The Polyamorous Christian Socialist Utopia That Made Silverware | Hacker News Reader

The Polyamorous Christian Socialist Utopia That Made Silverware

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158 pointssamclemens83 comments

For what appears to be such a well researched article, the author completely gets the theology of Methodists and Baptists wrong. Not only does he do a poor job of trying to explain Arminianism, and he associates it with Baptists, which it isn't, but he says the Baptists and Methodists originated as part of the Second Great Awakening they both predate it by a century or more. Also I have never even heard of "perfectionism" and a quick google/wikipedia of it turns up no reference other then to this specific cult. As a clarification Puritan and Calvinist theology would hold to the "sainthood of the believer" which appears to be identical to the idea of Perfectionism raised in this article.

I wouldn't put it quite so starkly as "completely... wrong". It was a jumbled time for the movements and sects of Protestantism.

Perfectionism was a valid strain of Methodism, see Wesley's sermon: http://www.umcmission.org/Find-Resources/John-Wesley-Sermons.... There are PhD's thesis I could point you to if interested (look through Notre Dame's archives).

Sainthood of the believer is a bit different from perfectionism, as perfectionism was the final stage of the christian journey in some strains of Methodism (vs. the predestined state).... but it all got a little messy in that era.

Regarding that it's true both baptists and methodists originated well before the 2nd great awakening, but both certainly saw big growth due to it.

All of that fun history stuff aside, the Oneida Community was clearly off in terms of normal Christianity theology and practice (and the article points to many examples of poor discernment). They made a nice brand of silverware though!

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." -Matthew 5:48

It's actually pretty rare among Christians to believe that this implies that ceasing sinning is possible. The Nazarene denomination is really the only notable group that believes that today.

The more common understanding is that lines like this are meant to drive to despair ("Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" -Romans 7:24) anyone who thinks they're getting close to perfect obedience. Only the perfect obedience of someone else (Christ himself being the only one fitting that description) is suitable to reach glory.

It's actually pretty rare among Christians to believe that....

I'm kind of doubting that's relevant to the actual meaning of the Bible.

For example, the book of John can be seen as patterned on the Greco-Roman mystery religions. How would they feel about that, hmmmm?

> The Nazarene denomination is really the only notable group that believes that today.

At least not entirely correct. The group I belong to considers this important. We are only a few thousand though.

What group would that be if you don't mind sharing ?

Not here to advertise or linkspam so, using rot13, here is the website:

uggc://npgvirpuevfgvnavgl.bet/

Nothing is as perfect as you believe it to be.

History is fun. I now have something new to read up one, Perfectionism.

Well, Christian Perfection is a traditionally Wesleyan idea. Although that isn't saying that Christians could be free from all sin, only that they /could/ be free from all /conscious/ sin.

Sainthood of the Believer is something that's generally held by all Protestants and is basically another way of saying sola fide (by faith alone). It's just using the more traditional definition of saint (anyone that's in Heaven).

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I just read a great book called Paradise Now about 5 different Utopian movements in the US, Oneida being one of them. It seems the most successful colonies blended business savvy with a coherent set of values and cultivated familial closeness. Capitalist individualism obviously dominated the 20th century, but I can imagine a tech-focused system of common ownership making a comeback.

https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Now-Story-American-Utopianis...

The Good Life [1] is an interesting account by Scott and Helen Nearing of living in a self-sufficient way (motivated largely by the great depression and a desire to isolate themselves from the ups and downs of the larger economy).

It did sound pretty appealing when I read it to live in a more primitive way and have to deal with less of the stresses of modern life. It would require a very different set of skills than I have now, though.

I could see communes or something like them coming back as a way of sharing the cost of purchasing land. Where I live, houses are pretty expensive and rural land is only available in large (also expensive) lots. A group of people could conceivably pool their resources to buy a large lot in the countryside and then put up an apartment building (assuming the local zoning laws have any exploitable loopholes that allow that sort of thing).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Good-Life-Nearings-Self-Sufficient-Li...

I haven't read the good life but this immediately reminded me of the song by Pete Seeger "Maple Syrup Time" where he mentions Scott and Helen. Looks like it's referenced in the book as well. https://books.google.ca/books?id=iumQ0TLXESkC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA...

Strangely enough, I grew up singing this song in a commune that did not fail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruderhof_Communities

The Nearings were pretty puritanical though... They lived a very stark existence. But the base idea was pretty awesome: devote 50% of your time to "bread work" and do whatever you like the rest of the time.

