Beginnings
TT Put your hands to work and your hearts to God; pay all your just
debts, and right all your wrongs. Remember the poor; if you have but little
to spare, give to them that need. Be neat and clean, and keep the fear of God
in all your goings forth. " Thus did Ann Lee advise her followers, and "Hands
to work and hearts to God" remained their motto.
Who was Ann Lee? Born in England in 1740 in a laboring class family
and therefore illiterate, she became interested in the teachings of Jane and
James Wardley, religious dissenters, at an early age. Her marriage was
arranged by her family to a blacksmith named Abraham Stanley, She then
had four children, all of whom died at birth or shortly after, and this experi-
ence turned her away from marr^^e and towards her religion and its comfort.
Her zeal and eloquence soon established her as the leader of the United Society
of Believer^, as they called themselves.
In 1770 she had a vision in which Christ appeared and showed her that
the basis of human sin, the transgression committed by Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden, was sex. After this, her converts called her "Mother Ann" or
"Ann the Word"; she was considered "Mother in Christ" and "Bride of the
Lamb. " While her visions, her deep sense of sin, the way she punished herself
for sin made the "Believers" consider themselves truly a chosen, people, their
English neighbors regarded them as "demented hodigans, who communicated
with spirits and broke the peace of the Sabbath. " [Holloway]
She was finally accused of blasphemy and examined by four scholars
of the Church of England. In her replies, she is reported to have spoken