The Oneida Community
The Oneida community was founded in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes in New York. The general idea was for it to be a utopian community. This paper will look, briefly, into the community focusing on the reasons behind its formation, the big ideas underlying the community and its successes or failures if any.
What were the reasons behind the formation of the community?
As mentioned in the introduction, the idea behind the formation of the community was to have it as a utopian community. This community believed that that Jesus Christ had already returned in the year 70. At this point, it is important to note that the year 70 is a term used to refer to any year where the first day is a Monday, according to the Gregorian calendar. Logically, the next step will be to find out when the last year 70 was before 1848. This was ten years earlier (1838). It is therefore arguable that the members of this community thought that Jesus Christ returned in 1838. From this understanding/thought they thought it possible for them to bring Christ’s millennial kingdom themselves. This is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a paradise on earth (hence utopian) in which “Christ will reign” prior to the final judgment (Revelations 20:1-6). It is for this reason that the community was formed.
Big ideas underlying the community
The community had some principles which they strictly adhered to. One of the principles was the communal way of living. The possession and ownership of property was communal and no individual could claim personal ownership of any thing. There were specified gender roles for the members, there existed a complex marriage system where every male was married to every female in the community and they did not encourage romance, there existed mutual criticism for every member and they advocated for male continence where males were encouraged to avoid ejaculation during intercourse with their partners as a sign of self control.
Successes and failures
The community was successful to some extent in a manner that it spread over to many other cities and the number of members grew up to some extent. By 1878, the community had 306 members compared to the 87 members the community originally had when it was started.
The decline of the community was experienced when the founder John Noyes attempted to pass the mantle to his son Theodore Noyes, who happened to be an atheist. The move eventually divided the community.
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