For more information:

• Cane Ridge Meeting House, P.O. Box 26, Paris, KY 40362-0026, (859) 987-5350

Place of Worship

Cane Ridge Meeting House

Cane Ridge, in Bourbon County, was settled in 1790 by a group of Presbyterians from North Carolina. They had come at the urging of Daniel Boone, who discovered and named the site.

In 1791, the settlers built a log meeting house for worship services. Ten years later, it was the epicenter of a revival that drew crowds of 20,000 or more, including Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. The Cane Ridge Revival was the climax of the Second Great Awakening, a religious movement that spread across the American frontier in the early 1800s.

The meeting house is still a place of worship today and is the largest single-room log structure from the frontier period remaining in the U.S.

Kentucky Life Program 301 includes a historical look at the Great Cane Ridge Revival, which also led to the founding of two American religious denominations.

For more information:
• Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, 1305 Lexington Rd., Harrodsburg, KY 40330, (800) 734-5611

Society of Believers

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

Missionaries of the United Society of the Believers in Christ’s Second Coming, or Shakers (for the emotionally charged shaking they sometimes experienced during worship) came to Kentucky in 1805 with the utopian religious belief that they could create the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth within their communities. They lived apart from the rest of society, worshipped together, owned property as a community, and practiced celibacy.

Though the Shakers are no longer an active religious denomination, they left a lasting legacy in their simple and functional architecture and furniture, which is still popular two centuries later.

You’ll find another visit to Pleasant Hill in Kentucky Life Program 1305.

For more information: Abbey of Gethsemani, Trappist, KY 40051, (502) 549-3117

The Contemplative Life

Abbey of Gethsemani

French Trappist monks established the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Nelson County in 1848. It is best known as the home of Thomas Merton, who came to the monastery in 1941 and lived and wrote there until his death in 1968.

Today’s brothers of Gethsemani still live lives of quiet conviction. In between daily worship, private prayer, and contemplative reading, the monks make cheese, fruitcakes, and fudge to sell as their main source of income.

Kentucky Life first visited the abbey in Program 105.