Emerging Religious Groups, Early 19th Century
The first half of the 19th century in the United States was a time of considerable religious ferment. The combination of uncharted social context and vigorous religious climate encouraged experimentation. The belief in a right for freedom extended itself into religious expression, giving rise to cults, sects, and religious movements.
One noteworthy feature of the early 19th century in America was the rise and decline of several communal societies. Not all were religious in origin and orientation, but many were.
The Shakers
The followers of Ann Lee were the Shakers. They organized in 1787 after Lee’s death and then experienced a surge of growth with the onset of the Second Awakening. Originally in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, they went west into Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana as well as into the rest of New England. They grew to about 6,000 members, but by 1850, a steady decline in numbers began. They attracted fewer new members, and with their practice of celibacy, they added no new members within their own ranks.
The Oneida Community
In the early 1840s, John Humphrey Noyes gathered a small group in Putney, Vermont and instituted a communism of property. The community was reestablished in 1846 at Oneida, New York. By 1880 communal ownership of property was abandoned and shares of a joint-stock company were distributed among the former communitarians.
The Millerites/Adventists
The Panic of 1837, a severe fiscal crisis, brought with it for many Americans renewed hopes for a millennium. The key figure in the Adventist excitement of the late 1830s and early 1840s was William Miller, a farmer at Low Hampton, New York. He announced that the end of the world would occur with Christ’s coming in about 1843. Subsequently, he proclaimed a new date, October 22, 1844, to be the day of Christ’s triumphant return. Except for a steadfast few, his followers were disappointed and disillusioned. Some became Shakers.
But those who remained met in Albany in 1845 to form a conference; it would later splinter into three groups, the largest of which was the Advent Christian Church.
Ellen Gould White proclaimed that Christ’s failure to appear was due to neglect of proper observance of the Sabbath; her followers formed the nucleus of what was to become the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized on April 6, 1830 in Fayette, New York with Joseph Smith, Jr.as prophet and president. Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon was published in Palmyra, New York in 1830. It is currently published in many languages throughout the world as a second witness to Jesus Christ.
Geographically, the Latter-day Saints left New York for Kirtland, Ohio, then on to Missouri, and next to Nauvoo, Illinois, gaining converts along the way. Smith was murdered by an angry mob in Illinois in 1844 while imprisoned in a jail in Carthage. It was the death of Joseph Smith Jr. that created the doctrinal dispute that caused the RLDS (Now the Community of Christ) to break from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The death of the prophet precipitated the heroic trek of the majority of the Latter-day Saints to the basin of the Great Salt Lake, under the leadership of Brigham Young. By 1870 the Latter-day Saints in that region exceeded 140,000, many of whom were individuals and families who had converted to the church abroad.
Community of Christ(formerly RLDS) is a sect that broke off from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.