>A group of people could conceivably pool their resources to buy a large lot in the countryside and then put up an apartment building (assuming the local zoning laws have any exploitable loopholes that allow that sort of thing).

This is generally executed as Co-Housing, these days.

But isn't the common thread that all of these groups ultimately failed?

Perhaps the point of communes is not to convert the whole world forever, but to create the world you envision around yourself. Temporality becomes real only when one has a vantage point in the future and through written record. That it did not last until this very moment does not make a commune or a set of any conditions any less real to the people who participated in it. So I don't think one can say that they "failed", they actually succeeded.

We can choose to define our terms however we want, I guess, but the bottom line is that these communes all set out to start some kind of community and the communities they created no longer exist. In my book, that is a failure to achieve the objective.

>> "[They] all set out to start some kind of community"

>> "the communities they created"

So the objective was to start a community, which you say they did.

Call it an experiment. Sure the communities failed, but they succeeded in giving insightful social data.

Less sizable communes survive to at least some extent. I work in the Ann Arbor area and I hear from my coworkers that there's a lot of them around here, farther out of town where the land is cheap. I don't know any details personally, though, so I don't know where they range from what you'd really consider a "commune" through to "a fancy homeowners association" or "coop with a hippie-friendly label". Partially I post this to solicit anyone who does know better to contribute.

But the fact that there always seem to be communes in existence doesn't imply that they are successful. All it means is that there is some baseline portion of the population who are interested in the idea of living communally and who then start communes.

Go on something like IC.org (communes like to call themselves intentional communities). If you dig into them, most of the listings do not seem to be for successful, thriving endeavors.

In the long view of history, all societies will fail. Is three generations of success enough to qualify it as a success? I don't know. But it's subjective to say it failed.

But that's like saying Mars isn't necessarily a better planet for humans than Earth because eventually the entire solar system will become uninhabitable.

Perfection is not required for one system to be better than another.

Communes don't work. Most never get off the ground. The ones that do rarely make it longer than a decade. And there are basically none that have lasted longer than a century (the only group I am aware of in North America are some sects of Mennonites).

Whereas essentially the entire developed world lives and thrives without the concept of communal property (outside of marriage).

Capitalist individualism will ultimately fail too. Nothing lasts forever.

Care to elaborate?

Most of these cults/communes don't make it past the first decade. The longest lasting ones rarely make it past a century.

So far "capitalist individualism" seems to have a better track record than that.

Capitalism, when not regulated, tends to increase inequality. This will, eventually, lead to instability and a societal reset.

Capitalism doesn't need to be perfect in order to be a better system for organizing a society than communism.

OTOH, communism doesn't need to be perfect to be better than unregulated capitalism.

We've tried almost entirely unregulated capitalism. Inequality increased, but only up to a point. It didn't increase without bound.

Before that we had other systems that lasted just as long. Mercantilism had a good run for 3 centuries.

As long as there is resource scarcity and property rights, capitalism is a stable proposition. I think you'll find some physical issues with eliminating resource scarcity, and I'd rather not give up my right to own things.

"Capitalist individualism will ultimately fail too."

Capitalism has already been around forever :)

It just wasn't until Adam Smith that we had a word for it, or could describe it.

Outside of Imperial power - which by the way always represented a tiny portion of state power (the King had a nice castle, and theoretically absolute power - but the taxes raised were pretty small part of GDP, also, if you didn't live directly near the king, he couldn't exactly bother you. Also remember up until Napoleon - if a King wanted to invade somewhere, he could hardly conscript, usually he had to pay armies of mercenaries).

So even in ancient times - regular trade was the basis for most economies.

>Capitalism has already been around forever :)

Much of Europe, for example, was feudalist until around the mid 17th century. To put it simply, the king owned all the land, and those who lived on it were divided into those who worked, those who fought, and those who prayed. Under no reasonable definitions could this be considered capitalism - even Marx viewed feudalism as the order coming before capitalism.

And most people likely thought that there couldn't be other forms of society. Divine rights of kings.

>Capitalism has already been around forever :)

Only if you define it in a way which is so loose as to be tautological.

There have been a wide variety of resource allocation mechanisms throughout history, and it wasn't until relatively recently that any of them could really be described as "Capitalism".

Not literally forever but you could describe ships bought by private money for private profit by merchants in ancient Rome as capitalism. Capitalism is, fundamentally, the private ownership of the means for production with the owners receiving the fruits of that production directly and the workers being compensated by that owner, and the capitalists using their excess profits to create more means of production. I'm not sure how you could define capitalism such that it includes everything we describe as capitalist in the modern world while excluding Roman merchants.

