Religious Communism (1871)

AUTHOR: Evans, Frederick William

KEYWORDS: communalism, food, environmentalism, land use, Suffrage, women's rights

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen)

Other Shaker texts often allude to Evans’ veg*nism and explanation of the concept of “Mosaic communism.” In this short speech Evans recounts his first encounter with Shakers and describes the Shaker lifestyle.

He shares his astonishment that lay governments do not include women and blames their dysfunction on this unbalance (6-7). He claims that Shaker communities offer women equal rights but gives no further details. He explains that Shakers believe in a “dual Deity” (7-8). Evans links "Mosaic Communism" and diet with land use and slavery:

The Jews cultivated the land scientifically; they observed their sabbaths … they were dependent for their food upon the manna that came down upon the ground every morning; and all the people, high and low, learned and ignorant, must needs go out, and bend down to the ground, and pick up their manna--something to eat--or go without it. … All of the people of Israel, under the direction of God in the wilderness, for forty years ate one kind of food and drank one kind of drink. True, they remembered back, how they did live in Egypt -- the leeks and onions, and flesh-pots thereof, and they hankered after them, and often rebelled against God and against Moses, so their own loss and damage; for thousands of them would be destroyed in their rebellion. But Moses had cured them of all the diseases that they brought with them out of Egypt by the dietary system that he established among them, by the physiological condition that he placed them under, the good air they breathed, living in tents--not like smoky London -- the good water they drank, and the exercise that every one of them took, early in the morning, before the sun was up to melt their manna -- all very good conditions for health. (16)

On “scientific agriculture,” Evans explains:

When [Israel] came into the land of Canaan, they were not to forget that vision; for the law is, that where there is no vision the people perish. Hence, while they took possession of the land of Canaan, every family was apportioned their allotment of that soil--it was their homestead -- it was their home. Here was another principle then -- the right of human beings to the soil of the country in which they live. That is God’s law and nature’s law, how contrary soever it may be to the existing laws in Christendom” (17).

Comment by Mr J. M. Peebles: “They [i.e. the Shakers] are nearly all vegetarians. This venerable man by my side [i.e. Frederick Evans] has for forty years tasted no meat” (24).

Last updated on June 9th, 2024

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