Women's roles in Utopian Communities

Marcus Wollman

Dr. Leaman

HIS-406c

5/10/23

A common theme that has been observed in modern studies of the 19th-century American Utopianists is their remarkable openness to pushing the boundaries of traditional gender norms, and even having women hold positions of spiritual authority. While the observation largely holds, a close study of the individual movements shows that their egalitarianism had notable limits. In this essay, I will explore the development of women’s rights in three of the most prominent Utopian groups, the Shakers, Amana Inspirationists, and the Oneida Perfectionists. I will attempt to demonstrate that while these groups did gradually push beyond the gender norms of their time, these developments were primarily driven by their views on spiritual authority. Furthermore, these gradual shifts were fraught with difficulty, usually met significant resistance within their own communes, and ultimately, the gender equality that emerged within these societies was still significantly limited in its scope. 

For the Utopians, the essence of Christian life was living in holiness. They believed that every soul was equally valuable to God. When coupled with their belief that God speaks through the church body, this effectively translated into a strong conviction that women had equally much to contribute to the spiritual life of the church as men did. In groups that relied on prophetic revelation, such as the Shakers, Oneida, and the Amana commune, women were treated as equals within the community’s church life. Due to the Utopianists’ belief that their physical or secular endeavors were inseparable from their spiritual lives, it is only natural that this sense of equality extended into all aspects of their community. In the following paragraphs, I will demonstrate what theological and historical factors each community’s convictions were grounded in, and how this saw fruition in their community life. 

In these societies, their egalitarian position on women’s rights finds its root in one key religious conviction: All of these societies believed that God could transmit divine revelation to the church through any member of the church body. These revelations, or inspirations as they were often called, were one of the primary methods by which the communes practiced discipline. Revelations of sin, shortcomings, or exhortations directed to other members were a regular occurrence during Amana, Shaker, and Oneidan worship services. Frequently, women would receive and deliver inspirations to which a man was the subject of admonishment, and this reality inspired a strong sense of confidence in women to assert themselves in community life. 

Shaker Society

The formation of the Society of Shakers is broadly considered the beginning of the American Utopianism movement. They began from a single house-church in New England and had grown to over 3000 members across nearly eighteen communities by the time the next major utopianist group formed in 1824. 

The Shakers are an excellent case study into the dynamics of women’s roles for various reasons. First, they are the logical place to start because they are the oldest group within the movement by a significant margin. Second, they were not only founded by a woman but were also led by women at multiple points in their history. Third and most importantly, the role of women carried intense theological significance for them. In Shaker theology, Jesus was the personification of the male form of God, and their founder Ann Lee was his counterpart in the female form. This was the backbone of their theological framework, and it was instrumental to the development of women’s role in their society.

The society was formed when Ann Lee began meeting with a small group of followers in a house church in rural New England. They preached that the “Spirit of Christ” had come down from heaven onto Ann Lee, and this heralded the beginning of the Christian millennium prophesied in Revelation.(1) Their worship services, from which the group earned its name, were fittingly wild and chaotic. There were no sermons or clergy, instead, their meetings consisted of spontaneous outbursts of ecstatic dancing, singing, and prophesying brought on by the Holy Spirit moving through the congregation. 

It took a considerable amount of time for the Shakers to standardize and codify their doctrine of Ann Lee’s divinity. The entire process began largely out of necessity for a unified message as the growing movement spread across New England following Lee’s death.(2) Ann Lee had been illiterate, and during her tenure as the group’s primary leader, there had subsequently been very little value placed on the written word. In many ways, early Shakerism was an oral religion. Most of the readers of this essay will very likely have grown up in and be primarily familiar with Christian denominations that ground their spiritual authority primarily and often solely on the Bible. For the most part, this was not true of the American Utopian movements. Starting with the Shakers in the very beginning, most of these groups grounded their source of spiritual authority in divine revelation. I will explore the implications of this further in another section. For our purpose here, it is sufficient to point out that while Ann Lee was alive, she was the primary source of spiritual authority for the Shaker community. Due in part to her illiteracy, and partly to a widespread conviction that the eschaton was imminent, Lee and her Shaker followers saw little reason to ensure that Shaker doctrine would be sustainable beyond her lifetime. Despite her enthusiasm and conviction for the imminence of the eschaton, as the years went by, it became painfully obvious her assurance was misplaced. Lee passed away in 1784, leaving the leadership of the Shaker movement to one of her close confidantes, James Whittaker. 

For reasons that remain unclear, Whittaker was only head elder for a very short time before passing on the role to a fellow Shaker named Joseph Meacham. Meacham’s eldership was the catalyst for significant shifts in Shaker society. In contrast to Lee’s chaotic and fiery spontaneity, Meacham was much more systematic and organized. He began a process of codifying Shaker doctrine, which would lay the groundwork for ensuring the movement’s longevity for over 200 years. 

