In the flickering candlelight of Mona Fastvold’s new cinematic masterpiece, The Testament of Ann Lee, we see a woman not merely praying but vibrating. As played by a translucent, fierce Amanda Seyfried, the founder of the Shakers doesn’t just lead a sect; she channels a seismic shift in the American spiritual landscape.
Released in late 2025, the film—a “modern Baroque” musical—has reopened a window into one of the most misunderstood and radical experiments in communal living: the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, otherwise called the Shakers.
Garnering effusive reviews in publications from The New York Times to The Atlantic, the movie generating Oscar chatter of Best Actress for Amanda, but was eventually snubbed. Nonetheless, Amanda Seyfried (Gone Girl, and recently, The Housemaid) sells Ann’s zeal with tremendous gusto, throwing herself fully into the role of a prophetess, turning in her career-best performance.
The movie has also renewed interest in the Shakers. If people know anything at all about the sect that once thrived in some parts of America, it will be for their celibacy vows and minimalistic furniture. Celibacy explains why only three or four Shakers survive in a hamlet in the state of Maine.
But for readers of A Lotus In The Mud, Ann Lee offers more than historical drama. It is a meditation on how trauma can be transmuted into transcendence, and how the search for a “Heaven on Earth” requires a total reimagining of the Divine.
The Shakers split from the Quakers in 1747, before Ann Lee (1736-1784) formalized the movement. Though both groups shared pacific values, Quakers often practice silent worship, listening for the “inward light”. Conversely, “Shaking Quakers” (Shakers) used intense physical movement—trembling, dancing, and shouting—to reach the spiritual place through the body.
The Testament of Ann Lee invites us to look at the Shakers not as a “dead cult” of furniture makers, but as a living question: How much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice for a more perfect world?
The radical concept of dual deity
The core of Shaker theology, and a central pillar of the film, is a startling departure from mainstream 18th-century Christianity. While the Anglican Church of Ann Lee’s youth in Manchester, England preached a patriarchal Trinity, Lee’s “testament” was built on the belief in a dual-gendered God.
Rooted in Genesis 1:27 (“In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”), the Shakers argued that if humanity is both male and female, then the Source must be as well. To them, Jesus represented the male manifestation of Christ, while Mother Ann Lee was the female manifestation—the “Bride” who completed the spiritual circuit. This wasn’t just abstract theology; it was the foundation for a society where women and men held equal power, a radical notion in an era when women were legally and spiritually subservient.
I asked Rev. Thomas W. Goodhue, who led the Long Island Council of Churches for many years, how he looks at the Shakers. He told me: “The Shakers began as a restorationist sect (to restore Christianity to what they imagined it was in the time of the first followers of Jesus) but they soon parted company with Christianity on key theological points. Still, as a former president of my seminary quipped, ‘Heresy is the exaggeration of a neglected half-truth’. I have always taken that to mean that those who leave our tribe still may have insights we can appreciate.”
The body as a battlefield
Ann Lee the movie does not shy away from the visceral origins of Lee’s most controversial doctrine: celibacy. The Norwegian director Fastvold portrays Lee’s early life as a “cradle-to-grave” biopic marked by profound grief. Having lost all four of her children in infancy, Lee’s rejection of “the flesh” was born from post-partum trauma and a conviction that sexual lust was the “root of all evil.”
In the film’s most haunting sequences, the Shakers replace sexual intimacy with religious ecstasy. Choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall turns their “shaking” into a borderline orgiastic tangle of movement—a percussive, panting, and holy release. It suggests that by closing the door on earthly procreation, the Shakers opened a window to a different kind of creative fire: one expressed through their haunting hymns and the “divine” craftsmanship of their famous furniture.
The struggle for religious freedom
The film’s middle act follows the Shakers’ 1774 exodus to America; a journey framed as a desperate flight for religious survival after Lee was imprisoned for blasphemy.
Even in the “land of the free,” the struggle continued. As pacifists who refused to bear arms during the American Revolution, the Shakers were accused of being British spies. Plus, their radical inclusion of Black members as early as 1811 made them outsiders. The film serves as a timely reminder that the American “experiment” in religious freedom was often a violent, uphill battle for those whose visions didn’t align with the status quo.
‘Heresy is the exaggeration of a neglected half-truth’. I have always taken that to mean that those who leave our tribe still may have insights we can appreciate.
~ Rev. Thomas W. Goodhue
United Methodist clergyman and author
A dwindling flame
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the Shaker story is its current fragility. While the sect peaked in the mid-1800s with over 5,000 members across 21 villages in New York, New England, Ohio, and Kentucky, today they are on the edge of extinction.
As of 2026, only three active Shakers remain at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. The film concludes with a sense of “the silence that now surrounds the dream,” yet it echoes the defiant words of Sister Mildred Barker, a Shaker leader who died in 1990 at age 92: “This is God’s work… nothing that mortals do can bring that to an end.”
Final thoughts
The Testament of Ann Lee invites us to look at the Shakers not as a “dead cult” of furniture makers, but as a living question: How much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice for a more perfect world? In their “Hands to work and hearts to God” motto, we find a spirituality that is grounded, physical, and relentlessly egalitarian—a lotus that bloomed in the mud of the industrial revolution and refuses, even now, to fully fade away.
As for the movie, it is still running at some cinema halls and is available to stream on Disney+. But be ready to watch it as a fully immersive experience, much like the Shakers’ way of worshiping God, which involves singing and dancing in intricate patterns, losing oneself in the exultation.
Hands to work and hearts to God
The Shaker aesthetic was born from a theological mandate: “Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow.” By rejecting the ornate “vanity” of 19th-century furniture, they created a timeless, minimalist language that pre-dated Modernism by a century. Today, as the new Shaker Museum in Chatham, NY, prepares to open, their “honest” craftsmanship remains a testament to a life lived in total alignment with one’s values.
The Ann Lee biopic is part of the surge of interest in the Shakers.
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