Shaker dance and the religious production of spectacle

Abstract

Religious communities such as the Shakers, the Mormons, and Africana religious practitioners practice spectacular religion. Ritual spectacle is particularly visible and thus invites observation from outsiders. My argument follows recent work by David Walker and Paul C. Johnson that illustrates religious traditions in which religion was practiced in collaboration with an anticipated audience. Religious spectacle is not unusual: there are religions who put on shows for one another and who have a place for theater within their religious community. On the other hand, there are religions that make a spectacle of themselves for others, a category that overlaps substantially with groups categorized through the disciplinary frame of New Religious Movements. Scholarship on non‐normative religion has, however, underestimated the way in which religions that invite negative attention incorporate the hostile gaze of audiences into their rituals. By thinking about particular religious practices as performances for an audience, I argue that Shakers, Mormons, and Africana traditions used the power of observation for spiritual purposes.