Bible Communism

During the period between 1832 and 1838 John Humphrey Noyes traveled the northeast. He met and argued with other Perfectionists. He wrote exhaustively. He read the Bible daily.


He slowly became convinced that all other Perfectionists and indeed all other millenarians misunderstood the Biblical prophesy of the coming end times in one crucial way. They believed on Judgment day that the righteous would be lifted up into heaven. During the period leading up to Judgment the righteous need to pray and strive to live a moral life. Other than that they simply need to wait for the appointed time.


Noyes did not believe in waiting. His Bible study convinced him that the millennial process was to be gradual. In his view, Perfectionists who had experienced salvation from sin could and should begin to immediately live a life identical to life in heaven. This example of a perfect life would be an inspiration to others. Once all sinless persons adopted a heavenly life-style, heaven would be the reality on a transformed earth. Here's how Noyes describes the process:

“It is clear from the New Testament descriptions that the New Jerusalem is not a city to be hereafter instituted, but one long ago established, the place into which the primitive saints passed either by death or by change at the second coming, and where they met the Father, Son and holy angels. This organization is to be revealed ultimately in this world. Its distinctive character when revealed will not be changed. It will still be the home of angels and just men made perfect, entirely exempt from sin and death. Yet it does not appear that it will at once embrace the whole population of the world. On the contrary John represents it as a city standing in the midst of nations, assessable to them and shedding its healing influence over them, but not including them within its walls.”

Even though Noyes was an inspired and even mystical thinker, he was a realist. He believed it would take many years for the Perfectionist “heaven on earth” to grow and be accepted. When pressed to estimate the time this process would take he opined it would take less than 300 to 400 years. He felt certain, however, that once he understood what life would be like in heaven, he could convince his most inspired followers to begin living that life.

The New Testament became his guide. He clearly understood that the one thing God required of all believers was selflessness. It is individual egoism that leads to sin and all the vices. To live a life free of sin required that the ego be sacrificed. Noyes is squarely in the Protestant main-stream in seeing the essential message of the New Testament as an argument against personal ego and in favor of love of mankind. Where he goes with that belief is what sets him apart.


He carefully studied the practical advice in the writings of Jesus' Apostles as well as the teachings of Paul to the early Christian churches. Here he discovers what he called “Bible Communism.” We must remember that when Noyes composed his early writings, Karl Marx was unknown in America and had not yet published the Communist Manifesto (1848). The word “Communism” would not assume its full contemporary connotation for almost a century. For Noyes “Bible Communism” meant totally renouncing all claims of ownership, both over things and over people.


Noyes' argument is spelled out in the early publications of the Oneida Community roughly as follows:

"We hold - 1, That all the systems of property-getting in vogue in the world, are forms of what is vulgarly called the 'grab-game,' i.e., the game in which the prizes are not distributed by any rules of wisdom and justice, but are seized by the strongest and craftiest and that the laws of the world simply give rules, more or less civilized, for the conduct of this game.”

“The Association believes that in the kingdom of heaven 'every man will be rewarded according to his works' with far greater exactness than is done in the kingdoms of this world; but it does not believe that money is the currency in which rewards are to be distributed and accounts balanced. Its idea is that love is the appropriate reward of labor; that in a just spiritual medium, every individual, by the fixed laws of attraction, will draw around him an amount of love exactly proportioned to his intrinsic value and efficiency, and thus that all accounts will be punctually and justly balanced without the complicated and cumbersome machinery of book-keeping.”

Noyes believed the first step to ending egoism is an end to private property. He saw all proper ownership as communal co-ownership with God. He believed that abolition of private property and establishment of totally communal property would abolish “the curse of excessive labor.” He went further, however, and held that an end to egoism, if allowed its full scope, would not only abolish private property but also abolish property in persons. He believed St. Paul expressly placed property in goods and property in persons in the same category, and spoke of them together as being abolished by the coming of the Kingdom of God.


For Noyes ownership of persons only incidentally included the institution of slavery. His primary concern was with the institution of marriage. Noyes found adequate Biblical evidence that in the Kingdom of God marriage does not exist, but his search of the Bible revealed no evidence that sex and procreation does not exist in heaven. Because of this fact, he believed a new relationship of men and women is required, totally free of ownership and of what Noyes would later term the “special love” of just one person for one other. Furthermore, he knew first-hand that exclusiveness in marriage poses unfair challenges to women, chief among which was “the curse of excessive childbearing.”


In short he believed the practical object of Perfectionism was “to break up the worldly social system and establish true sexual and industrial relations.” Here's Noyes' summary of the project of the Oneida Perfectionists:

“We can now see our way to victory over death. Reconciliation with God opens the way for reconciliation of the sexes. Reconciliation of the sexes excludes shame, and opens the way for Bible Communism. Bible Communism increases strength, diminishes work, and makes work attractive. Thus the antecedents of death are removed. First we abolish sin, then shame, then the curse on woman of exhausting childbearing, then the curse on man of excessive labor, and so we arrive regularly at the tree of life.”

