In her most recent contribution to the field of Shaker studies, Glendyne R. Wergland explores gender relations and women's authority in Shaker communities from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries. Wergland challenges many earlier studies for their narrow or misinformed interpretations: the earliest authors ignored women altogether; others argued that, although communities officially sanctioned equality of the sexes, in reality men enjoyed more authority than women; and still others based Shaker women's access to communal power on their escape from childbearing. Instead, Wergland asserts that, first, we must evaluate equality according to Shakers' own standards: “If sisters believed themselves equal, then they were. . . . The Shakers' perceived reality was what mattered”; equality, in this case, did not mean that men and women performed the same jobs, but that “women's work [was] considered as valuable as men's work, regardless of what each sex does” (6, 7). Second, celibacy, more so than its biological result, avoiding motherhood, was “the key to Shaker equality” (10).

Part 1, “Joining the Shakers,” focuses on women's roles and experiences as Believers, beginning with founder Mother Ann Lee and her successor Mother Lucy Wright, in order to uncover why women became Shakers and why, in fact, after 1800 more women than men joined Shaker communities and more women remained Shakers until their deaths. Primarily, Shaker life, in which equality of the sexes was a central principle grounded in the doctrine of androgynous divinity and the elimination of marriage through the practice of celibacy, afforded women a respite from, to use Wergland's vocabulary, the patriarchal structures of the outside world that enforced male dominance and female submission in social and marital relations. Sisters had access to power and authority—indeed, some brethren left communities because they refused to be ruled by a “petticoat government”—as well as to economic security, friendship, and spiritual salvation. Girls who entered a community as orphans or indentured servants were schooled in conformity and industry while also enjoying the benefits of a nurturing environment, abundant meals, a good education, and occasional boisterous play; many refused to return home when their parents or guardians came to pick them up. When girls reached adulthood (early to mid-teens) they donned the sisters' uniform cap, emblem of female modesty and chastity, in order to help the brethren control their natural lustfulness. Changes in the style of the cap, “an itchy symbol of Christian patriarchy” (168), until sisters abandoned it in the 1890s reflect, Wergland argues, the ways that women challenged the status quo in their communities and adapted to changing values in the outside world.

Each chapter in part 2, “Work and Worship,” focuses on an aspect of egalitarianism in Shaker communities. Outsiders who visited Shaker villages typically did not recognize gender equality (most only observed Sabbath worship services, in which men usually dominated), although Wergland later argues that many visitors held up the Shakers as exemplars of female emancipation to be emulated in American society. Sisters and brethren negotiated work duties in ways that mirrored traditional gender roles (for example, women worked in the kitchens and men in the fields), yet their labors were reciprocal, “two halves of a whole” rather than occurring in separate spheres (5), with each sex depending on the other's contributions, as sisters helped brethren with their seed business and brethren invented labor-saving devices for kitchens and laundry rooms. Nevertheless, there was plenty of gendered conflict—around food, for example, when New Lebanon kitchen sisters embraced Grahamism in 1835 and began producing meatless meals, which the brethren opposed, creating “party feeling” rather than the ideal of “union.” Conflicts came to a head during the Era of Manifestations (1838–1841), when some Believers, mostly women, became vessels of the spirit of Mother Ann to expose members' alleged sins and demand their expulsion from the community. As she concludes part 1 with a chapter on the Shaker cap, so Wergland concludes part 2 with a chapter on the Shaker bonnet to illustrate the remarkable industry and business acumen of sisters as they produced thousands of palm leaf bonnets for sale to the world, contributing significant income to community coffers.

A great strength of Sisters in the Faith is the author's close reading of a rich array of primary sources, most of them unpublished, to tease out the subtleties of gender relations in Shaker communities. Wergland admittedly focuses her attention on the New Lebanon community in New York, which was more egalitarian than others, and she invites historians to explore other communities to uncover the ways they implemented equality of the sexes. A somewhat disconcerting element, however, despite the author's critique of some scholars' “ahistorical effort” to “apply late-twentieth-century standards to nineteenth-century Shaker life” (161), is her regular application of contemporary feminist and other approaches. For instance, when writing about Shakers' androgynous divinity, Wergland cites Merlin Stone's questionable claim that the male-dominated “Judeo-Christian tradition” was a reaction to “earlier goddess worship, wherein women had both spiritual and political power” in order to argue, incorrectly, that religions that worship a goddess favor human women (43). Or when writing about the Era of Manifestations, she detours into sociological, psychological, and anthropological explanations regarding spirit possession and mental illness.

In spite of several such disruptive and unnecessary insertions, the book really shines when it plunges into the intricacies of everyday Shaker life. It guides readers deep into the lived world of Believers: we can feel the uncomfortable pinch of the cap on one's head, the frustrations of a kitchen sister with a brother who cadged snacks when he should have been outdoors working, and the exuberance of girls at play on a maple sugaring outing. Ultimately, Wergland makes a strong case for the many ways, both subtle and direct, that Shaker women exercised authority in their communities.