The story of the Shakers begins with a vision of freedom and light, the freedom to build a new kind of community and the light of grace of heaven on earth here and now.

The visionary was Ann Lee, the founder of a small religious group in England, sometimes called the Shaking Quakers, because of how they danced during worship.

In 1774, Lee and a few followers emigrated to New York proclaiming the Shaker Gospel that we can build communities of heaven on Earth.

For the Shakers, Mother Ann Lee was the second coming of Christ.

The female counterpart to the male incarnation of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, ensuring from the outset a special emphasis on equality between men and women in Shaker life as they saw it.

A new era had begun and a new kind of life was possible.

The message found a ready audience in America, and before long, 19 shaker villages rose from the landscape, from Maine to Kentucky.

And in 1792, Canterbury.

Shaker Village became the seventh.

American history is full of hopeful communal experiments, but they seldom lasted longer than a few years.

Canterbury Village, however, was active for two centuries from 1792 to 1992, Singing.

The Shakers are the most successful communitarian society in American history.

Why did so many join the movement?

One attraction was the promise of living one's whole life as an act of devotion to God holding property and proceeds in common, sharing and reinvesting for the common good.

The practice of celibacy also opened up new ways of organizing community life.

Shaker Women worked and ate together, sleeping in separate quarters, as did the men.

Children were raised by the village as a whole, and everyone gathered regularly for worship, discussions and entertainment.

For many, this arrangement was refreshingly social and collaborative sharing resource has and responsibilities freed up women and men to live lives of service, welcoming orphaned children and living out lives of pacifism, philanthropy and equality between men and women.

Following Mother Ann's teachings, Shakers believe that God is both male and female, and so men and women govern the community together.

Even Shaker architecture tells this story of equality.

Two identical entrances staircases, tables and dwelling spaces.

One for women, one for men.

Instrumental Music.

Singing for the shakers.

Simplicity never meant simplistic.

Simplicity meant distilling things down to essentials.

It meant deploying resources in the most excellent and sustainable ways possible.

The Canterbury apple orchards, for example, brought multiple blessings all at once.

Beauty to the landscape, income to the village source and cider to the table.

And that classic shaker breakfast, apple pie.

Simplicity meant a kind of heavenly order with each thing in its place.

Cupboards and drawers built into bedrooms and hallways, limited clutter and stopped dust from gathering out of reach.

There's no dirt in heaven, taught Mother Ann Lee.

And simplicity also meant making things with the best materials in the best ways, enhancing quality and beauty.

The result was the famous shaker esthetic.

Simple lines, clear forms, goods well made and jobs well done.

Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live, said.

Mother Ann Lee.

And as you would if you knew, you must die tomorrow.

What the Shakers made was built to last and at the same time was crafted as a kind of gift to God and neighbor.

The Shakers didn't invent ladder back chairs or oval boxes or washing machines, but they did simplify and perfect them until they became synonymous with shaker ingenuity, shining examples of their motto.

Hands to work.

Hearts to God.

Singing.

Far from a void in the world and its technologies.

The Shakers were inventive, tech savvy entrepreneurs.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the state of the art energy source was water.

But there was no river running through the village.

So the Shakers made one.

They dug a two mile ditch to bring water from a distant swamp into the village, powering sawmills for lumber, a turning mill for wood products, a tannery for leather, grist mills for flour and textile mills for fabric.

They invented or improved an astonishing range of goods, tools and processes from the circular saw to the revolving oven, the flat broom to the drying rack.

They developed herbal medicines, including the famous shaker syrup of sarsaparilla.

They ran a printing press, published a monthly magazine called The Shaker Manifesto, and Canterbury became the first shaker village to use musical instruments in worship.

They changed with the times.

Canterbury was one of the first communities in the region to embrace electricity, the telephone, automobiles.

But as the world around them became more urban and industrial, fewer were attracted to the rural way of life, and many shakers were drawn away by opportunities elsewhere for Eldris Emma King.

However, the gradual decline in numbers is no story of failure.

It's a story of transformation.

Over 200 years of Canterbury history.

More than 2000 people lived in the village, and today what Eldris King called the light and truth of shaker values the gifts of community simplicity and innovation that gave rise to a quintessentially American movement.

Those will live on in other forms, enriching and inspiring a generation to come with a vision of freedom and light.

Singing