Spencer Klaw’s, “Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community” is a fascinating overview of the Oneida community. Adherences of the Oneida community were a combination of Christian and Communist attempting to create a Utopian community and were led by John Humphrey Noyes. The Oneida community practiced several unusual principles, but were most notorious for their complex marriage system. They believed that every man was married to every woman and vice versa; through complex marriage, selfishness could be dissolved.
Analytically, the Oneida community had all of the major attributes of a cult. The leader had just enough power to exert over the community that they both loved him and worked for him. This book is a prime example of the complications of carrying out the Utopian or Communist society. Although a complex marriage system and its consequences may sound ideal to some, not everyone in the community is going to completely agree on the principles to carry in their lives.
Reading this introduction to Klaw’s work of the Oneida community was completely captivating. I found it interesting that the women of the Oneida community were almost egalitarian in the community, or at least compared to the rest of the 19th century United States. There was some control exerted over women, including not allowing long hair, however, men were the ones required to practice birth control and women did not have to bear more children than desired.
However, from just this small introduction to the Oneida community, it is hard to establish an opinion of whether this was a secessionist or separatist movement. Upon further research of the community and its collapse, I was able to form more of an opinion considering the Oneidas. After the original leader, John Humphrey Noyes, passed on the leadership to his son Theodore, the community began its decline. As a result of Theodore being agnostic, the community fell apart. From this background information, I believe that the decline of the Oneida community would be considered more of a separatist movement. The groups wanted to both be removed from each other and establish their own troops, however both failed. On the contrary, the separatist movement could be considered from the point of view as Noyes moved his community from Putney to Oneida New York, as a result of hostility from the surrounding community. Either way, I don’t believe that the separatist movement in the Oneida was the most prominent aspect of their history.