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Show Page 15 they visited the only church in the neighborhood, a combined Presbyterian- Congregationalist meeting in an awkward building called "God's barn." Then, when Orson reached his ninth year, a religious upheaval struck New Lebanon. The old "Church of Christ" adopted itself into the Presbyterian councils of New York state, leaving the Congregationalists among them understandably upset. The church eventually split in two, and other sects found the little township sufficiently agitated to begin proselyting of their own. Elder Nathaniel Otis came in 1820, preaching for the Baptist society, while the Methodists held services simultaneously. The controversy of denominations that was "burning over" the state flared in microcosm in the young Orson's own sleepy neighborhood. This was not the first religious excitement New Lebanon had experienced. A beleaguered colony of "Shaking Quakers," popularly known as Shakers, had found refuge there from English persecution in 1787. New Lebanon soon became the center of the Shaker communities, a numerous and higgly charismatic society that absorbed many of the local settlers - an early Baptist congregation followed their preacher into Shakerism and helped set up a commune of farms, a mill, and an arched meetinghouse at the foot of Mount Lebanon. Shaker influence thrived well into the 1820s, first under the direction of "Father Joseph," the former Baptist minister, and then his colleague, "Mother Lucy." The leaders were said to be prophets, gifted in visions and revelations, hollering exhortation as they led their hundreds of followers in the so-called "square Order," worship involving singing and dancing. Distant reflections of unborn Mormonism can be seen in Shakerism - a belief in dispensations, degrees of heavenly reward, and the consecration of property for the common good. Shakers proselyted furiously throughout the region, and, along with the other denominations striving for adepts, probably kept New Lebanon in a chronic state of |