Distinctives of the Oneida Perfectionists

This essay will provide a brief overview of the distinctive doctrines and practices of the Oneida Perfectionists within the 19th-century utopian movement. In studying the Oneida Community, one of the most striking features is the strong centralization of power in the person of their founder, John Humphrey Noyes. Even in a movement practically defined by charismatic authority figures, the Oneidans absolute commitment to the doctrines of Noyes still sets them apart. 

Noyes was the ultimate arbiter of spiritual authority for most of the group’s history. Therefore, some familiarity with his spiritual journey is essential to understand Oneida’s theology. Consequently, this essay will be as much about him as it will be about the commune as a whole. My source for the narrative account of Noyes’ personal life, unless otherwise cited, is Chris Jennings's Paradise Now.(1) As this essay only aims to examine the fundamental beliefs of the Oneida group, it will not be covering the controversy around Noyes’ leadership in the community’s later years. Those details are the subject of another essay within this project.

Noyes grew up part of a wealthy family in Vermont.(2) Theologically, he was a product of the Great Awakening, having been converted in a revival tent meeting at the age of twenty. Turning away from a budding career in law, he dedicated his life to ministry and decided to attend Andover Theological Seminary and thus join the ministry. Once in Massachusetts however, Noyes clashed badly with the orthodox Calvinism of his seminary, and after a year, he transferred to Yale.

It was at Yale that Noyes first encountered the doctrine of perfectionism. Christian perfectionism is the belief that it is possible for believers to attain a state of moral perfection or complete sanctification in this life. For most proponents of this doctrine, their conviction was based on the belief that Jesus’ second coming had already occurred at some point in the past.(3) The implication then was, that because Jesus’ redemptive work was finished and the new millennium was upon us, through faith in Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, believers could truly overcome sin and live a life of perfect obedience to God's will. 

Noyes was captivated by perfectionism doctrine from the outset.(4) While most proponents of the doctrine were content to merely affirm the attainability of earthly perfection, Noyes was not. He believed that sinless perfection was the reality of the Christian life. His conviction was grounded in scripture. 1 John 3:8 states that “He that committeth sin is of the devil”, this was a clear indication for Noyes that Christians were immune to sin. For several years, the now 23-year-old Noyes traveled around the East Coast, visiting and preaching among different perfectionist groups. It was at this time that he first encountered the Shakers, as they, like all the utopian societies, espoused a form of perfectionism as well. Although he loved their practice of communism, he thought their theology to be overly legalistic. Over time, Noyes gained a following of his own, including some of his own siblings. Following the death of his father in 1841, Noyes and his siblings pooled their inheritance and bought a property near their hometown of Putney, New York, forming a church based on Christian communism.

While still at Yale, a few years earlier, Noyes had fallen in love with and begun courting a young woman there. Owing to his unorthodox and scandalous religious beliefs, the girl’s family talked her out of the relationship. Now, six years later in Putney, Noyes heard that his former love had married another man. This triggered some existential soul-searching for the young man, and the result was a life-changing spiritual insight. Marriage, Noyes proclaimed, had no place in the Christian millennium. Or, as he put it elsewhere, “Exclusiveness, jealousy, quarreling have no place at the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Ironically, Noyes used the same scriptural reference(5) the Shakers used as a call to celibacy to support his own theory that sex should be open but non-monogamous within the church. 

For several years, Noyes’ ideas on sexuality remained confined to theory. In another ironic twist, he ended up getting married only a year after his new revelation. Despite this turn of events, Noyes's conviction had not swayed. His new wife was a devoted follower of his teachings, and the two had married under the agreement that there were to be no restrictions on either of their extramarital affections. As time passed, Noyes continued to reflect on the potential for a community based on non-monogamous marriage. In 1846, he and his wife invited another couple from their group of followers to join their open marriage. The practice, which Noyes dubbed “complex marriage”, quickly became popular among their followers, and eventually, the whole community embraced it.

