Worship with the Shakers – August, 2026

They didn’t shake. Not one little bit. “The Shakers, officially known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, are a millenarian Christian sect founded in 1747 in England that later established communal utopian societies across the United States (wikipedia).”

And so Jeff and I – who were traveling in New England to visit the homes of American poets, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and to see the very site of the very beginning of the Shakers, a religious group that originated in the United States – joined the Shakers in worship in Maine.

The simple worship, which we discovered after climbing the steep stairs in the main hall of the main building – we were not certain whether we had climbed the women’s stairs or the men’s stairs – had already started when we arrived at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine. The large building we entered was quiet, and we made our way up the stairs into the place of worship. Jeff and I found two chairs on the left side of the room, a room where almost 30 people were already gathered. We sat for a few moments, until a woman in the row of seats directly in front of us motioned with her head – a bob, and eyes meaningfully cast across the room – for Jeff to sit with the men, whose chairs sat facing the women’s section, across a space of about 15 feet. Finally, we got the message, and Jeff moved to the men’s section of worship.

We sang several hymns as we gathered there, hymns from a book of songs called: Original Shaker Music. A man who apparently was the leader – at least the leader of that particular worship service – sat in a chair at the front of the room and said a few words. I would call his speaking a sermon, or homily, although I’m not certain that is what his message is called among the Shakers.

After worship, we joined the gathered group of folks – men and women – in a large attached hall, for coffee hour. There, we enjoyed coffee fellowship with conversation, although not with anyone who appeared to be a real life Shaker. A few of the folks who stayed for coffee apparently joined the Shakers in worship every Sunday.

Later, we walked across the road and walked along the carefully laid rows of the summer garden. Everything in sight was beautiful, perfect. There may be as few as three Shakers in the community now. Like all denominations, their days of thriving worship are long behind them. It was Sunday, after all, and there were no workers in the garden.

We went to the car and drove away.

Shaker garden, New Gloucester, Maine, 8/16/2026, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert