Among the many religious orders in the Catholic Church are the Cistercians.  They are a monastic set of monks and nuns who are also known as Trappists.  They live a strict but simple life founded on prayer and work.  As men and women who have taken vows, they practice celibacy.  Though abstaining from sex is not unique to them, in general it has been something that has led to declining numbers of those making such commitments within the Church.  As you shall see, these sentences in a general way can be used to describe much of what you see in The Testament of Ann Lee (2025).  It is about the title character (Amanda Seyfried), one of the founders and early leaders of the protestant sect commonly called the Shakers.  They refer to themselves as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but for brevity’s sake, I will stick with Shakers.  I hope they understand because I do not wish to disrespect their movement in any way, though I will have to talk about how they diverge from Catholicism.  I intend none of that eventual discussion to take away from what I daresay is an inspiring piece of cinema.

The piece of cinema that is The Testament of Ann Lee is narrated by one of the early Shaker converts, Mary Partington (Thomasin McKenzie).  She relates the story of Ann’s life, beginning when she is a child in Manchester, England.  Beginning at six (Esmee Hewett), Ann had Heavenly visions that provided the seed for a relationship with God that grows with time.  Being a part of a large family, she is also expected by age twelve (Millie Rose Crossley) to help the family earn an income.  In the moments when she is not laboring in textile mills, she searches out opportunities to worship God.  As an adult, she finds a place to do this in the home of James (Scott Handy) and Jane Wardley (Stacy Martin), who are members of the Society of Friends.  You might know them as Quakers, and yes, there is a connection between these appellations and how they give glory to the Almighty.  During these early years with the Wardleys, she meets and marries Abraham Standerin (Christopher Abbott).  Her attitudes on sex have been shaped by seeing her parents engage in intercourse, but Abraham convinces her to do the act by perverting Christian writing to tell her that it can be a vehicle to greater closeness with the Creator.  You do not have to be Catholic to know how awful is such a scheme.  Their relations produce four children, but none of them survive past one year.  The last of these offspring requires hospitalization.  It is Jane, who they refer to as Mother Jane because she is one of their main preachers, who convinces Ann to return to the community.  Once Ann comes back, she gives herself over more fully to her faith and their group grows.  As so often happens in these instances, the success brings scrutiny, and soon she faces the first of many jailings.  While in prison and nearly starving, she has more prophetic visions, the long and short of which is that, upon release, she informs her brethren that God wants them to be celibate.  Us watching this in the twentieth century might see this as crazy, and it is not well received in the eighteenth century, either, except by a few adherents.  Those who do accept this word come to see Ann as Mother Ann, and a second appearance of Jesus on Earth.  Together, they begin to spread her message, but she meets resistance from other Christians.  The solution comes in the form of the British colonies, where one of her Spiritual fathers and founder of Methodism, George Whitefield (George Taylor), has been involved in a new awakening of Christianity.  I am trying not to get too deep into the history, but it should also be pointed at that Ann is being called to relocate across the Atlantic Ocean mere years before the American Revolution.  Funded by John Hocknell (David Cale), a fellow Shaker, they book passage and land in New York City.  Things do not go smoothly at first when they debark in the New World.  Two of their eight fall in love and resign from the congregation to start a family.  Then Abraham, who can no longer take not being able to lie carnally with his wife, basically makes an ultimatum with Ann: sex or he will leave.  Ann remains true to her convictions, so now they are five.  As this drama unfolds, John and Ann’s dear brother, William Lee (Lewis Pullman), travel up the Hudson River to find land on which the Shakers can settle.  It takes John apparently being divinely guided to the right plot for them to finally get what they had set out to obtain.  Still, as they commence to building and planting, William points out the obvious: they will need more people since their women are not giving birth.  The answer is him going around the countryside and preaching Ann’s gospel.  His wanderings also keep him apprised of that pesky American Revolution I mentioned a moment ago.  The Shakers are pacifists, and anti-slavery, which makes them suspicious in the eyes of the fledgling colonial government.  Ann does not help their position when she turns away recruiters from the Continental Army.  Hence, it is back behind bars for a time, only being released because the governor of New York does not approve of holding a Christian woman.  With the conflict coming to a close, she embarks on her own mission trips, but we see the resistance of other protestants.  During a meeting in Massachusetts, they are attacked and beaten, including Ann, who is also stripped to see if she is a man.  The film concludes with her dying in her late forties, the community firmly established, and them giving her a fitting burial.

I should say that the burial at the end of The Testament of Ann Lee is fitting by Shaker standards.  I am compelled to make this distinction because the major doctrinal difference between them and Catholics is that our protestant cousins see her as another Jesus.  By the way, her gender should not matter.  While Jesus was a man, the triune God is beyond such conceptions.  While Catholicism does not acknowledge Ann in the same way Shakers do, there is nothing that says that when Jesus returns, he could not do it in the form of a woman.  Or it could be a man.  Generally speaking, such ideas are insignificant, and getting fixated on them is not practicing good faith.  However, there is a distinction that must be made.  If you read “second appearance” as “second coming,” then you misunderstood the intention.  Shakers hold that Ann was a second manifestation of Jesus, but they still believe in the second coming of the Messiah as outlined in Revelation.  Catholicism does not accept this status for Ann.  Catholics also engage in sexual relations within the confines of marriage, and accept that it is not a sin in that context.  Otherwise, I was struck by the overlap between Catholic and Shaker life.  The two confess their sins to one another, though the former do so only to priests.  At the same time, there have been many times I have undergone this sacrament outside of the Confessional as you see here.  Another similar trait is the communal living.  This is part of the reason I brought up the Cistercians in the introduction.  One of their more famous members in the modern era was Thomas Merton, who had great respect for Shakers.  He found joy in their simplicity as rendered in their craftmanship and dedication to their principles.  This is why the movie is inspiring despite having a few moments of nudity.  Their lifestyle was hard, but it was full, and that is all anyone could ask of God.

I am also going to ask that you see The Testament of Ann Lee, though, again, be warned of some adult content.  And while, as a Catholic, I do not agree with Shaker theology on many points, I cannot deny the power of her message of total dedication to God and letting that guide all your actions.  We tend to think of that as zealousness, but she showed that it is best practiced as one of harmony with one another.