The Shaker Revival
There have been many religious social movements in human history. Some have been revolutionary in design or impact, such as Calvinism, which forms the basis of the Protestant Ethic. Others have involved the members' attempts to establish their own beliefs, values, and life-style without militant challenge to the values of the social order of the society in which the movement has developed. Many religious movements have tried to abide by ascetic values that deny the worldly pleasures of secular society. Finally, although reform or revolutionary movements are commonly thought to be the actions of poverty-stricken, lower-class persons, these and other types of social movement can be based in the middle class.
Over the last century sociologists and other social thinkers foresaw that developments in technology and the rise of the industrial nation-state would challenge and change traditional patterns. Modern society is in a state of diversity and change, and social movements are common. From gay liberation to women's liberation, from John Birchers and the fundamentalist right wing to the hippies, yippies, and radical left, contemporary society is characterized by social movements that reflect, among others, political, religious, age, sex, and social class divisions.
In modern society, many who feel alienated and estranged from "impersonal" social structures feel unable to cope with the conditions of their lives as individuals. Believing that social ills and inequities can be overcome through joint effort in a cause with those who share their values and beliefs, many join in collective action.
The Shakers in Gerald Jonas's story are an ascetic religious group, made up of white middle-class youths who have rejected what they feel to be the overabundance and overindulgence of late twentieth-century society. The Shakers attempt to segregate themselves socially in order to establish values and a way of life quite in opposition to those around them. This story reflects the social context within which a social movement develops and is vividly contemporary.
History is not simple cyclical repetition of patterns previously experienced, but neither is history an unrelated sequence of isolated and unique events. Looking at youth movements in the United States in the 1960s, few would deny that many young adults rejected the Puritan values of the Protestant Ethic common among generations preceding their own. And yet, few recognized that some of this generation of young adults and more of the generation becoming young adults in the 1970s would reject this rejection and its secular permissiveness and would reassert sexual and social puritanism. That many unorganized religious sects of today's young have made this attempt is recognized today. What of the future?
To: Arthur Stock, Executive Editor, Ideas Illustrated, New York City, 14632008447
FROM: Raymond Senter, c/o Hudson Junction Rotel, Hudson Junction, N.Y. 28997601910
ENCLOSED: Tentative Lead for "The Shaker Revival." Pix, tapes upcoming.
JERUSALEM WEST, N.Y., Thursday, June 28, 1995—The work of Salvation goes forward in this green and pleasant Hudson Valley hamlet to the high-pitched accompaniment of turbo-car exhausts and the amplified beat of the "world's loudest jag-rock band." Where worm-eaten apples fell untended in abandoned orchards less than a decade ago a new religious sect has burst into full bloom. In their fantastic four-year history the so-called New Shakers—or United Society of Relievers (Revived), to give them their official title—have provoked the hottest controversy in Christendom since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October Thirty-one, Fifteen-seventeen. Boasting a membership of more than a hundred thousand today, the New Shakers have been processing applications at the rate of nine hundred a week. Although a handful of these "recruits" are in their early and middle twenties—and last month a New Jersey man was accepted into the Shaker Family at Wildwood at the ripe old age of thirty-two—the average New Shaker has not yet reached his eighteenth birthday.
Richard F, one of the members of the "First Octave" who have been honored with "uncontaminated" Shaker surnames, explains it this way: "We've got nothing against feebies. They have a piece of the Gift inside just like anyone else. But it's hard for them to travel with the Family. Jag-rock hurts their ears, and they can't sync with the Four Noes, no matter how hard they try. So we say to them, 'Forget it, star. Your wheels are not our wheels. But we're all going somewhere, right? See you at the other end.'"
It is hardly surprising that so many "feebies"—people over thirty—have trouble with the basic Believers' Creed: "No hate, No war, No money, No sex." Evidently, in this final decade of the twentieth century, sainthood is only possible for the very young.
The "Roundhouse" at Jerusalem West is, in one sense, the Vatican of the nationwide movement. But in many ways it is typical of the New Shaker communities springing up from La Jolla, California, to Seal Harbor, Maine. At last count there were sixty-one separate "tribes," some containing as many as fifteen "families" of a hundred and twenty-eight members each. Each Shaker family is housed in an army-surplus pliodesic dome—covering some ten thousand square feet of bare but vinyl-hardened earth—which serves as bedroom, living room, workshop and holy tabernacle, all in one. There is a much smaller satellite dome forty feet from the main building which might be called the Outhouse, but isn't—the New Shakers themselves refer to it as Sin City. In keeping with their general attitude toward the bodily functions, Sin City is the only place in the Jerusalem West compound that is off-limits to visitors.
As difficult as it may be for most North Americans to accept, today's typical Shaker recruit comes from a background of unquestioned abundance and respectability. There is no taint of the Ghetto and no evidence of serious behavioral problems. In fact, Preliminary School records show that these young people often excelled in polymorphous play and responded quite normally to the usual spectrum of chemical and electrical euphorics. As underteens, their proficiency in programmed dating was consistently rated "superior" and they were often cited as leaders in organizing multiple-outlet experiences. Later, in Modular School, they scored in the fiftieth percentile or better on Brand-Differentiation tests. In short, according to all the available figures, they would have had no trouble gaining admission to the college of their choice or obtaining a commission in the Consumer Corps or qualifying for a Federal Travel Grant. Yet for some reason, on the very brink of maturity, they turned their backs on all the benefits their parents and grandparents fought so hard for in the Cultural Revolution—and plunged instead into a life of regimented sense-denial.
On a typical summer's afternoon at Jerusalem West, with the sun filtering through the translucent dome and bathing the entire area in a soft golden glow, the Roundhouse resembles nothing so much as a giant, queenless beehive. In the gleaming chrome-and-copper kitchen, blenders whirr and huge pots bubble as a squad of white-smocked Food Deacons prepares the copious vegetable stew that forms the staple of the Shaker diet. In the sound-proofed garage sector the Shop Deacons are busily transforming another hopeless-looking junkheap into one of the economical, turbine-powered "hotrods" already known to connoisseurs in this country and abroad as Shakerbikes. The eight Administrative Deacons and their assistants are directing family business from a small fiber-walled cubicle known simply as The Office. And in a large, fully instrumented studio, the sixteen-piece band is cutting a new liturgical tape for the Evening Service—a tape that may possibly end up as number one on the federal pop charts like the recent Shaker hit, This Freeway's Plenty Wide Enough. No matter where one turns beneath the big dome one finds young people humming, tapping their feet, breaking into snatches of song and generally living up to the New Shaker motto: "Work is Play." One of their most popular songs—a characteristic coupling of Old Shaker words to a modern jag-rock background-concludes with this no-nonsense summation of the Shaker life-style:
It's the Gift to be simple,
The Gift to be free,
The Gift to come down
Where the Gift ought to be.
