A Shaker Revival Points to Something Deeper

Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester. John Ewing/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images.

The common vision of a Shaker village is one of New England orderliness: large dwelling houses in white- and straw-colored clapboard, a central meeting house, an expansive barn in red, all arranged along a central spine. Unlike their neighbors out in “the World,” the Shakers had the ability, manpower and organizational strength to build to plans as orthogonal and symmetrical as the drawings of Holy Cities by their female members, known as Sisters.

The Shakers — the millenarian sect more formally known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing — have spanned the whole existence of the US, first settling in a colony near Albany, New York, in 1776. Even as membership in the egalitarian community dwindled to just a handful of said believers, the 20th century hosted multiple Shaker revivals, often coinciding with times of crisis, as a re-assertion of American ingenuity and collectivity.

Now the 21st century is experiencing its own Shaker revival.