Under the influence of their utopian forebears, the Perfectionists renounced private property, raised their children collectively, embraced gender equality, perfected a novel form of birth control, experimented with every health fad of their day, pursued rigorous self-improvement, practiced a complex system of free love, and initiated an unprecedented experiment in eugenics.”Įarly decision from the founder on cooking: They saw their community as an earthly branch of the Kingdom of Heaven, a sort of portal through which the millennium would come to earth. “At the community’s peak, three hundred Oneida “Perfectionists” lived an intensely intimate, intellectual existence in a rambling, Italianate mansion. The Oneida Community was a Christian communal society founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York. Passages I highlighted about the Oneida community from Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism by Chris Jennings.
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