Until recently capitalism has been a small fraction of production but it's existed much longer.

"There have been a wide variety of resource allocation mechanisms throughout history"

If you have currency, banking, credit, merchants raising capital, private property protections, rule of law, labour at some cost - towards projects ... then it's basically capitalism.

The Romans had all of that to lesser or greater degree.

There are no examples of centrally planned economies working out on any scale.

Communism is a completely dead idea, it's an effete academic concept only. That game is over.

The Amanas (mentioned downthread) are still around.

Sure. But according to Wikipedia, they abandoned communal ownership of property in 1932. Seems like the common thread is still that all attempts at fully communal systems fail sooner or later.

Successful group ownership of a business by the workers is pretty common; it just has to stop short of a commune.

I know of one [1], the Bruderhof, that maintains communal ownership of property and has existed for almost 100 years. It's not easy to do, though, so perhaps an exception that proves the rule. They do have some thriving businesses that make surviving in a capitalist world possible [2]. [1] source: I was born and spent my childhood there [2] http://www.communityplaythings.com/ http://www.rifton.com/

The anabaptist religious movements are fascinating. There are Mennonite sects in the US and Canada who live communally and have also lasted a relatively long time.

There's a large Mennonite colony just south of the Amana colonies in eastern Iowa. Apparently, they have little interaction (not that they hate each other, they just don't do business together), but we'd see them both. In Iowa City, we'd see Mennonites in town, actually shopping at Wal-Mart and the like. The Amanas were a much rarer sight unless you actually went to the Amana colonies (which we did regularly, because the restaurants there are some of my favorite places to eat ever).

It's possible that they fail because they have to operate against a capitalist backdrop.

It's also possible (and, I would argue, more probable) that they fail because for any sedentary peoples, the accumulation of material wealth is inevitable, and such accumulation is unequal. Thus, some degree of "capitalist individualism" grows organically out of sedentary societies.

The only successful societies with anything resembling fully-shared ownership are those which can't accumulate much of anything.

I say this not to defend ultra-liberal capitalism or anything, but rather to point out that utopias tend to be very artificial (and therefore short-lived) constructs.

It's also wrapped up in the move from hunting and gathering to farming. Hunting is relatively random and while skill plays a role you can't rely on it. Also excess meat won't last too long so why not share? Farming is more reliable and when bad luck hits it often hits an entire group at once. And it involved more unpleasant labor to farm a lot of food meaning incentives become more important.

Ultra-liberal capitalism is also very artificial

Respectfully, that's a very loaded statement, as evidenced by the absence of a clearly-stated point. My reaction is twofold:

1. You seem to be implying that ultra-liberal capitalist societies abound. I disagree to the extent that most economies/political-systems incorporate social elements that tend to push the dial back towards resource sharing. I do, however, concede that there has been a trend towards liberalism in recent decades, but this is accompanied by increasing social instability. I don't see how your comment constitutes a counter-point in this respect.

2. It's not really artificial given the two priors discussed above:

    a) accumulation of wealth (and the subsequent inequalities in entrains)

    b) low social trust

Again, this should not be interpreted as a defense of ultra-liberal capitalism, but I think it's so entrenched precisely because it follows naturally from the aforementioned preconditions.

One interesting thing from the aforementioned (or below-mentioned) wikipedia entry for the Amana Colonies is that they adopted the notion of a basic income (of $25-$50) to be spent at village stores, keeping the money within the community.

This is one take on UBI I haven't seen before--directly channeling collective money back into the local economy.

Excellent book indeed.

Whatever else they did, the Oneida Community certainly created a lasting brand. I bought this $13 santoku knife at Safeway 6-7 years ago, and it's still going strong:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009Q8TXFA

Easily as good quality as some of my much more expensive knives.

Of course the brand has been sold, and it's probably just a label on products they import from wherever, but somebody is paying attention to quality and value - and I appreciate that!

I keep seeing the assumption, that anything that ceases to exists is a failiure. I feel that this could not be further from the truth. Perhaps the members were happy for a time and then died. Just because a woman ceases to be beautiful with age does not mean she was never beautiful at all. Go make some mandalas people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala !

This is one of my favorite stories that hardly anybody knows about. I actually did consulting for Oneida briefly a long time ago, and I don't think anybody there had a clue that it was started by a communist sex cult.

Really? I live ~20 miles away, and it's pretty common knowledge here...

