The rise and fall of Harmonia, Battle Creek’s Spiritualist utopia

January 16, 2019

A nice pro­file on a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty in Michi­gan that went full-in in Spiritualism:

As they came west, a num­ber brought Spir­i­tu­al­ism with them. A lot of lib­er­al Quak­ers were very inter­est­ed in Spir­i­tu­al­ism. Bat­tle Creek had a Quak­er base, they pre­dom­i­nat­ed for a while. They con­vert­ed to Spir­i­tu­al­ism as a body, and Bat­tle Creek became this south­west Michi­gan cen­ter for Spiritualism. 

Quak­era were among many of rhe ear­ly lead­ers of the Spir­i­tu­al­ist move­ment; while it even­tu­al­ly most­ly burned out, a lot of the ideas about author­i­ty and spir­i­tu­al diver­si­ty in turn influ­enced Hick­site Friends.

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