The Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing)

Denomination·Founded 1747 CE·Three members at Sabbathday Lake, New Gloucester, Maine, as of August 2025 — the only Shakers in the world. Membership at the peak in the 1840s is usually put between four and six thousand across eighteen or nineteen communities from Maine to Kentucky; the figures are estimates and the sources differ.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing)

Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community — National Park ServiceArchiveHancock Shaker Village

Branch
Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) Discussion

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Part of Practice →
Weekly
They danced, in ranks, and sold tickets to nobody. The worship was the shaking, the whirling and then, from the 1780s, ordered dances in formation — the square order shuffle, the circular march — with singing and no instruments. Outsiders came in crowds to watch, which the Shakers permitted and disliked. When Weekly — the Sunday meeting, and formerly on weekday evenings tooWho The whole family of the community, and in the nineteenth century the public, who came to watch Go deeper — context →

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

Built on Hatchable