-MORE TO COME-
XEROGRAM: June 28 (11:15 P.M.)
TO: The Dean, Skinner Free Institute, Ronkonkoma, New Jersey 72441333965
FROM: Raymond Senter, c/o Hudson Junction Rotel, Hudson Junction, N.Y. 28997601910
Friend:
My son Bruce Senter, age 14, was enrolled in your institute for a six-week seminar in Applied Physiology beginning May 10. According to the transcript received by his Modular School (NYC118A), he successfully completed his course of studies on June 21. Mrs. Senter and I have had no word from him since. He had earlier talked with his Advisor about pursuing a Field-research project in Intensive Orgasm. I would appreciate any further information you can give me as to his post-seminar whereabouts. Thank you.
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed, I.I.
FROM: Senter
ENCLOSED: Background tape. Interview with Harry G (born "Guardino"), member of First Octave. Edited Transcript, June 29.
Q: Suppose we begin by talking a little about your position here as one of the—well, what shall I say? Founding Fathers of the Shaker Revival?
A: First you better take a deep breath, star. That's all out of sync. There's no Founding Fathers here. Or Founding Mothers or any of that jag. There's only one Father and one Mother and they're everywhere and nowhere, understand?
Q: What I meant was—as a member of the First Octave you have certain duties and responsibilities—
A: Like I said, star, everyone's equal here.
Q: I was under the impression that your rules stress obedience to a hierarchy.
A: Oh, there has to be order, sure, but it's nothing personal. If you can punch a computer—you sync with The Office Deacons. If you make it with wheels—you're in the Shop crew. Me—I fold my bed in the morning, push a juice-horn in the band and talk to reporters when they ask for me. That doesn't make me Pope.
Q: What about the honorary nomenclature?
A: What's that?
Q: The initials. Instead of last names.
A: Oh, yeah. They were given to us as a sign. You want to know what of?
Q: Please.
A: As a sign that no one's stuck with his birth kit. Sure, you may start with a Chevvie Six chassis and I have to go with a Toyota. That's the luck of the DNA. But we all need a spark in the chamber to get it moving. That's the Gift. And if I burn clean and keep in tune I may leave you flat in my tracks. Right?
Q: What about the Ghetto?
A: Even the Blacks have a piece of the Gift. What they do with it is their trip.
Q: There's been a lot of controversy lately about whether your movement is really Christian—in a religious sense. Would you care to comment on that?
A: You mean like "Jesus Christ, the Son of God"? Sure, we believe that. And we believe in Harry G, the Son of God and Richard F, the Son of God and—what's your name, star?—Raymond Senter, the Son of God. That's the Gift. That's what it's all about. Jesus found the Gift inside. So did Buddha, Mother Ann, even Malcolm X—we don't worry too much about who said what first. First you find the Gift—then you live it. The Freeway's plenty wide enough.
Q: Then why all the emphasis on your Believers' Creed, and the Articles of Faith, and your clothes?
A: Look, star, every machine's got a set of specs. You travel with us, you learn our set. We keep the chrome shiny, the chambers clean. And we don't like accidents.
Q: Your prohibitions against money and sex—
A: "Prohibitions" is a feebie word. We're free from money and sex. The Four Noes are like a Declaration of Independence. See, everybody's really born free—but you have to know it. So we don't rob cradles. We say, let them grow up, learn what it's all about—the pill, the puffer, the feel-o-mat—all the perms and combos. Then, when they're fifteen or sixteen, if they still crave those chains, okay. If not, they know where to find us.
Q: What about the people who sign up and then change their minds?
A: We have no chains—if that's what you mean.
Q: You don't do anything to try to keep them?
A: Once you've really found the Gift inside there's no such thing as "changing your mind."
Q: What's your attitude toward the Old Shakers? They died out, didn't they, for lack of recruits?
A: Everything is born and dies and gets reborn again.
Q: Harry, what would happen if this time the whole world became Shakers?
A: Don't worry, star. You won't be around to see it.
-MORE TO COME-
XEROGRAM: June 29 (10:43 P.M.)
TO: Connie Fine, Director, Camp Encounter, Wentworth, Maine, 47119650023
FROM: Raymond Senter, Hudson Junction Rotel, Hudson Junction, N.Y., 28997601910
Connie:
Has Bruce arrived yet? Arlene and I have lost contact with him in the last week, and it occurred to me that he may have biked up to camp early and simply forgotten to buzz us—he was so charged up about being a full counselor-leader of his own T-group this season. Anyway, would you please buzz me soonest at the above zip? You know how mothers tend to overload the worry-circuits until they know for sure that their little wriggler is safely plugged in somewhere. Joy to you and yours, Ray.
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed. I.I.
FROM: Senter
ENCLOSED: Fact sheet on Old Shakers
*Foundress—Mother Ann Lee, b. Feb. 29, 1736, Manchester, England.
* Antecedents—Early Puritan "seekers" (Quakers), French "Prophets" (Camisards).
* Origin—Following an unhappy marriage—four children, all dead in infancy—Mother Ann begins to preach that "concupiscence" is the root of all evil. Persecutions and imprisonment.
*1774—Mother Ann and seven early disciples sail to America aboard the ship Mariah. Group settles near Albany. Public preaching against concupiscence. More persecutions. More converts. Ecstatic, convulsive worship. Mother Ann's "miracles."
*1784—Mother Ann dies.
*1787—Mother Ann's successors, Father Joseph and Mother Lucy, organize followers into monastic communities and "separate" themselves from sinful world.
*1787-1794—Expansion of sect through New York State and New England.
*1806-1826—Expansion of sect across Western frontier—Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana.
*1837-1845— Mass outbreak of spiritualism. Blessings, songs, spirit-drawings and business advice transmitted by deceased leaders through living "instruments."
*1850’s—Highpoint of Society. Six thousand members, 18 communities, fifty-eight "Families."
*Total recorded membership—from late 18th century to late 20th century—approximately seventeen thousand.
*Old Shakers noted for—mail-order seed business, handicrafts (brooms, baskets and boxes), furniture-manufacture.
*Credited with invention of—common clothes pin, cut nails, circular saw, turbine water-wheel, steam-driven washing machine.
*Worship—Emphasis on communal singing and dancing. Early "convulsive" phase gives way in nineteenth century to highly organized performances and processions—ring dances, square order shuffles.
* Beliefs—Celibacy, Duality of Deity (Father and Mother God), Equality of the Sexes, Equality in Labor, Equality in Property. Society to be perpetuated by "admission of serious-minded persons and adoption of children."
*Motto—"Hands to Work and Hearts to God."
