Lee, Ann (1736–1784)

Founder of American Shaker movement

One theory of leadership holds that “when society is in a state of flux, the conscious need of leadership is much more urgent than in a tranquil state…. [People] desire leadership, ask for it expressly, and are more open to guidance by others” (Wieman and Wieman 1935, Ch. 24). During times of relative stability, religious institutions become dulled and stagnant, training leaders who “are able to do certain stunts well,” (Wieman and Wieman 1935, 2) but cannot enter into a reciprocal relationship of shared experiences, fears, and hopes. But in times of instability and momentous change, leaders emerge, be they women or men, who experience that instability and claim it as their own. An American proponent of this theory, Henry Nelson Wieman, lists a sampling of leaders in history, both religious and secular, men and women, who enter into this reciprocal relationship of felt need and mutually beneficial response, giving women and men equal due. For religious cultures, such foment may include the leader's claim to divine inspiration or even divine right. Wieman's criterion for reciprocity among religious leaders and their followers during periods of rapid change is echoed by a nineteenthcentury American Shaker apologist, F. W. Evans: “But let the following proposition be first considered: namely, that at a given part, point, and time of every cycle human affairs, in all ages, nations, and tribes, there have invariably arisen an order and people analogous (in some measure) to the American Shakers” (Evans 1849, 5). Evans reaches back to Greece and Rome, and, in characterizing these orders, includes inspiration, asceticism, often celibacy, and the leadership of women and men.

Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker movement, exemplifies this type of leadership. She emerged as a religious leader in Manchester, England, at the dawn of the industrial revolution to become the cornerstone of what has been called the [Page 888]longest lived communal religious order in U.S. history. The spark for that movement had been struck nearly a century before her birth in 1736.

Between 1650 and 1750, the English countryside experienced a relentless shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. Cottage industries were giving way to mills and factories. Women who had once worked all day in the fields, or sheared their own sheep and brought the wool to market, began to seek employment at mills springing up seemingly overnight. The English northwest, which included the region of Lancashire and the town of Manchester, where Ann Lee was born, became a bustling center for the textile industry. In 1650, Manchester already had been known for producing varieties of woolen goods. By 1690, France had imported calico printing into Manchester, increasing its importance as a manufacturing center, and in 1761, canals opened up for importing coal into town. By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Manchester had become the cotton capital of England. And while progress seemed inevitable and praiseworthy, everyday life was anything but decent. Friedrich Engels, whose German father owned a factory in Manchester where Friedrich served as his agent, described the working-class district, old Manchester, as a

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