In 1787, some 3 years after Lee’s death, Meacham received a vision directing him to establish a system of ‘joint parentage’.(3) With this system, the position of head elder would be split into two, one male and one female, and together they would assume leadership of the Shaker church. For the Shakers, this system ensured a better representation of their belief in the male/female duality of God than a single elder could. The system was hierarchical, so Meacham would remain the primary leader while the female elder would play a supporting role. He chose a woman named Lucy Wright for the position. 

Little is known about Wright before this point, and it is therefore not immediately clear why she was chosen. Although she had joined the Shakers quite early after their move to America, she was never in Ann Lee’s inner circle or even particularly close to her. In many ways, the two women were polar opposites. Lee was the daughter of an English factory worker who had grown up in poverty and abuse. Her language was rough, and her personality was harsh and even abrasive. Wright, on the other hand, came from an upper-class New England family and had a high value for proper conduct and good social graces. Considering the similarities between Meacham and Wright, it’s probable that along with her lengthy history with the Shakers, these personality factors were a key reason he selected her as his counterpart. 

Just before his death in 1796, Meacham made a controversial decision to have Wright, rather than his male replacement, succeed him as head elder. This decision saw significant pushback from different parts of the Shaker community. However, Wright persevered and was able to navigate through these controversies and remained the Shaker’s primary elder for the rest of her life. Her tenure, like her predecessor’s, was one of innovation, but her legacy would ultimately do much to ensure the longevity of the movement.

While many aspects of Shaker society still operated under clearly defined traditional gender roles, the legacy of Lee and Wright did much to ensure a spirit of equality permeated the movement for the rest of its two-hundred-year history. Wright’s ordination in particular solidified a practice of dual leadership that became the model for every Shaker commune. Thus, the persistent presence of women as authority figures throughout Shaker society fostered an atmosphere where women felt much freer to assert themselves and stand for their rights. By the early 19th century, this culture of gender egalitarianism was firmly cemented in their society. And it proved to be influential as other religious groups sought inspiration from the Shakers in looking to create their own utopian societies.

Amana Inspirationists

The Inspirationists of Amana lived in a collection of 7 villages in east-central Iowa. They were a German-speaking group with roots in the German Pietist movement. They immigrated to the US in 1842 and founded their Iowa colonies 14 years later. The Inspirationists are arguably the least egalitarian of the three groups we study in this essay. This is due in part to their more isolationist lifestyle, and the more limited opportunities for both men and women to actively participate in the delivery of divine revelation within the community.

The history of women’s equality in Amana contains key parallels to that of the Shakers. Most importantly, both societies highly valued celibacy. The Inspirationists were not as dogmatic as the Shakers on this issue, while they strongly discouraged marriage, they still allowed it. A second similarity is the strong role that influential female leaders played in generating a culture of equality. Finally, both groups had a measured egalitarianism that was predominantly visible in their religious lives. Within the day-to-day lives of their members, these societies still mostly practiced traditional gender roles, with men performing the majority of physical labor and industry, while women handled housekeeping, food preparation, childcare, etc. 

Unlike the Shaker Colonies, in Amana, divine revelation was received in a much more limited scope than in the Shaker Society. Only a few members of the Society of Inspirationists received revelations, these members were called Werkzeug (instrument of the Lord). This is not to imply that the Inspirationists were protective or controlling of the “gift of inspiration” as they called it. In reality, their elders sought to discover and cultivate the gift in any members of their community that it might manifest. This eagerness, and even eventual desperation, is especially evident in sources from the later years of the society when they experienced extended decades without a Werkzeug to provide authoritative spiritual leadership.(4) But we’re running ahead of ourselves. The Werkzeug, being the conduit through which God provided guidance to the community, were effectively the highest authority in Amana. A central council of elders assembled from the group’s seven villages ran the oversaw the domestic affairs of the community, and in spiritual matters functioned primarily as an advisory council to the Werkzeug.(5) Thanks to the Inspirationist’s vigilance in recording every revelation the Werkzeug delivered, it is possible today to develop detailed insights into the nature of divine revelation within the Amana Society.

One Werkzeug, Barbara Landmann, is especially noteworthy not only because she served as the group’s only Werkzeug for several decades, but she was also the last the community ever had. Her tenure was not without controversy. I have done a more comprehensive analysis of the early part years of her time as Werkzeug here. For this topic, it is enough to note that she was at one point excommunicated, but returned and became a Werkzeug a second time alongside Christian Metz, the most prominent Werkzeug in the movement’s history. Her legacy is a good source to highlight some tensions around women’s authority that existed in the Amana community.

After her return to the office, historians have noted that there is a distinct difference between the authority that Landmann and Metz wielded. There were constant tensions between Landmann and the elders of the community. Some even flatly refused to heed her revelations. Metz was continuously acting as a mediator between Landmann and the elders, but Landmann’s role as a Werkzeug continued to decline. For the last few years of his life, Metz received all the revelations that had significant spiritual or practical implications for the church, while Landmann’s revelations were relegated to the more domestic and individual aspects of their spiritual lives.(6) After Metz’s death, Landmann became the group’s sole Werkzeug. The next 23 years marked a notable decline in the influence of divine revelation throughout the society. The council of elders, which (in keeping with the gender norms of the time) was notably open only to men, began to take a much more prominent role in the community’s administration. At the same time, Landmann’s revelations became predominantly relegated to worship services on important religious holidays. When she died in 1883, the Amana elders had not yet found another Werkzeug, despite diligently watching their society for any signs of the inspirational gift. The elders attributed this to a rising spirit of worldliness and spiritual apathy within the society. Without their inspired leadership, the community elders struggled to keep the society from drifting for another 50 years before finally officially disbanding communism in 1932.