-MORE TO COME-
XEROGRAM: June 30 (8:15 A.M.)
TO: Mrs. Rosemary Collins, 133 Escorial Drive, Baywater, Florida, 92635776901
FROM: Raymond Senter, Hudson Junction Rotel, Hudson Junction, N.Y. 28997601910
Dear Rosie:
Has that little wriggler of ours been down your way lately? Bruce is off again on an unannounced sidetrip, and it struck me that he might have hopped down south to visit his favorite aunt. Not to mention his favorite cousin! How is that suntanned teaser of yours? Still taking after you in the S-L-N department? Give her a big kiss for me—you know where! And if Bruce does show up please buzz me right away at the above zip. Much Brotherly Love, Ray.
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed., I.I.
FROM: Senter
ENCLOSED. Caption tape for film segment on Worship Service.
JERUSALEM WEST, Saturday, June 30—I'm standing at the entrance to the inner sanctum of the huge Roundhouse here, the so-called Meeting Center, which is used only for important ceremonial functions—like the Saturday Night Dance scheduled to begin in exactly five minutes. In the Holy Corridor to my right the entire congregation has already assembled in two rows, one for boys and one for girls, side by side but not touching. During the week the Meeting Center is separated from the work and living areas by curved translucent partitions which fit together to make a little dome-within-a-dome. But when the sun begins to set on Saturday night the partitions are removed to reveal a circular dance floor, which is in fact the hub of the building. From this slightly raised platform of gleaming fibercast, I can look down each radical corridor—past the rows of neatly folded beds in the dormitories, past the shrouded machines in the repair shops, past the partly finished Shakerbikes in the garage, past the scrubbed formica tables in the kitchen—to the dim horizon line where the dome comes to rest on the sacred soil of Jerusalem West.
All artificial lights have been extinguished for the Sabbath celebration. The only illumination comes from the last rays of the sun, a dying torch that seems to have set the dome material itself ablaze. It's a little like standing inside the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar with a hundred and twenty-eight unworried prophets of the Lord. The silence is virtually complete—not a cough, not the faintest rustle of fabric is heard. Even the air vents have been turned off—at least for the moment. I become aware of the harsh sound of my own respiration.
At precisely eight o'clock the two lines of worshippers begin to move forward out of the Holy Corridor. They circle the dance floor, the boys moving to the right, the girls to the left. Actually, it's difficult to tell them apart. The Shakers use no body ornaments at all— no paints, no wigs, no gems, no bugs, no dildoes, no flashers. All wear their hair cropped short, as if sheared with the aid of an overturned bowl. And all are dressed in some variation of Shaker gear—a loosely fitting, long-sleeved, buttonless and collarless shirt slit open at the neck for two inches and hanging free at the waist over a pair of baggy trousers pulled tight around each ankle by a hidden elastic band.
The garments look vaguely North African. They are made of soft dynaleen and they come in a variety of pastel shades. One girl may be wearing a pale pink top and a light blue bottom. The boy standing opposite her may have on the same colors, reversed. Others in the procession have chosen combinations of lilac and peach, ivory and lemon or turquoise and butternut. The range of hues seems endless but the intensity never varies, so that the entire spectacle presents a living demonstration of one of the basic Articles of Faith of the Shaker Revival—Diversity in Uniformity.
Now the procession has ended. The worshippers have formed two matching arcs, sixty-four boys on one side, sixty-four girls on the other, each standing precisely an arm's length from each neighbor. All are barefoot. All are wearing the same expression—a smile so modest as to be virtually undetectable if it were not mirrored and remirrored a hundred and twenty-eight times around the circumference of the ritual circle. The color of the dome has begun to change to a darker, angrier crimson. Whether the natural twilight is being artificially augmented—either from inside or outside the building—is impossible to tell. All eyes are turned upward to a focus about twenty-five feet above the center of the floor, where an eight-sided loudspeaker hangs by a chrome-plated cable from the midpoint of the dome. The air begins to fill with a pervasive vibration like the rumble of a distant monocar racing toward you in the night. And then the music explodes into the supercharged air. Instantly the floor is alive with jerking, writhing bodies—it's as if each chord were an electrical impulse applied directly to the nerve ends of the dancers— and the music is unbelievably loud.
The dome must act as an enormous soundbox. I can feel the vibrations in my feet and my teeth are chattering with the beat—but as wild as the dancing is, the circle is still intact. Each Shaker is "shaking" in his own place. Some are uttering incomprehensible cries, the holy gibberish that the Shakers call their Gift of Tongues—ecstatic prophecies symbolizing the Wordless Word of the Deity. One young girl with a gaunt but beautiful face is howling like a coyote. Another is grunting like a pig. A third is alternately spitting into the air and slapping her own cheeks viciously with both hands.
Across the floor a tall skinny boy has shaken loose from the rim of the circle. Pirouetting at high speed, his head thrown straight back so that his eyes are fixed on the crimson membrane of the dome, he seems to be propelling himself in an erratic path toward the center of the floor. And now the dome is changing color again, clotting to a deeper purple—like the color of a late evening sky but flecked with scarlet stars that seem to be darting about with a life of their own, colliding, coalescing, reforming.
A moment of relative calm has descended on the dancers. They are standing with their hands at their sides—only their heads are moving, lolling first to one side, then the other, in keeping with the new, subdued rhythm of the music. The tall boy in the center has begun to spin around and around in place, picking up speed with each rotation—now he's whirling like a top, his head still bent back, his eyes staring sightlessly. His right arm shoots out from the shoulder, the elbow locked, the fingers stiff, the palm flat—this is what the Shakers call the Arrow Sign, a manifestation of the Gift of Prophecy, directly inspired by the Dual Deity, Father Power and Mother Wisdom. The tall boy is the "instrument" and he is about to receive a message from on high.
His head tilts forward. His rotation slows. He comes to a halt with his right arm pointing at a short red-haired girl. The girl begins to shake all over as if struck by a high fever. The music rises to an ear-shattering crescendo and ends in mid-note.
"Everyone's a mirror," the tall boy shouts. "Clean, clean, clean-on, let it shine! My dirt's not my own but it stains the earth. And the earth's not my own—the Mother and Father are light above light but the light can't shine alone. Only a mirror can shine, shine, shine. Let the mirror be mine, be mine, be mine!"
The red-haired girl is shaking so hard her limbs are flailing like whips. Her mouth has fallen open and she begins to moan, barely audibly at first. What she utters might be a single-syllable word like "clean" or "mine" or "shine" repeated so rapidly that the consonants break down and the vowels flow into one unending stream of sound. But it keeps getting louder and louder and still louder, like the wail of an air-raid siren, until all resemblance to speech disappears and it seems impossible that such a sound can come from a human throat. You can almost hear the blood vessels straining, bursting.
