The Sexual Containment of Perfectionism

This chapter looks at the containment of the boldest religious sexual experiment of the Second Great Awakening, the perfectionist community of John Humphrey Noyes. Once men and women were reborn, Noyes insisted, they were incapable of sin. Rejecting both secular and religious law, Noyes crafted a system of “complex marriage.” However, the initiation of this system came at a significant cost, a self-imposed isolation from the outside world. Once safely settled in upstate New York, Noyes and the Oneida Community forsook proselytism. A series of critics had forced this settlement. Noyes's antinomian theology, his insistence that one should follow the spirit rather than ground one's religion in scripture and reason, they said, was his fatal flaw. In addition, they insisted this sect endangered young women, threatening to seduce them into a dangerous commune. Facing heated criticism, the Oneida Community would make peace with its neighbors by publicly declaring that their door was shut to new members.