From the beginning, complex marriage lived up to its name. The boundaries were very well-defined. While individuals could be involved in multiple relationships simultaneously, each coupling was limited to a heterosexual pair and typically lasted for weeks or months. Besides being fully consensual for both sides, every potential coupling had to be approved by Noyes. Maintaining transparency was a key concern, as it prevented couples from developing exclusive and ‘jealous’ love, which was considered sinful. This highly structured system of relational management proved remarkably effective at cultivating a strong sense of communal loyalty while preventing problematic exclusive relationships.

With sexuality being such a major part of their identity in an age before effective birth control was commonly available, it is unsurprising that the topic was a key concern for the Perfectionists. Noyes had a solution for this as well. Male continence was a pivotal piece of the Perfectionists' sexual worldview. Early in their marriage, before complex marriage had been instituted, Harriet Holton Noyes had suffered a series of four failed pregnancies. The trauma of these experiences led her husband to the work of Robert Dale Owen.(6) Owen believed that there were two distinct reasons that humans sought sex: pleasure and reproduction. He believed that if reproduction was not the goal, then the man should refrain from bringing himself to climax. Noyes was intrigued by this idea, but at the time he was also intrigued by the Shaker doctrine of sexual abstinence. For the Perfectionists, he ultimately discovered a middle path. In his words, where the Shakers chose self-denial, he instead chose a system of self-control. Outside of intentional reproduction, men in the Perfectionist commune would not bring themselves to climax. This required a great deal of discipline and self-control for men, and it is therefore astonishing, and it is perhaps a testament to the conviction of self-denial within the community, that male continence is never depicted as problematic in Perfectionist primary sources. 

Noyes considered this one practice to be the single most important innovation of the community.(7) It brought a critical aspect of self-denial to complex marriage that would otherwise have lent the system ripe to abuse by sensual overindulgence. Simultaneously, it still allowed free expression of sexuality without the risk of undue pregnancies. In tandem with the community’s careful management of reproductive sex, this dramatically reduced the number of pregnancies within Perfectionist culture, which in turn minimized the impact of familial bonds competing with the values of communal loyalty and self-denial. The practice remained the central pillar of the complex marriage doctrine for the entirety of the Perfectionists’ history. 

With the popularity of complex marriage among his disciples, Noyes was emboldened to begin developing a comprehensive theology around it. He began to see the radical self-denial within communism and complex marriage as a complete practical doctrine. With his earlier-mentioned conviction that Christ’s second coming was already fulfilled, he had the freedom to declare many Christian doctrines obsolete. Therefore he saw traditional Christian sacraments such as baptism or communion as outdated and unnecessary for spiritual growth, and the Perfectionists didn’t practice them. Furthermore, they saw no need to observe Sunday Sabbaths, believing instead that every day was a day of rest. Instead, the Oneida community's pursuit of "sinless perfection" through self-denial served as the guiding principle of their spiritual existence.

In the early years, John Noyes encouraged his disciples to refrain from publicizing details of the community’s religious practices. But as the community grew, publicity proved inevitable. Unsurprisingly, the Putney community’s strange lifestyle proved to be very unpopular with their neighbors. Noyes was eventually arrested for adultery. He was released on bail, but after discovering that numerous members of his community had received similar warrants, the entire community fled the area. After several months, Noyes and his remaining communists moved to Oneida, New York in 1848 and founded the Oneida Community, which was the primary home for the Perfectionists until their ultimate dissolution in 1881.

For Noyes, the fresh start in Oneida was an incredible opportunity to create the ideal environment for the practical expression of Christian Perfectionism. Instead of creating a village or commune as was the norm for American utopian societies, the Perfectionists opted to build the Oneida Community Mansion House. This massive stone mansion, planted right in the middle of the Oneida property, would quickly become one of the most iconic features of the community. Its unique design held several advantages for the community. First, it was a practical solution to the challenges of communal living, as having everyone in one building made it easier to share resources, coordinate activities, and maintain a sense of community. Second, it reflected the group's belief in the importance of equality, as all members, regardless of status or occupation, lived in the same building. Finally, it allowed Noyes and the community architects to create a blueprint meticulously tailored to the eccentricities of a society based on complex marriage. 