Then the loudspeaker cuts in again in mid-note with the loudest, wildest jag-rock riff I have ever heard, only it's no longer something you can hear—it's inside you or you're inside it. And the dome has burst into blooms of color! A stroboscopic fireworks display that obliterates all outlines and shatters perspective and you can't tell whether the dancers are moving very, very slowly or very, very fast. The movement is so perfectly synchronized with the sound and the sound with the color that there seems to be no fixed reference point anywhere.
All you can say is: "There is color, there is sound, there is movement—"
This is the Gift of Seizure, which the New Shakers prize so highly—and whether it is genuinely mystical, as they claim, or auto-hypnotic or drug-induced, as some critics maintain, or a combination of all of these or something else entirely, it is an undeniably real— and profoundly disturbing—experience.
-MORE TO COME-
XEROGRAM: July 1 (7:27 A.M.)
TO: Frederick Rickover, Eastern Supervisor, Feel-O-Mat Corp., Baltimore, Maryland, 6503477502
FROM: Raymond Senter, Hudson Junction Rotel, Hudson Junction, N.Y. 28997601910
(WARNING: PERSONALIZED ENVELOPE: CONTENTS WILL POWDER IF OPENED IMPROPERLY)
Fred:
I'm afraid it's back-scratching time again. I need a code-check on DNA No. 75/62/HR/tl/4-9-065. I'm interested in whether the codee has plugged into a feel-o-mat anywhere in the Federation during the past two weeks. This one's a family matter, not business, so buzz me only at the above zip. I won't forget it. Gratefully, Ray.
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed., I.I.
FROM: Senter
ENCLOSED: Three tapes. New Shaker "Testimonies." Edited transcripts, July 1.
TAPE I (Shaker name, "Farmer Brown"): What kind of mike is this? No kidding. I didn't know they made a reamper this small. Chinese? Oh. Right. Well, let's see—I was born April seventeenth, nineteen seventy-four, in Ellsworth, Saskatchewan. My breath-father's a foreman at a big refinery there. My breath-mother was a consumer-housewife. She's gone now. It's kind of hard to remember details. When I was real little, I think I saw the feds scratch a Bomb-thrower on the steps of City Hall. But maybe that was only something I saw on 2-D. School was—you know, the usual. Oh, once a bunch of us kids got hold of some fresh spores from the refinery—I guess we stole them somehow. Anyway, there was still a lot of open land around and we planted them and raised our own crop of puffers. I didn't come down for a week. That was my farming experience. (LAUGHTER) I applied for a bummer-grant on my fifteenth birthday, got a two-year contract and took off the next day for the sun. Let's see—Minneapolis, Kansas City, Mexico—what a jolt! There weren't so many feel-o-mats in the small towns down there and I was into all the hard stuff you could get in those days—speed, yellow, rock-juice, little-annie—I guess the only thing I never tried for a jolt was the Process and there were times when I was just about ready.
When the grant ran out, I just kept bumming on my own. At first you think it's going to be real easy. Half the people you know are still on contract and they share it around. Then your old friends start running out faster than you make new ones and there's a whole new generation on the road. And you start feeling more and more like a feebie and acting like one. I was lucky because I met this sweet little dove in Nashville—she had a master's in Audio-Visual but she was psycho for bummers, especially flat ones.
Anyway, she comes back to her coop one day with a new tape and puts it on any says, "This'll go right through you. It's a wild new group called the Shakers."
She didn't know two bobby's worth about the Shakers and I didn't either—the first Shaker tapes were just hitting the market about then. Well, I can tell you, that jagged sound gave me a jolt. I mean, it was bigger than yellow, bigger than juice, only it let you down on your feet instead of your back. I had this feeling I had to hear more. I got all the tapes that were out but they weren't enough. So I took off one night for Wildwood and before I knew it I was in a Prep Meeting and I was home free—you know, I've always kind of hoped that little dove makes it on her own—Oh, yeah, the band . . .
Well, I'm one of the Band Deacons, which is what's called a Sacrificial Gift because it means handling the accounts—and that's too close to the jacks and bobbys for comfort. But someone has to do it. You can't stay alive in an impure world without getting a little stained and if outsiders want to lay the Kennedys on us for bikes and tapes, that's a necessary evil. But we don't like to spread the risk in the Family. So the Deacons sign the checks and deal with the agents and the stain's on us alone. And everyone prays a little harder to square it with the Father and Mother.
TAPE II (Shaker name, "Mariah Moses"): I was born in Darien, Connecticut. I'm an Aquarius with Leo rising. Do you want my breath-name? I don't mind—it's Cathy Ginsberg. My breath-parents are both full-time consumers. I didn't have a very interesting childhood, I guess. I went to Mid-Darian Modular School. I was a pretty good student—my best subject was World Culture. I consummated on my third date, which was about average, I've been told, for my class. Do you really want all this background stuff? I guess the biggest thing that happened to the old me was when I won a second prize in the Maxwell Puffer Civic Essay contest when I was fourteen. The subject was The Joys of Spectatorism and the prize was a Programmed Weekend in Hawaii for two. I don't remember who I went with. But Hawaii was really nice. All those brown-skinned boys—we went to a big luau on Saturday night. That's a native-style orgy. They taught me things we never even learned in school.
I remember thinking, Oh, star, this is the living end!
But when it was all over I had another thought. If this was the living end—what came next? I don't know if it was the roast pig or what but I didn't feel so good for a few days. The night we got back home—Herbie! That was the name of my date, Herbie Alcott—he had short curly hair all over his back—anyway, the night I got home my breath-parents picked me up at the airport and on the way back to Darien they started asking me what I wanted to do with my life. They were trying to be so helpful, you know. I mean, you could see they would have been disappointed if I got involved in production of some kind but they weren't about to say that in so many words. They just asked me if I had decided how I wanted to plug into the Big Board. It was up to me to choose between college or the Consumer Corps or a Travel Grant—they even asked me if Herbie and I were getting serious and if we wanted to have a baby—because the waiting-list at the Marriage Bureau was already six-months long and getting longer. The trouble was I was still thinking about the luau and the roast pig and I felt all—burned out. Like a piece of charcoal that still looks solid but is really just white ash—and if you touch it it crumbles and blows way. So I said I'd think about it but what I was really thinking was I'm not signing up for any more orgies just yet.
And a few days later the miracle happened. A girl in our class was reported missing and a friend of mine heard someone say that she'd become a Shaker.
I said, "What's that?"
My friend said, "It's a religion that believes in No hate, No War, No money, No sex."