The story of how Bible Communism became a reality for nearly half a century began with a small band of followers in Putney, VT in about 1840 and continued at Oneida, NY after 1848 until about 1880. As will be seen, there were ample examples of how one might abolish private property. There were few examples of how to abolish marriage. For that reason, I will take a closer look at the argument for abolishing marriage in my next posts.

Perfectionism

John Humphrey Noyes was an intensely intellectual person living in a time when almost all moral discourse was framed in religious terms. It is not surprising, therefore, when Noyes thought about the social and personal upheavals of his time he did so in a religious framework. I assume he got the fundamentals of his religious education when attending Dartmouth College (Class of 1830). In the period before the civil war, a college education was basically a religious education. Any “philosophical” education was conducted personally by the college president and was designed to indoctrinate students with the basics of that distinguished clergyman's personal religious outlook.

Like most old New England colleges, Dartmouth was founded by a Congregational minister (Eleazer Wheelock) and remained firmly a Congregational institution when Noyes was there. At the core of the Congregational faith was a belief in the essential sinfulness of all humans and in salvation by grace alone. Perhaps the most eloquent expression of this belief can be found in Jonathan Edwards' 1741 sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/je-sinners.htm

Put simply, this doctrine holds it is impossible for humans not to sin. Even though a person may know God's laws and faithfully try to do what is right, failure is inevitable. Despite this fact, God still judges certain persons worthy of salvation and sends them to heaven after death. Others will be damned. The choice is God's alone and cannot be known during a person's life. In this view, the intention and effort to always do what is right is no guarantee of salvation. The believer must work hard to do good all his or her life, aware of the inevitability of committing some sin, with no sense of whether he or she will be saved in the end. The role of the Church is to guide the faithful, hopefully maximizing their chances of salvation.

This issue received a new formulation in the 18^th century by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804). Kant called the Christian belief in original sin a “moral puzzle.” He held that a fundamental principle of all morality is that “ought” implies “can.” Kant did not believe it made sense to claim we have a moral obligation to act in a certain way if, in the practical world, it is impossible to perform such acts. In his view, valid moral rules cannot require more than we are able to give.

John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of the Methodist Church, also believed that God's laws for living a moral life could not require behavior that is not attainable. He preached that any human being, who truly devoted him or her self to live a moral life, could live a “perfect” life without sin. He spells out this view in some detail in A Plain Account of Christian Perfectionism (1725). He recognized the reality that humans dwell in a corruptible body marked by a thousand defects arising from ignorance, infirmities, and so on. In his view, a truly devout person who loves God with all one's heart, soul, and mind has the ability to live without deliberate sin.

In Wesley's formulation, achieving the state of “perfection” is accomplished by a religious conversion experience followed by a revelation of personal salvation. During conversion a person is freed from the outward sins he or she committed in the past. Salvation allows the believer to transcend the inner limitations of original sin. He exhorted his followers that salvation from sin is not the end of their spiritual search, but the beginning. Once saved, a person still has to strive daily to live a good life.

In 18^th century England and in early 19^th century New England Wesley's views were seen as heresy. It is easy to see why. So long as salvation from sin could only be achieved within the framework of an established church, the existing social order was not threatened. The Church, be it Catholic, Anglican, or Congregational, could largely control society so long as all moral authority emanated from the pulpit. If individuals outside of the church were allowed to believe that personal salvation can be achieved without Church guidance, chaos would reign.

By the time John Humphrey Noyes was attending Yale Theological Seminary the term “perfectionism” was shorthand for a sort of Wesleyan belief in personal salvation from sin. On February 20, 1834, when he stood up in the Free Church of New Haven and declared his personal revelation that he was free of sin, he was actually publicly taking sides against the established religious order. It is little wonder, then, that he quickly lost his license as a Congregational minister.

The interesting question for me is what happens next. The act of taking a public stand against established religion, threw Noyes into an emotional turmoil. His account of his life in the time following his departure from Yale sounds like a description of a nervous breakdown. He moved briefly to New York City and wrestled with what he had done. I'm sure he considered returning to Vermont to work at his father's successful dry goods store or to practice law. In the end he realized he had to share his revelation. He spent the next four years he eked out a meager living as an itinerant perfectionist preacher traveling throughout the settled parts of the northeast from New York City to Vermont.

