Last night, I watched an incredible Ken Burns documentary about the Shakers. I’ve always held a deep fascination for fringe religious movements and utopian societies, although my knowledge of such things is minimal at best. Watching this film definitely left me wanting to know more, not only about the Shakers, but other similar groups that permeated the American landscape particularly in the 19th century.
Before watching this film, pretty much all I knew about the Shakers was confined to a limited knowledge of the handcrafts they are renowned for: Shaker chairs and those gorgeous circular boxes. I’ve always been drawn to rustic, simple home decor, and I remember leafing through the pages of a Country Living style book and finding my favorite rooms described as “Shaker style.” I’ve never had the discipline to pull off this stark, simple aesthetic. Try as I might, clutter always seems to creep in. But I am drawn to the almost monastic sparseness of the Shaker homes shown in the film, and imagine there is quite a peace to be had in the absence of an overabundance of meaningless material possessions.
The philosophy behind the Shaker movement was that an individual served God in every single act of work. Order, neatness, and discipline became a primary expression of devotion to God. Order is heaven’s first law, and as one Shaker tenet proclaims, “to discipline the body is to enrich the spirit.” The daily chores of cooking, gardening, farming, and so on become elevated to a level of worship. Labor was consecrated, and striving for perfection in every small task a way to express devotion to the higher power. 
I was also intrigued by the fact that this movement was founded by a woman, Ann Lee, in days when women held so little sway in any public arena whatsoever. The society operated on egalitarian terms long before slaves were free or women had the right to vote. Ultimately, however, the Shakers found the modern world too much to compete with and have mostly disappeared. In 1985, when Ken Burns created this documentary, there were only 12 Shakers left. I don’t know what the numbers are today, if any. Mostly, the onset of industrialization crushed smaller enterprises everywhere, but part of the problem likely also came from the society’s insistence on celibacy of its members. One scholar mused that a possible source of the incredible Shaker energy and creativity that could produce such incredible work was largely due to the sublimation of sexual energy, which sort of makes sense. Shakers did not reject marriage for humanity as a whole, realizing that without procreation even the Shaker faith could not continue, but rather accepted members through a conversion process, part of which included rejecting much of the outside world and adopting a celibate lifestyle. 
In any event, this film left me mesmerized and yearning to know more about this and other social and religious movements that managed to create successful, self-sufficient communities. For anyone who might be interested, this film was available as an instant play on Netflix.
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