And I felt this thrill go right through me. And even though I didn't know what it meant at the time, that was the moment I discovered my Gift. It was such a warm feeling, like something soft and quiet curled up inside you, waiting. And the day I turned fifteen I hiked up to Jerusalem and I never went home. That was eleven months ago . . . oh, you can't describe what happens at Preparative Meeting. It's what happens inside you that counts. Like now, when I think of all my old friends from Darien, I say a little prayer.
Father Power, Mother Wisdom, touch their Gifts, set them free. . . .
TAPE III (Shaker name, "Earnest Truth"): I'm aware that I'm something of a rarity here. I assume that's why you asked me for a testimony. But I don't want you categorizing me as a Shaker intellectual or a Shaker theologian or anything like that. I serve as Legal Deacon because that's my Gift. But I'm also a member of the vacuum detail in Corridor Three and that's my Gift too. I'd be just as good a Shaker if I only cleaned the floor and nothing else. Is that clear? Good. Well then, as briefly as possible: (READS FROM PREPARED TEXT) I'm twenty-four years old, from Berkeley, California. Breath-parents were on the faculty at the University; killed in an air crash when I was ten. I was raised by the state. Pacific Highlands Modular School: First honors. Consumer Corps: Media-aide First-class. Entered the University at seventeen. Pre-law. Graduated magna cum in nineteen ninety. Completed four-year Law School in three years. In my final year I became interested in the literature of religion—or, to be more precise, the literature of mysticism—possibly as a counterpoise to the increasing intensity of my formal studies. Purely as an intellectual diversion I began to read St. John of the Cross, George Fox, the Vedas, Tao, Zen, the Kabbala, the Sufis. But when I came across the early Shakers I was struck at once with the daring and clarity of this purely American variant. All mystics seek spiritual union with the Void, the Nameless, the Formless, the Ineffable. But the little band of Shaker pilgrims, confronted with a vast and apparently unbounded wilderness, took a marvelous quantum leap of faith and decided that the union had already been accomplished. The wilderness was the Void. For those who had eyes to see—this was God's Kingdom. And by practicing a total communism, a total abnegation, a total dedication, they made the wilderness flower for two hundred years. Then, unable to adjust to the methodologies of the Industrial Revolution, they quietly faded away; it was as if their gentle spirit had found a final resting place in the design of their utterly simple and utterly beautiful wooden furniture—each piece of which has since become a collector's item. When I began reading about the Old Shakers I had of course heard about the New Shakers —but I assumed that they were just another crackpot fundamentalist sect like the Holy Rollers or the Snake Handlers, an attempt to keep alive the pieties of a simpler day in the present age of abundance. But eventually my curiosity—or so I called it at the time—led me to investigate a Preparative Meeting that had been established in the Big Sur near Jefferstown. And I found my Gift. The experience varies from individual to individual. For me it was the revelation that the complex machine we refer to as the Abundant Society is the real anachronism. All the euphorics we feed ourselves cannot change the fact that the machinery of abundance has long since reached its limit as a vital force and is now choking on its own waste products—Pollution, Overpopulation, Dehumanization. Far from being a breakthrough, the so-called Cultural Revolution was merely the last gasp of the old order to maintain itself by programming man's most private senses into the machine. And the childish Bomb-throwers were nothing but retarded romantics, an anachronism within an anachronism. At this juncture in history, only the Shaker Revival offers a true alternative—in the utterly simple, and therefore utterly profound, Four Noes. The secular world usually praises us for our rejection of Hate and War and mocks us for our rejection of Money and Sex. But the Four Noes constitute a beautifully balanced ethical equation, in which each term is a function of the other three. There are no easy Utopias. Non-Shakers often ask: What would happen if everyone became a Shaker? Wouldn't that be the end of the human race? My personal answer is this: Society is suffering from the sickness unto death—a plague called despair. Shakerism is the only cure. As long as the plague rages more and more people will find the strength to take the medicine required, no matter how bitter it may seem. Perhaps at some future date, the very spread of Shakerism will restore Society to health, so that the need for Shakerism will again slacken. Perhaps the cycle will be repeated. Perhaps not. It is impossible to know what the Father and Mother have planned for their children. Only one thing is certain. The last of the Old Shaker prophetesses wrote in nineteen fifty-six: "The flame may flicker but the spark can never be allowed to die out until the salvation of the world is accomplished."
I don't think you'll find the flame flickering here.
-MORE TO COME-
XEROGRAM: July 1 (11:30 P.M.)
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed., 7.7.
FROM: Raymond Senter, c/o Hudson Junction Rotel (WARNING: PERSONALIZED ENVELOPE: CONTENTS WILL POWDER IF OPENED IMPROPERLY)
Art:
Cooperation unlimited here—until I mention "Preparative Meeting." Then they all get tongue-tied. Too holy for impure ears. No one will even say where or when. Working hypothesis: It's a compulsory withdrawal session. Recruits obviously must kick all worldly habits before taking final vows. Big question: how do they do it? Conscious or unconscious? Cold-turkey, hypno-suggestion, or re-conditioning? Legal or illegal? Even Control would like to know. I'm taping the Reception Deacon tomorrow. If you approve, I'll start putting the pressure on. The groundwork's done. We may get a story yet. Ray.
XEROGRAM: July 2 (2:15 A.M.)
TO: Joseph Harger, Coordinator, N.Y. State Consumer Control, Albany N.Y. 31118002311
FROM: Raymond Senter, c/o Hudson Junction Rotel, Hudson Junction, N.Y. 28997601910
(WARNING: PERSONALIZED ENVELOPE: CONTENTS WILL POWDER IF OPENED IMPROPERLY)
Joe:
I appreciate your taking a personal interest in this matter. My wife obviously gave the wrong impression to the controller she contacted. She tends to get hysterical. Despite what she may have said I assure you my son's attitude toward the Ghetto was a perfectly healthy blend of scorn and pity. Bruce went with me once to see the Harlem Wall—must have been six or seven—and Coordinator Bill Quaite let him sit in the Scanner's chair for a few minutes. He heard a muzzein call from the top of one of those rickety towers. He saw the wild rats prowling in the stench and garbage. He also watched naked children fighting with wooden knives over a piece of colored glass. I am told there are young people today stupid enough to think that sneaking over the Wall is an adventure and that the Process is reversible—but my son is definitely not one of them. And he is certainly not a Bomb-thrower. I know that you have always shared my publication's view that a selective exposure to the harsher realities makes for better consumers. (I'm thinking of that little snafu in data-traffic in the Albany Grid last summer.) I hope you'll see your way clear to trusting me again. I repeat: there's not the slightest indication that my son was going over to the Blacks. In fact, I have good reason to believe that he will turn up quite soon, with all discrepancies accounted for. But I need a little time. A Missing Persons Bulletin would only make things harder at the moment. I realize it was my wife who initiated the complaint. But I'd greatly appreciate it if she got misfiled for 48 hours. I'll handle any static on this side. Discreetly, Ray.