Likely the people that work for Oneida aren't going to get into the Commie Christian Sex Cult origins with a random contractor.

Fellow upstater (grew up near Utica) here to confirm that this is common knowledge.

The Mansion House is really lovely building that has been well kept up. It's a popular field trip destination for local schools.

You can stay there: http://www.oneidacommunity.org/lodging-rentals/overnight-gue... (they even have several apartments they rent out)

This is a fascinating read. What I got from this is it's important for men to be laid regularly or there is a risk they will go and form a cult cum commune in a 100 year experiment that always ends badly.

How many women have formed cults? They are not as driven by sex, and cults seem to be closely connected to sex, either the embrace of it in some way that is against current convention or the puritanical rejection of it.

And thank god for the invention of the the condom. In perspective it has to be the most important human invention in 2000 years finally freeing women from the risk of childbirth or disease for every encounter. I think this in many ways fundamentally changed the evolution of our social structures.

the condom doesnt stop the spread of all stds or diseases.

but it is still better than nothing.

This commune was also home to Charles Guiteau for a time, the man who later assassinated President Garfield: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_J._Guiteau

And he was such a strange kind of loser that none of the women wanted anything to do with him and he was kicked out. Twice.

The Met has on display furniture designed and manufactured by members of the Shaker Community

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shak/hd_shak.htm

Alice Stockham was influenced a lot by the Oneida Method when formulating the Karezza practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Bunker_Stockham

For an in-depth history of Oneida-like continence in the West, I recommend this book by Arthur Versluis: https://www.innertraditions.com/the-secret-history-of-wester...

Interesting how Mormonism came out of the same area at the same time. Were any other religions or cults part of that tent revivalism culture? I thought JW's but that's further south and a few decades later.

That part of NY State was called the 'Burned-over district' because "the area had been so heavily evangelized as to have no 'fuel' (unconverted population) left over to 'burn' (convert)". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district

I read a theory once that the religious fervor may have also been fueled by upstate New York's notoriously terrible weather. It certainly encourages some prayer for sunlight! :)

Charles Finney too, and the predecessors to Seventh-Day Adventists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district

This was another one that went on to produce housewares:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Colonies

That's so weird... I lived near the Amana Colonies (in Grinnell, and then Iowa City) for 15 years, and always assumed they were Amish. Love that place!

Did you live in Grinnell, or go to the college? If you weren't a student I could understand. If you were a student, why didn't you ask Prof. Andelson? He did his PhD work in the colonies.

The colonies are definitely a good place to visit. Tho' you have to travel a bit further and look carefully to begin to pierce the veil they put up for outsiders. Even then, you are still an outsider.

Went to the college. Actually took basic anthropology from Prof. Andelson, back in the '80s. But that wasn't about his own research, that was the usual intro-class stuff.

Ah, OK. Tho', I never took Andelson's class ... Learned about the Amanas through independent research.

As for the Amish, they're here in NY. Not what you would think. A good start is Amish Society, by Hostetler.

There are plenty of Amish in southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, too. I have a hard time telling Amana from Amish by looking, although I could easily tell Amana and Mennonites apart when I lived near them in Iowa.

Broadly, that's the entire Second Great Awakening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening

I noticed that in the first picture in the article, the woman in the front-centre and the two women on the right appear to have no feet or lower legs. It doesn't seem be due to the length of the grass because the shoes of men nearby are visible. Also, the trousers worn by the woman standing sideways in the centre don't look wide enough to conceal her feet.

Anyone know an explanation?

I think it's a combination of the pants legs being a bit wider than you think, and the grass being a bit taller than you think. I can assure you the Oneida Community had no bizarre foot amputation practice...

I love how many oxymorons there are in that title... "polyamorous Christian", "Christian socialist", "socialist utopia", "polyamorous utopia"

Christian socialist is definitely not an oxymoron. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_democratic_p... : "Christian democracy often advocates centre-right positions on cultural, social, and moral issues and Social market economic policies" and further, "whereas in the very different cultural and political environment of Latin America they tend to lean to the left".

Utopian socialism is an actual thing : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism , related to socialist utopia, in a way that is characterised as "possible ways society can turn out to be in the future".

What's wrong with "Christian socialist"? While we have conflated (evangelical) Christianity with right-wing politics in the US, that is far from universal.

Most of the Christian churches described in the Bible are, in many ways, socialist communes.

And in many ways that is how the early Church started. It provided social services that the failing states of the time could not.

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