I have to wonder if the last two are looking nervously at each other just now and asking: “maybe just once, should we, y’know, do it? Who’s going to stop us?”
I’ve visited the Maine community some years ago, and there were, I believe, 4 Shakers and a small group I guess I’d have to call acolytes(?) Young people who worked, ate, slept, prayed with the actual members of the Shaker community, but had not signed the covenant. Once the last 2 actual Shakers have gone to their reward, couldn’t these believers, or any others for that matter, declare themselves to BE Shakers, and reinstitute the covenant? As long as they fervently believed in the precepts, and practiced what the founder decreed, wouldn’t THAT be enough to make them able to claim the name? It does seem a shame for the Shaker flame to die out, when there would undoubtedly be those willing to keep it alive.
It’s fortunate, then, that the Catholics allow priests to have children. :rolleyes:
That’s a bit different, wouldn’t you say? Catholicism makes up for the celibate clerics by requiring the … um … lay people to have twelve children apiece.