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed, I.I.
FROM: Senter
ENCLOSED: Background tape; interview with Antonia Cross, age 19, Reception Deacon, Jerusalem West. Edited Transcript, July 2.
Q: (I waited silently for her to take the lead.)
A: Before we begin, I think we better get a few things straight. It'll save time and grief in the long run. First of all, despite what your magazine and others may have said in the past, we never proselytize. Never. So please don't use that word. We just try to live our Gift— and if other people are drawn to us, that's the work of the Father and Mother, not us. We don't have to preach. When someone's sitting in filth up to his neck he doesn't need a preacher to tell him he smells. All he needs to hear is that there's a cleaner place somewhere. Second, we don't prevent anyone from leaving, despite all rumors to the contrary. We've had exactly three apostates in the last four years. They found out their wheels were not our wheels and they left.
Q: Give me their names.
A: There's no law that says we have to disclose the names of backsliders. Find them yourself. That shouldn't be too hard, now that they're plugged back in to the Big Board.
Q: You overestimate the power of the press.
A: False modesty is not considered a virtue among Shakers.
Q: You mentioned three backsliders. How many applicants are turned away before taking final vows?
A: The exact percentage is immaterial. Some applicants are more serious than others. There is no great mystery about our reception procedure. You've heard the expression "Weekend Shakers." Anybody can buy the gear and dance and sing and stay pure for a couple of days. It's even considered a "jolt," I'm told. We make sure that those who come to us know the difference between a weekend and a lifetime. We explain the Gift, the Creed, the Articles of Faith. Then we ask them why they've come to us. We press them pretty hard. In the end, if they're still serious, they are sent to Preparative Meeting for a while, until a Family is ready to accept them.
Q: How long is a while?
A: Preparative Meeting can take days or weeks. Or longer.
Q: Are they considered full-fledged Shakers during that time?
A. The moment of Induction is a spiritual, not a temporal phenomenon.
Q: But you notify the authorities only after a recruit is accepted in a Family?
A: We comply with all the requirements of the Full Disclosure Law.
Q: What if the recruit is underage and lies about it? Do you run a routine DNA check?
A: We obey the law.
Q: But a recruit at a Prep Meeting isn't a Shaker and so you don't have to report his presence. Is that right?
A: We've had exactly nine complaints filed against us in four years. Not one has stuck.
Q: Then you do delay acceptance until you can trace a recruit's identity?
A: I didn't say that. We believe in each person's right to redefine his set, no matter what the Big Board may say about him. But such administrative details tend to work themselves out.
Q: How? I don't understand.
A: The ways of the Father and Mother sometimes passeth understanding.
Q: You say you don't proselytize, but isn't that what your tapes are —a form of preaching? Don't most of your recruits come to you because of the tapes? And don't most of them have to be brought down from whatever they're hooked on before you'll even let them in?
A: The world—your world—is filth. From top to bottom. We try to stay as far away as we can. But we have to eat. So we sell you our tapes and our Shakerbikes. There's a calculated risk of contamination. But it works the other way too. Filth can be contaminated by purity. That's known as Salvation. It's like a tug of war. We'll see who takes the greatest risk.
Q: That's what I'm here for—to see at first hand. Where is the Jerusalem West Preparative Meeting held?
A: Preparative Meetings are private. For the protection of all concerned.
Q: Don't you mean secret? Isn't there something going on at these meetings that you don't want the public to know?
A: If the public is ignorant of the life of the spirit, that is hardly our fault.
Q: Some people believe that your recruits are "prepared" with drugs or electro-conditioning.
A: Some people think that Shaker stew is full of saltpeter. Are you going to print that, too?
Q: You have been accused of brain-tampering. That's a serious charge. And unless I get a hell of a lot more cooperation from you than I've been getting I will have to assume that you have something serious to hide.
A: No one ever said you'd be free to see everything. You'll just have to accept our—guidance—in matters concerning religious propriety.
Q: Let me give you a little guidance, Miss Cross. You people already have so many enemies in that filthy world you despise that one unfriendly story from I.J. might just tip the scales.
A: The power of the press? We'll take our chances.
Q: What will you do if the police crack down?
A: We're not afraid to die. And the Control authorities have found that it's more trouble than it's worth to put us in jail. We seem to upset the other inmates.
Q: Miss Cross—
A: We use no titles here. My name is Antonia.
Q: You're obviously an intelligent, dedicated young woman. I would rather work with you than against you. Why don't we try to find some middle ground? As a journalist my primary concern is human nature—what happens to a young recruit in the process of becoming a full-fledged Shaker. You won't let me into a Prep Meeting to see for myself. All right, you have your reasons, and I respect them. But I ask you to respect mine. If I can look through your Reception files—just the last two or three weeks will do—I should be able to get some idea of what kind of raw material you draw on. You can remove the names, of course.
A: Perhaps we can provide a statistical breakdown for you.
Q: I don't want statistics. I want to look at their pictures, listen to their voices—you say you press them pretty hard in the first interview. That's what I need: their responses under pressure, the difference between those who stick it through and those who don't.
A: How do we know you're not looking for something of a personal nature—to embarrass us?
Q: For God's sakes, I'm one of the best-known tapemen in the Federation. Why not just give me the benefit of the doubt?
A: You invoke a Deity that means nothing to you.
Q: I'm sorry.
A: The only thing I can do is transmit your request to the Octave itself. Any decision on such a matter would have to come from a Full Business Meeting.
Q: How long will it take?
A: The Octave is meeting tomorrow, before Evening Service.
Q: All right. I can wait till then. I suppose I should apologize again for losing my temper. I'm afraid it's an occupational hazard.
A: We all have our Gift.
-MORE TO COME-
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed, I.I.
FROM: Senter
ENCLOSED: First add on Shaker Revival; July 3.