Oneida Perfectionists

The Oneida Perfectionists were a radically different community than the two we have looked at so far, but I will address the similarities first. The religious practices of Oneida shared a common emphasis with those of Amana and the Shaker communes. Like the former two groups, Oneida’s religious gatherings were centered on divine revelation, which was used as a means of encouraging members to pursue more holy and selfless lives. In terms of revelation, the Perfectionists fell into the same camp as the Shakers, believing that divine revelation was open to everyone. One of the key practices of their society was an activity they called ‘mutual criticism’. Once a week, the community would break into small groups of ten or twenty individuals, each group would gather in a circle and take turns meticulously criticizing the character of each member in turn. While this practice sounds intimidating and off-putting to most people, it was held in high regard by the community as one of the key practices that drew their members together as a group. Much like the similar but less intense practices outlined in the other two communities, the fact that women were equal participants in this activity fostered a sense of egalitarianism that permeated their society.

Despite the similarities, the biggest factor in women’s autonomy in Oneida is found in their differences. While Amana and the Shakers practiced celibacy and Amana strongly encouraged it, Oneida took the opposite extreme.(7) Oneida practiced a system that they called ‘complex marriage’, in which every member of their community was married to every other member of the opposite sex. The details and theological underpinnings of this bizarre arrangement are the subjects of another essay, but for the topic at hand, two primary aspects are relevant. First, exclusive monogamous relationships were forbidden. Second, individuals were generally engaged in multiple ongoing relationships at any given time, with an average duration of about 3 months. This system had significant implications on the role of women in their community. As an article in their monthly journal describes, complex marriage created a society where women were never ruled over by men, as was the case in traditional marriage. Instead, the system created a dynamic of continuous courtship, in which both sexes had to continuously cultivate the desire and affection of the other.(8) This was the biggest contributor to the sense of autonomy and personal agency that was characteristic of women in the Oneida commune. 

Another important piece of the Oneida Community’s egalitarianism was their unique view of the duality of God. The Oneidans claimed that the prevailing view was that the male and female aspects of God were wisdom and love, respectively. Noyes, however, claimed that the proper way to think of male/female duality was as power and wisdom.(9) In practice, this opened the Oneidans to see women as more effective workers in a wide variety of different traditionally male occupational roles throughout their community. Noyes himself was hopeful women would eventually take over their entire education program (although his son’s autobiography reveals that this dream was never realized). Oneidan records do reveal however that women were actively engaged in many of their industries, including the silk business, their greenhouse, library, publishing house, and much of their accounting.(10)

Conclusion

As these examples demonstrate, gender equality in the utopian movement was in a constant state of evolution throughout the movement’s history. While each of these groups did significantly challenge the gender norms of their contemporary society, the limited scope of their gender equality, internal struggles, and unique circumstances demonstrate the gravity with which these changes developed. Notably, despite the looser stance on women’s roles throughout the movement, the voice of women is still largely missing from the primary sources. In light of these points, it is important to recognize that portraying the utopian societies as pioneers of women’s rights is rather reductionistic and can very easily be overstated.

(1)  Jennings, Chris. Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. New York: Random House, 2016. 32.

(2) Humez, Jean. Mother’s First Born Daughters. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 69

(3) Ibid. 66

(4) Yambura, Barbara. A Change And A Parting. Rochester, NY: Penfield Books; 2nd edition 2022. 183

(5) Andelson, Jonathan G. “Routinization of Behavior in a Charismatic Leader.” American Ethnologist 7, no. 4 (1980): 719. Accessed April 3, 2023. http://www.jstor.org/stable/643478.

(6) Ibid. 726

(7) The Amana colonies idealized celibacy, but they still allowed their members to remain married and maintain nuclear families. More details on this topic are available in another essay within this project.

(8) New York Heritage Digital Collections. Oneida - Madison County - New York. “An Oneida Journal” (2). Women and Gender in the Oneida Community, 1848-1959. Accessed April 1, 2022. https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll170/id/117/rec/11

(9) New York Heritage Digital Collections. Oneida - Madison County - New York. “The Place Of a Woman.: Home-talk”. Women and Gender in the Oneida Community, 1848-1959. Accessed April 1, 2022. https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll170/id/142/rec/13

(10) New York Heritage Digital Collections. Oneida - Madison County - New York. “Community Gossip. (1)”. Women and Gender in the Oneida Community, 1848-1959. Accessed April 1, 2022. https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll170/id/136/rec/21