NEW GLOUCESTER — April Baxter had never heard of the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village until she bought a pack of hard cider while visiting her sister in Maine.

When she looked up the town where it was made, up popped information about the only active Shaker community in the world. She knew she had to visit.

The Shakers are a small Protestant religious denomination with members known for living simple lives in a community where all property is shared and their work and worship are closely intertwined.

During her first visit in September 2024, Baxter walked around the hillside village and through the historic buildings. The experience was peaceful, moving and, ultimately, life-changing.

“I’ve been to a lot of beautiful places. I’ve climbed mountains. I’ve lived by the ocean for 23 years,” she said. “So it was more than being at a beautiful place. I didn’t really understand it at the time. All I knew was I had this real gut feeling and knew in my heart that I had to come back.”

A year later, the 59-year-old is now Sister April, the third, and youngest, Shaker living in the brick dwelling house where Shakers have made their home for more than two centuries. She works, studies and worships alongside Brother Arnold Hadd, 68, and Sister June Carpenter, 87.

Together, they are the only three active members of the faith anywhere.

Close to 30 others have joined the community at some point in Brother Arnold’s 47 years as a Shaker but ultimately decided it was not for them. It was apparent from their first meeting that Sister April would do well, he said.

“She has a very uplifting spirit that’s very good for the community itself, and she very much knows why she wants to be here,” he said.

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FINDING SHAKERISM

When she arrived in New Gloucester for her first visit, Sister April was already familiar with living in a religious community and the process of discernment.

“For me, it’s something I usually feel, like a profound, deep feeling in my heart,” she said. “And there’s a rightness about it.”

She had spent years exploring other religions — her parents’ Jewish and Protestant roots, a friend’s Catholicism, the Baptist church — before falling away from the church altogether. She said she found her way back after attending an Episcopal service in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she worked in a church office.

She eventually joined an Episcopal convent and lived there for three years before visiting the Shaker village for the first time.

After several visits with the Shakers, Sister April left the convent to move to New Gloucester on Palm Sunday, a Christian holiday that marks the beginning of Holy Week for Christian communities. Every part of her life up to that point prepared her to be there, she said.

And everything about being there, about worshipping with the Shakers, felt right.

“It struck me that I fit in without trying. I could simply just be me,” Sister April said while sitting in the music room, surrounded by portraits of the Shakers who came before her. “I was really moved by the fact that the people here are just ordinary people. Everybody’s unpretentious, quirky and kind.”

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing — commonly known as the Shakers — practice communal living where all property is shared. They are pacifists who live a celibate life in imitation of Christ and practice social, economic and spiritual equality.

The number of Shakers and active communities in the U.S. has declined over time; only Sabbathday Lake is left.

While news stories often highlight “the last Shakers,” both Brother Arnold and Sister April say they believe Shakerism will continue long after they’re gone.

“I do fully believe that as long as we’re doing the work of God, that God is going to always provide us vocations. It’s for us to be open to them, to receive them and to help them along,” Brother Arnold said. “For me, Shakerism is the truth, and the truth can’t die.”

Sister April is about halfway through her novice year, after which the community meets to decide on whether she will continue on as a member, Brother Arnold said.

Once a person has been there for five years, the community decides if they will become a full church member.

Sister April has spent the last few months settling into daily life in the community, learning about Shakerism through weekly study sessions and meeting the larger community of staff, friends and volunteers who add to the vibrant life in the village.

“This community has so many people who have lived here, who have prayed and sung and worshipped in this house,” she said. “It’s like the presence of those people is palpable to me. It feels like we’re standing on something that’s been built really solid through time.”

All of it brings her a profound sense of joy and faith that Shakerism will continue, as it has since Mother Ann Lee and the first followers came to America in 1744.

As the Sabbathday Lake community recently gathered to celebrate that anniversary, Sister April said, she was struck “that through time, all the Shakers have carried the light forward.”

“And now we’re the carriers of that light. May we carry it well.”