His efforts to make sense of Kant's “moral puzzle” drove him deeper and deeper into scriptural interpretation. Like many other perfectionists he believed the final days were destined to occur within his lifetime. This belief added urgency to his effort to understand how greater personal moral perfection could be practically achieved. He published his thoughts on these issues in the little religious newspapers he edited, first in The Perfectionist and later The Witness. By 1838 he had collected a small following and his ideas had matured. He returned to his home town of Putney, Vermont, married Harriet Holton, one of his followers, and commenced the process of founding his own religious society.

He had an outline of how to create “heaven on earth.” He was determined.

The Conversion of John Humphrey Noyes

Early on I realized that if I wanted to understand the Oneida Community I had to learn what I could about its visionary leader, John Humphrey Noyes. Older community descendants that I met generally had a favorable impression of him. I assumed their impressions were mostly influenced by their parents, but their parents' generation, if they had known him, had known him only as young children. Some of their grandparents knew Noyes quite well, but the details of that knowledge seemed to me not to have been well preserved.

At the top of the main staircase in the Mansion House hang two portraits in oils: JHN and Harriet Holton, whom he married in 1838, ten years before the Oneida Community was founded. They stare out impassively, formally, not revealing much of themselves.

How then can anyone today understand the character of John Humphrey Noyes? He left an extensive record of his religious beliefs: books, articles, tracts, and pamphlets. He frequently gave lectures and “Home Talks.” As I read through this immense record I kept expecting to encounter something that would clearly reveal his motives or his personality. Noyes wrote about his beliefs in great detail, but he was not often self-reflective. Accordingly, much of what I know of him is conjecture based on his writing and the writings of those who knew him. Today's post focuses on how he came to adopt the core beliefs that ultimately led to the founding of the Oneida Community.

John Humphrey Noyes was born September 3, 1811 in Brattleboro, Vermont. His was a fairly well-to-do family. His father, also named John, owned a general store in Brattleboro called Noyes & Mann and served a term in the US House of Representatives. He was a cousin of Rutherford B. Hayes who would later become President. His mother, Polly Hayes, was sixteen years younger than his father. By all accounts she was a deeply religious woman. She claimed to have prayed before John Humphrey's birth that someday he might become a minister.

Young John H. Noyes apparently did not share his mother's religious devotion. He entered Dartmouth College in 1826 intending to become a lawyer, graduating in 1830. He then apprenticed himself to Larkin G. Mead, Esq. of Chesterfield NH, the husband of Noyes' oldest sister, Mary. As was the custom in those days before the advent of law schools, aspiring lawyers would “read” law for a few years with a practicing lawyer, then start to practice.

The first three decades of the 19^th century was a time of profound social change in America. The population exploded from five to thirty million. The Louisiana Purchase vastly expanded the geographic reach of the nation. The early phases of industrialization began in the northeast. People were on the move. Canals, roads and then railroads crisscrossed the land. Towns and cities grew. Great numbers of people started to migrate west. The course of our relatively new nation had not yet been firmly set. Anything seemed possible.

One result of the uncertainty created by these massive social changes was a new religious fervor. In my view the rise of a new evangelical christianity, generally labeled “perfectionism,” was a response to a new American spirit of optimism and openness to possibility. The dark Congregationalist view of sinners in the hands of an angry God was supplanted by the idea that salvation can be achieved by living a righteous life. Historians call this religious movement, based on the idea of the perfectibility of the individual believer, the Second Great Awakening.

At his mother's urging, Noyes attended a four-day revival meeting in Putney, Vermont, under the ministry of the most famous perfectionist preacher of the time, Charles Grandison Finney. He was just 20 years old when he converted to evangelical Christianity on Sept. 18, 1831. Within the month he had enrolled in the Andover Theological Seminary. Then in August 1832 he transferred to the Yale Theological Seminary, arguably the leading school for religious training in the country. He finished the basic course of study for the ministry in August 1833 and received his license to preach.

While at Yale, Noyes began to question the basic Congregationalist doctrine that everyone is essentially sinful and can only be saved from damnation by the unknowable grace of God. Instead he adopted Finney's view that salvation from sin is accomplished at conversion. Noyes came to believe that God would not expect the impossible from believers, and that the moral perfection God demanded could be accomplished by living a righteous life. Perhaps one of the reasons Noyes adopted this doctrine was the fact that he never could summon up from within himself any genuine feeling of deep guilt or despair that he felt must accompany the reality of original sin.

As part of his Bible studies at Yale, Noyes also reached the conclusion that the second coming of Christ and the final judgment day predicted in the Bible had actually arrived without fanfare in 70 A.D. This conclusion was based on his interpretation of Christ's prediction that the millennium would arrive within one generation. Deriving the date of the millennium from Bible sources was a recurrent theme in revivalist preaching in the early 19^th Century, most famously with the Millerites (the original Seventh Day Adventists). The significance of the belief that the millennium had already occurred was that some part of the population unknowingly had their original sin absolved, and thus they were now spiritually capable of leading lives free from sin.