Every aspect of the house was fashioned to this end. Numerous sitting rooms and libraries were scattered throughout the house, providing members with a variety of social meeting spaces to mingle. Each sitting room had sightlines to the doors of bedroom wings located beyond, so no sexual meeting could escape the net of social accountability. Bedrooms were narrow, deep, and only lightly furnished, so as to quell any temptation to use them as a social space conducive to the formation of private cliques. A large dining hall served the entire community, and the mansion was filled with all manner of other amenities including a grand meeting hall, Turkish baths, a library, and an entire wing dedicated to a full-time daycare, complete with its own children’s dining hall.(8)

It is worth highlighting one final distinction of the Perfectionists from the broader utopian communal movement. The process of “mutual criticism” was another important piece that held the Perfectionist community together. Every Sunday, members of the Oneida community would gather into groups of 10 to 15 individuals in the various meeting spaces spread throughout the mansion. They would then seat themselves in a circle and each in turn sit silently as the rest of the group took turns meticulously examining and discussing his or her character, personality, strengths, weaknesses, and faults. As intimidating as it sounds, this practice of mutual criticism was incredibly effective at keeping disgruntled or unruly community members in line and generally maintaining the group’s social cohesion.(9)

As I have pointed out in other essays, for other utopian communes divine revelation in a group setting was an important component of their disciplinary system. The Shakers and Amana, in particular, have well-documented accounts of divine revelation coming to members during their worship meetings, calling individuals to repentance for sin, or a higher standard of piety. While mutual criticism was decidedly less mystical than the God-given revelation of the other groups, it ultimately served the same end for the Perfectionists. Because of their conviction that each individual member was attaining perfection through Christ, the criticisms and exhortations of their fellow community members held the same spiritual authority to them as the revelations and testimonies of their utopian counterparts did in their context. Thus, in Oneida, we observe a distinctive variation of the prevalent pattern within the utopian movement, characterized by a significant emphasis on communal discipline as a means of social reinforcement.

In conclusion, it is clear that Oneida as a commune was, more heavily than any other utopian groups, theologically molded by the spiritual experiences of its founder. Through their practice of complex marriage, which rejected the exclusivity of monogamy, and their adherence to male continence, the Perfectionists sought to cultivate a sense of self-denial and eliminate the potential conflicts of familial bonds. Additionally, the practice of mutual criticism, although less mystical than divine revelation experienced by other groups, served as a powerful tool for maintaining social cohesion and reinforcing the spiritual authority of their fellow community members. Overall, the Oneida Perfectionists' distinctive approach to communal living and their unwavering commitment to the convictions of John Humphrey Noyes made them a remarkable and controversial presence within the utopian movement.

(1) Jennings, Chris, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. (New York, Random House, 2016.), 293-328. Accessed via Kindle

(2) On his mother’s side, he was the cousin of Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th President of the United States.

(3) Among the utopians, the Shakers believed Christ’s second coming was fulfilled through their founder Ann Lee, Noyes instead believed this event had happened in 70 AD, at the fall of Jerusalem.

(4) Olin, Spencer C. “The Oneida Community and the Instability of Charismatic Authority,” The Journal of American History Volume 67 No.2 (September 1980): 288

(5) Matthew 22:23-30

(6) Robert Dale Owen (Jr.) was the son of Robert Owen, founder of the Owenites, another utopian communal group.

(7) Noyes, John Humphrey. Male Continence. Second Edition. Oneida, N. Y.: (Office of the American Socialist, 1877). 21

(8) Hayden, Dolores. Seven American utopias : the architecture of communitarian socialism. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976). 200-219

(9) Robertson, Constance Noyes, compiler. Oneida Community : an autobiography, 1851-1876. (Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press 1970) 128-134