Oneida Community: Did Biblical Movements Affect Group's Gender Behaviors?

Oneida Community started in the 1840s, an intentional community that consisted of men and women who were there to glorify their God through their lifestyle. Bible communism and perfectionism were the main tenets of this intentional community.

The society, based out of the reform period and also specifically the burnt over district was primarily the result of John Noyes's leadership. Fogarty (1994) summarized excellently the issues that they addressed: family planning, child care, women's rights, adult education, job diversification, and the problem of maintaining the communal family that had replace the nuclear family (p. 4). The community contended that they addressed the inequities that women had faced in the United States in the 19th century regarding their gender and sexual roles. Social scientists who take the position of admiration, unfavorable, or neither don't agree with each other if women's conditions were improved. Since the beginnings of Oneida, the practices of liberating women from suppressive gender and sexual expectations were progressive, considering the mixed evaluations of true achievement.

In the area of reform, the perfectionism movement started to arise in the United States, approximately in the decade of 1820s. Theodore Parker, critic of the perfectionist movement and distinguished clergyman said it was their aim to:

"create a society full of industry and abundance, full of wisdom, virtue, and the poetry of life; a state with unity among all, with freedom for each; a church without tyranny, a society without ignorance, want, or crime, a state without oppression; yes, a world with no war among the nations to consume the work of their hands, and no restrictive policy to hinder the welfare of mankind."

Historians further contend that he also noted that they created havoc by their means of creating this perfect society (Blum, McFeely, Morgan, Schelsinger, Stampp, & Woodward, 1993, p. 259).