It is unclear whether the eight teenagers—six boys and two girls —who banded together one fateful evening in the spring of 1991 to form a jag-rock combo called The Shakers had any idea of the religious implications of the name. According to one early account in Riff magazine, the original eight were thinking only of a classic rock-and-roll number of the nineteen-fifties called Shake, Rattle and Roll (a title not without sexual as well as musicological overtones). On the other hand, there is evidence that Harry G was interested in astrology, palmistry, Scientology and other forms of modern occultism even before he left home at the age of fifteen. (Harry G was born Harry Guardino, on December eighteen, nineteen seventy-four, in Schoodic, Maine, the son of a third-generation lobster fisherman.) Like many members of his generation he applied for a Federal Travel Grant on graduation from Modular School and received a standard two-year contract. But unlike most of his fellow-bummers, Harry did not immediately take off on an all-expenses-paid tour of the seamier side of life in the North American Federation. Instead, he hitched a ride to New York City, where he established a little basement coop on the lower west side that soon became a favorite way-station for other, more restless bummers passing through the city. No reliable account of this period is available. The rumors that he dabbled in a local Bomb-throwers cell appear to be unfounded. But it is known that sometime during the spring of nineteen ninety-one a group of bummers nearing the end of their grants gathered in Harry G's coop to discuss the future. By coincidence or design the eight young people who came together that night from the far corners of the Federation all played some instrument and shared a passion for jag-rock. And as they talked and argued among themselves about the best way possible to "plug into the Big Board," it slowly began to dawn on them that perhaps their destinies were linked— or, as Harry G himself has put it, "We felt we could make beautiful music together. Time has made us one."
Building a reputation in the jag-rock market has never been easy—not even with divine intervention. For the next two months, The Shakers scrambled for work, playing a succession of one-night stands in consumers' centers, schools, fraternal lodges—wherever someone wanted live entertainment and was willing to put the group on. The Shakers traveled in a second-hand Chevrolet van which was kept running only by the heroic efforts of the group's electricoud player, Richard Fitzgerald (who later—as Richard F—helped to design the improved version of the turbo-adapter which forms the basis of today's Shakerbike).
On the night of June the first the group arrived in Hancock, Massachusetts, where they were scheduled to play the next evening at the graduation dance of the Grady L. Parker Modular School. They had not worked for three days and their finances had reached a most precarious stage—they were now sharing only four bummer-grants between them, the other four contracts having expired in the previous weeks. From the very beginning of their relationship the eight had gone everywhere and done everything as a group—they even insisted on sleeping together in one room on the theory that the "bad vibrations" set up by an overnight absence from each other might adversely affect their music. As it turned out, there was no room large enough at the local Holiday Inn, so, after some lengthy negotiation, the Modular School principal arranged for them to camp out on the grounds of the local Shaker Museum, a painstaking restoration of an early New England Shaker community dating back to seventeen ninety. Amused but not unduly impressed by the coincidence in names, the eight Shakers bedded down for the night within sight of the Museum's most famous structure, the Round Stone Barn erected by the original Shakers in eighteen twenty-six. Exactly what happened between midnight and dawn on that fog-shrouded New England meadow may never be known—the validation of mystical experience being by its very nature a somewhat inexact science. According to Shaker testimony, however, the spirit of Mother Ann, sainted foundress of the original sect, touched the Gifts of the eight where they lay and in a vision of the future—which Amelia D later said was "as clear and bright as a holograph"—revealed why they had been chosen: The time had come for a mass revival of Shaker beliefs and practices. The eight teenagers awoke at the same instant, compared visions, found them to be identical and wept together for joy. They spent the rest of the day praying for guidance and making plans. Their first decision was to play as scheduled at the Grady L. Parker graduation dance.
"We decided to go on doing just what we had been doing—only more so," Amelia D later explained. "Also, I guess, we needed the jacks."
Whatever the reason, the group apparently played as never before. Their music opened up doors to whole new ways of hearing and feeling—or so it seemed to the excited crowd of seniors who thronged around the bandstand when the first set was over. Without any premeditation, or so he later claimed, Harry Guardino stood up and announced the new Shaker dispensation, including the Believers' Creed (the Four Noes) and a somewhat truncated version of the Articles of Faith of the United Society of Believers (Revived): "All things must be kept decent and in good order," "Diversity in Uniformity," and "Work is Play." According to the Hancock newspaper, seventeen members of the senior class left town that morning with the Shakers—in three cars "borrowed" from parents and later returned. Drawn by a Gift of Travel, the little band of pilgrims made their way to the quiet corner of New York State now known as Jerusalem West, bought some land—with funds obtained from anonymous benefactors—and settled down to their strange experiment in monastic and ascetic communism.
The actual historical connections between Old Shakers and New Shakers remains a matter of conjecture. It is not clear, for instance, whether Harry G and his associates had a chance to consult the documentary material on display at the Hancock Museum. There is no doubt that the First Article of Faith of the Shaker Revival is a word-for-word copy of the first part of an early Shaker motto. But it has been given a subtly different meaning in present-day usage. And while many of the New Shaker doctrines and practices can be traced to the general tenor of traditional Shakerism, the adaptations are often quite free and sometimes wildly capricious. All in all, the Shaker Revival seems to be very much a product of our own time. Some prominent evolutionists even see it as part of a natural process of weeding out those individuals incapable of becoming fully consuming members of the Abundant Society. They argue that Shakerism is a definite improvement, in this respect, over the youthful cult of Bomb-throwers which had to be suppressed in the early days of the Federation.
But there are other observers who see a more ominous trend at work. They point especially to the serious legal questions raised by the Shakers' efforts at large-scale proselytization. The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Federal Constitution guarantees the right of each white citizen over the age of fifteen to the free and unrestricted enjoyment of his own senses, provided that such enjoyment does not interfere with the range or intensity of any other citizen's sensual enjoyment. Presumably this protection also extends to the right of any white citizen to deny himself the usual pleasures. But what is the status of corporate institutions that engage in such repression? How binding, for example, is the Shaker recruit's sworn allegiance to the Believers' Creed? How are the Four Noes enforced within the sect? Suppose two Shakers find themselves physically attracted to each other and decide to consummate—does the United Society of Believers have any right to place obstacles between them? These are vital questions that have yet to be answered by the Control authorities. But there are influential men in Washington who read the Twenty-seventh Amendment as an obligation on the government's part not merely to protect the individual's right to sensual pleasure but also to help them maximize it. And in the eyes of these broad constructionists the Shakers are on shaky ground.
-MORE TO COME-
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed, I.I.
Gerald Jonas 175
FROM: Senter
(WARNING: CONFIDENTIAL UNEDITED TAPE: NOT FOR PUBLICATION: CONTENTS WILL POWDER IF OPENED IMPROPERLY)
FIRST VOICE: Bruce? Is that you?
SECOND VOICE: It's me.
FIRST: For God's sake, come in! Shut the door. My God, I thought you were locked up in that Prep Meeting. I thought—
SECOND: It's not a prison. When I heard you were prowling around town I knew I had to talk to you.
FIRST: You've changed your mind then?
SECOND: Don't believe it. I just wanted to make sure you didn't lie about everything.
FIRST: Do they know you're here?
SECOND: No one followed me, if that's what you mean. No one even knows who I am. I've redefined my set, as we say.
FIRST: But they check. They're not fools. They'll find out soon enough—if they haven't already.
