Don Wildman

What does that refer to?

Yeah.

How is Shakerism affected by the Civil War?

On what side do they fall, or are they involved in this at all, given their pacifism?

Yeah, well, it's what happens to America in the 1800s.

You really find that religion is replaced by moneymaking as mercantilism becomes its own kind of religion.

And I don't mean that glibly.

I mean, religion was always about self-improvement, about finding unity with God in order to improve your life and find purpose in your life.

Suddenly, moneymaking becomes that thing.

force of nature, if you will, in America.

And it slowly but surely to this day, very day, replaces that kind of spiritualism with another purpose.

It was fascinating.

Let's, I guess, mark the Civil War as kind of the peak or beginning of the decline of Shakerism.

Again, the running joke is, well, you can't build a movement if people can't make new members, you know, being the celibacy.

But in fact, that celibacy has a kind of a very noble feeling.

Quakers practice the same thing, as a matter of fact, in the fact that they are allowed to have sex, but it's about not proselytizing.

The idea is people need to find this movement on...

on their own in order for the movement to build in its strongest form.

That's kind of what this is all about, isn't it?

Every one of the big churches of Christianity and elsewhere have, and certainly Judaism, have gone through their own reformations.