Shaker Inspiration

Rev. Sunny McMillan, worship leader, and Carrie Koehnline, celebrant

Margaret Fuller is counted among our Unitarian ancestors. Highly educated and a member of the American Transcendentalist group of the mid-nineteenth century, she was an author, editor and teacher. In contrast, Ann Lee was born into poverty in an English factory city in the mid-eighteenth century. Though she was working class and uneducated, she would go on to become a prophetic preacher who started the norm-defying Shaker religious movement. Despite these differences in background and faith, Fuller and Lee nevertheless shared several important similarities, not the least of which involved challenging the existing order. On This Mother’s Day, we will lift up the stories of these two revolutionary women, discovering that although our UU theology may be different than Lee’s, there is still much in this current moment we can draw from her inspiring legacy.