[Alternate title: Shaking Yourself Apart]
So I caught this in the news recently: One of the Shakers’ last three members died Monday. The storied sect is verging on extinction. An excerpt:
One of the last three remaining members of the dwindling Shaker sect died Monday.
Sister Frances Carr died at the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine, “after a brief battle with cancer,” according to a statement on the community’s website.
It continued, “The end came swiftly and with dignity surrounded by the community and her nieces.” Carr was 89.
Carr was a member of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearance, a Christian group formed in 1747 in Manchester, England. They earned the name the Shakers when critics began calling them “Shaking Quakers” because of “their ecstatic and violent bodily agitation in worship,” according to Sabbathday Lake’s website. The Shakers eventually abandoned this particular dancing-style worship, but the congregation adopted the term, according to the Associated Press.
I remember reading about this particular sect years ago. I am not at all surprised the group is nearly extinct. Here are some of their core beliefs:
The Shakers practice celibacy, in addition to pacifism, equality of the sexes and communal ownership of property.
Their extinction is sort of a given considering their beliefs. Of course, the surviving members think otherwise, but hey, why wouldn’t they? Another point from the article:
Although it may sound like an old-fashioned religious sect by today’s standards, at one time the Shakers were considered progressive. As PBS noted, “Seventy-five years before the emancipation of the slaves and 150 years before women began voting in America, the Shakers were practicing social, sexual, economic, and spiritual equality for all members.”
We can see in the Shakers the end result of “Progressive Christianity” – extinction. This group just happened to (almost) get there a lot faster given their embrace of total celibacy. Other sects will come to the same fate as well, as sooner or later their deviancy will catch up with them.
Donal Graeme 
We can see in the Shakers the end result of “Progressive Christianity” – extinction. This group just happened to (almost) get there a lot faster given their embrace of total celibacy. Other sects will come to the same fate as well, as sooner or later their deviancy will catch up with them.
Yup. Given modern Protestantism’s institutional aversion to the formation, growth, and nurturing of stable Christian families, this is a certainty.
I’m a born-again Christian who identifies as both childfree and asexual, so I relate to a lot of what they stood for. (Their communal lifestyle and the notion that Mother Ann Lee was the physical embodiment of the Second Coming of Christ are things I’m not on board with.) I actually visited the Sabbathday Lake quarters where Frances lived a few months back. God rest her soul.
Heresy is more wild by the day…who can predict where it will go next?
Gen 1:27-28: So God created man…male and female he created them…and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…”
MK, that wasn’t a command so much as it was an invitation to the (potential) blessing of parenthood. But even if it were a direct order, I think it’s safe to say that it’s one of the few things we’ve done right.