Noyes had been attending services at the perfectionist-influenced Free Church of New Haven. At the evening service on Feb. 20, 1834 Noyes announced his perfectionist views to the congregation. He confessed that at his conversion he knew he had truly been saved from sin, and that he knew it was possible for persons so converted to lead a life free from sin. In memory of the day Noyes publicly embraced the doctrine of perfectionism, members of the Oneida Community marked February 20 with a celebration called the "high tide of the spirit."

News of Noyes's statements immediately became known throughout the Seminary. In April 1834 he was summoned for questioning. When Noyes would not recant or admit any error, the church authorities revoked his license to preach and expelled him. This prompted Noyes' famous saying, "I have taken away their license to sin and they keep on sinning. They have taken away my license to preach and I keep on preaching."

Between 1834 and 1838 Noyes traveled, preached and wrote extensively. The manner in which he assembled the practical elements of his own version of perfectionism will be the subject of another post.

My First visit

My first visit to the Oneida Community Mansion House was in June 1988. I had arrived in Central New York only a few weeks earlier to seek my fortune as a small town lawyer. I was thirty nine years old. I tried law practice for two years in Vermont, but it turned out not to be right for me. A close friend, EveAnn Shwartz, was the law partner of Paul V. Noyes. She convinced me (and her partners) that it made sense for me to join their three-person law firm on a part-time basis. I moved to Hamilton to help EveAnn operate the satellite office there. Paul ran the main office in Sherrill with Randy Schaal. The second time I met with Paul, he took me to the Mansion House for lunch.

As we drove through the little city of Sherrill, Paul made occasional obscure references to “the Company,” “the CAC” and “the Community.” Since I am something of a history buff, I had a vague recollection of the Oneida Community as one of the more successful 19^th century religious utopian communities that sprung up everywhere just prior to the Civil War. It had not occurred to me that there would be any remnant of this religious community a hundred and fifty years later or that Community buildings were actually located near-by.

We crossed a little bridge. Paul announced we had entered “Kenwood.” He pointed out a little side street curiously called “The Orchard” and the shingled house where he grew up. A grand brick building that looked as though it had been air lifted in from Harvard was identified as “the Sales Office” of Oneida, Ltd, the famous silverware manufacturer. We turned right into a little lane passing woods on the left and a few houses backed by a golf course on the right. We soon drew up behind a very large brick building and entered by the back door. The large room we entered was mostly empty of furniture except for a couple of round tables and built-in benches along two sides under the windows. Paul tossed his hat and coat on a bench and walked over to some pigeon-holes along the inside wall. He checked his slot in the bank of old-fashioned mail boxes next to the bulletin board. Some living room furniture was arranged around a stone fireplace at the far end of the room. Paul gestured at the formal portrait over the mantel and said, “That's old PB, he saved the company.”

We passed through an arch on the right and crossed a small dining room. A couple of older women sat with their lunch at one of the tables. Paul took me over and introduced me to Betty Wayland-Smith and Barb Smith. I don't exactly remember now everyone he introduced me to that day but I seem to remember also meeting Jane Rich and Prue Wayland-Smith. Over the next few years these four lively Community descendents would prove to be valuable guides to me. The day after Thanksgiving this year (2010) I attended the memorial service of Jane Rich, the last of them to pass away.

We pushed through a swinging door and entered the kitchen. We took cafeteria trays and helped ourselves to a hearty salad bar. Behind a counter a cook pointed out what was on offer that day, simple, basic comfort food. As we ate in an alcove off the main dining room, Paul filled me in on some of the basics. He said he was a direct descendant of the founder, John Humphrey Noyes, or JHN as he familiarly referred to him as though he were still lurking about. After lunch Paul took me on a whirlwind walking tour of the house, winding through halls, past a beautiful library, up a wide staircase, past a glass Victorian “curiosity cabinet” and emerging in the Big Hall still set up for meetings as in the old days.

I was truly amazed. At the time I had no idea I would soon meet another community descendant, Merry Leonard, who is now my wife. I had no idea I would live for a decade in a house in the Orchard built close by the Mansion House grounds by Merry's grandparents. I had no idea I would one day be conducting tours of the Mansion House for visitors, or that I would for a time play a role in the effort to tell the history of the Community. All of this was still in the future.

What I did know on that day was that I had closely encountered an important piece of living American history. This was no re-creation or re-enactment. This was no museum display. Almost nothing was explained. It just was. I was astounded at the potent melding of past and present.

That day marked one of the most important turning points in my life, although I did not realize it at the time. Over time I've learned a lot about the Oneida Community. I'm still deeply fascinated by the sheer audacity of this particular utopian experiment and what it reveals about the human condition.