in the first place.  and it seems odd that everyone else calls them Quakers but they call themselves everything BUT Quakers.  what’s the deal with that? “camp of the lord”? “seekers”? “society of friends”?  who came up with ‘quaker’ anyway? and also there was no mention of oatmeal either.  what’s the deal? where is all the useful quaker information hidden?

a little FYI, Mother Ann Day (i’m serious) is celebrated (by who? i don’t know) on the first Sunday in August. they sing songs, dance, and have Mother Ann cake. and of course, no sex.

next week’s epitomb: Oatmeal For Girls

jaimie “quakers? shakers? never heard of ’em” pickle

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