SECOND: They don't check. That's another lie. And anyway, I'll tell them myself after Induction.
FIRST: Brucie—it's not too late. We want you to come home.
SECOND: You can tell Arlene that her little baby is safe and sound. How is she? Blubbering all over herself as usual?
FIRST: She's pretty broken up about your running away.
SECOND: Why? Is she worried they'll cut off her credit at the feel-o-mat? For letting another potential consumer get off the hook?
FIRST: You wouldn't have risked coming to me if you didn't have doubts. Don't make a terrible mistake.
SECOND: I came to see you because I know how you can twist other people's words. Are you recording this?
FIRST: Yes.
SECOND: Good. I'm asking you straight out—please leave us alone.
FIRST: Do you know they're tampering with your mind?
SECOND: Have you tasted your local drinking water lately?
FIRST: Come home with me.
SECOND: I am home.
FIRST: You haven't seen enough of the world to turn your back on it.
SECOND: I've seen you and Arlene.
FIRST: And is our life so awful?
SECOND: What you and Arlene have isn't life. It's the American Dream Come True. You're in despair and don't even know it. That's the worse kind.
FIRST: You repeat the slogans as if you believed them.
SECOND: What makes you think I don't?
FIRST: You're my flesh and blood. I know you.
SECOND: You don't. All you know is that your little pride and joy ran away to become a monk and took the family genes. And Arlene is too old to go back to the Big Boards and beg for seconds.
FIRST: Look—I know a little something about rebellion, too. I've had a taste of it in my time. It's healthy, it's natural—I'm all for it. But not an overdose. When the jolt wears off, you'll be stuck here. And you're too smart to get trapped in a hole like this.
SECOND: It's my life, isn't it? In exactly one hour and ten minutes I'll be free, white and fifteen—Independence Day, right? What a beautiful day to be born—it's the nicest thing you and Arlene did for me.
FIRST: Brucie, we want you back. Whatever you want—just name it and if it's in my power I'll try to get it. I have friends who will help.
SECOND: I don't want anything from you. We're quits—can't you understand? The only thing we have in common now is this: (SOUND OF HEAVY BREATHING). That's it. And if you want that back you can take it. Just hold your hand over my mouth and pinch my nose for about five minutes. That should do it.
FIRST: How can you joke about it?
SECOND: Why not? Haven't you heard? There're only two ways to go for my generation—The Shakers or the Ghetto. How do you think I'd look in black-face with bushy hair and a gorilla nose? Or do you prefer my first choice?
FIRST: I'm warning you, the country's not going to put up with either much longer. There's going to be trouble—and I want you out of here when it comes.
SECOND: What are the feebies going to do? Finish our job for us?
FIRST: Is that what you want then? To commit suicide?
SECOND: Not exactly. That's what the Bomb-throwers did. We want to commit your suicide.
FIRST: (Words unintelligible.)
SECOND: That really jolts you, doesn't it? You talk about rebellion as if you knew something about it because you wore beads once and ran around holding signs.
FIRST: We changed history.
SECOND: You didn't change anything. You were swallowed up, just like the Bomb-throwers. The only difference is, you were eaten alive.
FIRST: Bruce—
SECOND: Can you stretch the gray-stuff a little, and try to imagine what real rebellion would be like? Not just another chorus of "gimme, gimme, gimme—" but the absolute negation of what's come before? The Four Noes all rolled up into One Big No!
FIRST: Brucie—I'll make a deal—
SECOND: No one's ever put it all together before. I don't expect you to see it. Even around here, a lot of people don't know what's happening. Expiation! That's what rebellion is all about. The young living down the sins of the fathers and mothers! But the young are always so hungry for life they get distracted before they can finish the job. Look at all the poor, doomed rebels in history—whenever they got too big to be crushed the feebies bought them off with a piece of the action. The stick or the carrot and then—business as usual. Your generation was the biggest sellout of all. But the big laugh is, you really thought you won. So now you don't have any carrot left to offer, because you've already shared it all with us— before we got old. And we're strong enough to laugh at your sticks. Which is why the world is going to find out for the first time what total rebellion is.
FIRST: I thought you didn't believe in violence and hate?
SECOND: Oh, our strength is not of this world. You can forget all the tapes and bikes and dances—that's the impure shell that must be sloughed off. If you want to get the real picture, just imagine us— all your precious little genemachines—standing around in a circle, our heads bowed in prayer holding our breaths and clicking off one by one. Don't you think that's a beautiful way for your world to end? Not with a bang or a whimper—but with one long breathless Amen?
TO: Stock, Ex-Ed, I.I.
FROM: Senter
ENCLOSED: New first add on "Shaker Revival" (scratch earlier transmission; new lead upcoming).
JERUSALEM WEST, N.Y, Wednesday, July 4—An early critic of the Old Shakers, a robust pamphleteer who had actually been a member of the sect for ten months, wrote this prophetic appraisal of his former cohorts in the year seventeen eighty-two: "When we consider the infant state of civil power in America since the Revolution began, every infringement on the natural rights of humanity, every effort to undermine our original constitution, either in civil or ecclesiastical order, saps the foundation of Independency."
That winter, the Shaker foundress, Mother Ann, was seized in Petersham, Massachusetts, by a band of vigilantes who, according to a contemporary account, wanted "to find out whether she was a woman or not." Various other Shaker leaders were horsewhipped, thrown in jail, tarred and feathered and driven out of one New England town after another by an aroused citizenry. These severe persecutions, which lasted through the turn of the century, were the almost inevitable outcome of a clash between the self-righteous, unnatural, uncompromising doctrines of the Shakers—and the pragmatic, democratic, forward-looking mentality of the struggling new nation, which would one day be summed up in that proud emblem: The American Way of Life.
This conflict is no less sharp today. So far the New Shakers have been given the benefit of the doubt as just another harmless fringe group. But there is evidence that the mood of the country is changing —and rapidly. Leading educators and political figures, respected clergymen and prominent consumer consultants have all become more outspoken in denouncing the disruptive effect of this new fanaticism on the country as a whole. Not since the heyday of the Bomb-throwers in the late Seventies has a single issue shown such potential for galvanizing informed public opinion. And a chorus of distraught parents has only just begun to make itself heard—like the lamentations of Rachel in the wilderness.
Faced with the continuing precariousness of the international situation, and the unresolved dilemma of the Ghettoes, some Control authorities have started talking about new restrictions on all monastic sects—not out of desire to curtail religious freedom but in an effort to preserve the constitutional guarantees of free expression and consumption. Some feel that if swift, firm governmental action is not forthcoming it will get harder and harder to prevent angry parents—and others with legitimate grievances—from taking the law into their own hands.
-MORE TO COME-