The Oneida Community belongs to the class of religious Socialisms, and, so far as we know, is the only religious Community of American origin. Its founder and most of its members are descendants of New England Puritans, and were in early life converts and laborers in the Revivals of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches. As Unitarianism ripened into Transcendentalism at Boston, and Transcendentalism produced Brook Farm, so Orthodoxy ripened into Perfectionism at New Haven, and Perfectionism produced the Oneida Community.
The story of the founder and foundations of the Oneida Community, told in the fewest possible words, is this:
John Humphrey Noyes was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1811. The great Finney Revival found him at twenty years of age, a college graduate, studying law, and sent him to study divinity, first at Andover and afterward at New Haven. Much study of the Bible, under the instructions of Moses Stuart, Edward Robinson and Nathaniel Taylor, and under the continued and increasing influence of the Revival afflatus, soon landed him in a new experience and new views of the way of salvation, which took the name of Perfectionism. This was in February, 1834. The next twelve years he spent in studying and teaching salvation from sin; chiefly at Putney, the residence of his father and family. Gradually a little school of believers gathered around him. His first permanent associates were his mother, two sisters, and a brother. Then came the wives of himself and his brother, and the husbands of his two sisters. Then came George Cragin and his family from New York, and from time to time other families and individuals from various places. They built a chapel, and devoted much of their time to study, and much of their means to printing. So far, however, they were not in form or theory Socialists, but only Revivalists. In fact, during the whole period of the Fourier excitement, though they read the Harbinger and the Present and watched the movement with great interest, they kept their position as simple believers in Christianity, and steadfastly criticised Fourierism. Nevertheless during these same years they were gradually and almost unconsciously evolving their own social theory, and preparing for the trial of it. Though they rejected Fourierism, they drank copiously of the spirit of the Harbinger and of the Socialists; and have always acknowledged that they received a great impulse from Brook Farm. Thus the Oneida Community really issued from a conjunction between the Revivalism of Orthodoxy and the Socialism of Unitarianism. In 1846, after the fire at Brook Farm, and when Fourierism was manifestly passing away, the little church at Putney began cautiously to experiment in Communism. In the fall of 1847, when Brook Farm was breaking up, the Putney Community was also breaking up, but in the agonies, not of death, but of birth. Putney conservatism expelled it, and a Perfectionist Community, just begun at Oneida under the influence of the Putney school, received it.
The story of the Community since it thus assumed its present name and form, has been told in various Annual Reports, Hand-books, and even in the newspapers and Encyclopædias, till it is in some sense public property. In the place of repeating it here, we will endeavor to give definite information on three points that are likely to be most interesting to the intelligent reader; viz: 1, the religious theory of the Community; 2, its social theory; and 3, its material results.
As the early experiences of the Community were of two kinds, religious and social, so each of these experiences produced a book. The religious book, called The Berean, was printed at Putney in 1847, and consisted mainly of articles published in the periodicals of the Putney school during the previous twelve years. The socialistic book, called Bible Communism, was published in 1848, a few months after the settlement at Oneida, and was the frankest possible disclosure of the theory of entire Communism, for which the Community was then under persecution. Both of these books have long been out of print. Our best way to give a faithful representation of the religious and social theories of the Community in the shortest form, will be, to rehearse the contents of these books.
[Table of Contents of The Berean slightly expanded.]
Chapter I. The Bible: showing that it is the accredited organ of the Kingdom of Heaven, and justifying faith in it by demonstrating, 1, that Christ endorsed the Old Testament; and 2, that the writers of the New Testament were the official representatives of Christ, so that his credit is identified with theirs.
II. Infidelity among Reformers: tracing the history of the recent quarrel with the Bible in this country.
III. The Moral Character of Unbelief: showing that it is voluntary and criminal.