Why do you think the shaker movement lasted only a few decades?

Answer 1

Your assertion that the Shakers lasted only a few decades is not correct, in that although diminished they still exist with an age of some 270 years.
The Shakers are one of the few success stories resulting from the proliferation of communitarian and millenarian groups in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe and America. They splintered from a Quaker community in Manchester, England. James Wardley, its preacher, had absorbed the teachings of the millenial French Prophets and his community began to evolve around 1746. The members were known as the Shaking Quakers and were viewed as radical for their communion with the spirits of the dead and impassioned shaking that would occur at their services. As radicals, all the members were harassed, including a young married woman named Ann Lee. Fervent from a young age, Ann had a revelation during a long imprisonment that she was the Second Coming of Christ, the vital female component of God the Father-Mother .
The vision had a great impact on the congregation and "Mother" Ann became the official leader of the group in 1772. With a distinctly new version of the Second Coming and other beliefs contradictory to mainstream Christian ideology, it was at this juncture that the Shaking Quakers became known as the Shakers. These radical views increased the Shakers' persecution and a small group composed of her brother, niece, husband and five others followed Mother Ann's vision of a holy sanctuary in the New World to New York in May,1774. They struggled for five years to survive, gaining few converts, on a communal farm in Watervliet, NY. During this period they faced great persecution for being both English and pacifistic in the middle of the Revolutionary War.
The turning point was a wave of religious revivalism called the New Light Stir that swept across New England between 1776 and 1783, bringing in new converts from other millenial groups and allowing the Shakers to safely proselytize. In 1779 Joseph Meacham and his followers joined the Shakers, becoming their first converts. The Shaker mission in New England ended in 1784 -- the same year as Mother Ann's death -- though they later missioned in Kentucky and Ohio during the Kentucky Revival of 1797-1805. Most of this expansion happened under Joseph Meacham's leadership, which began with Father John Whittaker's death in 1787. Meacham organized the communities and made New Lebanon, NY the Parent Ministry from which came both spiritual and commercial leadership. These industries would become both the sustaining income for the Shakers and a form of recruiting and publicity as their simple, functional furniture designs, music and dancing, and self-published books became popular in secular culture. By the mid-1800's they reached their peak membership and peak popularity, becoming a sort of tourist attraction that outsiders (known as The World's People) could observe in their communities on Saturday evenings.
The Civil War ended the American fascination with the many millenarian, communitarian and utopian social experiments of the early nineteenth century and replaced it with an emphasis on class struggle in an increasingly industrial and urban society. Industrialization made Shaker crafts obsolete and depleted even further the attraction of a way of life already made less tasteful by the emphasis on celibacy and severe simplicity. Between this decline in attraction and the society's inability to create a new generation of believers, the communities steadily declined and disbanded.
Little is known of the 20th Century Shakers besides their decline because they closed even their journals -- previously released in order to further spread first person witness of Shaker beliefs -- to the outside world in the first decades of this century. In 1965 this deterioration was speeded by a group decision to admit no new members. Today only the Canterbury, New Hampshire, and Sabbath Day Lake, Maine, communities remain and even then the members live on small plots of the properties while the rest is devoted to historic preservation and museums like those found at Pleasant Hill, KY , and South Union, KY (Gidley and Bowles 1990; Melton 1992). The Sabbath Day Lake group did recently admit three new members but they weren't recognized by the other remaining original members.

Answer 2

cuz they didnt make love any more, and no kids ...
and they yelled " SPIRITUAL EJACULATION HALELUYYYAAAAAAAA" wierd...
well, and they were secret organization, so they could be around still, but you still dont know. lol

look, M jackson did that song, thriller!! that was kinda shaker dance,,, may be, may be MJ is a shake member lol

Answer 3

Because they were celibate?