The Shakers, The Oneida, and The Mormons
Written for Anthro 431 3/23/1999
In the early nineteenth century, several new religious movements appeared that changed in some way the contemporary American family structure. The Shakers chose to do this through celibacy, and the Oneida through “complex marriage”. Both sought to create a new family structure that was a community, and this practice was a major aspect of their religion. Polygamy among the Mormons, by contrast, was not a foundation of their religion, nor did it seek to destroy the nuclear family. All three of these communities strove to establish a heavenly order of marriage on earth. To the Shakers this meant pure, “marriage to Christ”; to the Oneida, each married to all; to the Mormons, an increase in the scope of what was considered a nuclear family. The Shakers and the Oneida communities were unsuccessful in establishing a stable new “family” structure because they did not allow for strong emotional bonds between individuals. The Mormons were successful because they did not restructure the nineteenth century American family by destroying familial bonds; they increased the number of bonds within the family. While they were breaking down the contemporary family ties, the Mormons were adding on to them.
The Shakers’ main way of restructuring the family was through celibacy and the abolition of marriage. All of the Believers’ energy was devoted to the community “family”. They sought to break down exclusive emotional attachments, and redirected that loyalty to the group. The Shakers sought to establish gender equality in all matters, spiritual and worldly. A dual government and a joint economy was created toward this end. The community family rather than the nuclear family was the primary economic unit. Men and women lived together under the same roof as families of thirty to over a hundred individuals. These “families” were spiritually and economically self-sufficient. The basic American household division of labor remained intact, however, because the Shakers did not consider men’s work to be superior to women’s, or vice versa, and so work was assigned to those who were best suited to do it. Shaker women were freed from the childbearing and rearing to which women are usually subordinated. Communal child rearing of the adopted orphans and the children of new member families meant that women had more time to work as spiritual and economic leaders in the community.
The Oneida sought to accomplish much the same thing as the Shakers did only they took the stance that free sexual relations had the same effect that celibacy did: breaking down jealous, exclusive emotional attachments. The main tenet of Oneida religion was complex marriage, in which anyone can have sexual relations with anyone else as long as they did not create exclusive emotional attachments. Each should be married to all, and so each should have the same love relationship with everyone in the community. In order to further the destruction of exclusive relationships, communal child rearing and birth control was practiced. This abolishes the parent-child bond. Male continence was the preferred form of birth control, and only the Oneida leaders could choose who would be allowed to bear children. This form of scientific propagation was termed “stirpiculture” by John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida. Like the Shakers, the Oneida focused on the community, and directed all their loyalty and energies toward the group instead of the nuclear family. Individual relations were subordinated to the community. Community property reinforced the slant towards the group. The Oneida originally lived off Noyes’s family wealth, but eventually they did become economically self-sufficient.
The Oneida community retained the traditional division of labor among the sexes, though not to the extent of contemporary American society. Women, while remaining primarily in their traditional labor roles, could be supervisors as well, and if they were suited for it, could do men’s work. The division of authority by gender was somewhat more complex. According to Noyes, all things being equal man has primacy over woman. However, on earth all things are not equal, and some women are spiritually superior to some men. Among the Oneida, those women would have authority over those men.
The Mormons restructured the nineteenth century American family by increasing its boundaries. It did not break apart exclusive relations, it created more within the larger sphere of the community. While loyalty toward the community was important, it was not central. Unlike Shaker celibacy and Oneida complex marriage, Mormon polygamy was neither a foundational principle of the religion nor was it an original idea. Mother Ann Lee of the Shakers had a vision that she interpreted as God’s will that she should institute celibacy. Sexual relations did not exist in the Shaker heaven. John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida, developed his theory of complex marriage based on several criteria. The Mormons, however, were going back to the Abrahamic tradition of polygamous marriage, which is still practiced successfully throughout the world. It was not a particularly revolutionary idea. It was already proven to be a viable system of family structure. The only reason it drew so much attention is that in nineteenth century America polygamy was considered inferior to monogamous marriage, practiced only by savages in Africa and other third-world areas.
Still, the practice of polygamy was in many ways similar to the contemporary American family. It was more a combining of two (or more) households than a restructuring of one. The division of labor and traditional gender roles remained intact: the father was the breadwinner while the wives raised the children, cooked, cleaned, and cared for the home. There was no birth control, no eugenics or scientific propagation: children were born unplanned. The relation between the husband and each of his wives was still exclusive. Even the household structure was frequently unchanged: each wife had her own home, independent of those of her co-wives’. Sometimes, like Brigham Young and the Beehive House, the wives did reside in the same household. This practice furthered the relative independence of the women: there were more people to do the work that was normally done by one wife, and so her co-wives had more time to themselves.
While Mormon polygamy did give women more freedom than contemporary society, this was not its purpose, unlike Shaker celibacy and Oneida complex marriage. Polygamy was not a social experiment to establish equality between the sexes. It did not restructure gender roles to any great extent. The Mormons, in fact, reinforced male dominance to a great extent. Unlike the Shakers and the Oneida, Mormon women were never allowed to serve in the same positions of authority as men. The Relief Society was a purely auxiliary organization, and the only one in which women could serve as leaders. Their dominion was only over other women. The Priesthood was the true authority over all other organizations.
The purpose of polygamy was to increase the kingdom of God by raising up righteous children in the church, and to gain eternal glory and exaltation. In order to reach the highest degree of glory, a woman must have a righteous husband. Polygamy allowed a greater number of righteous women access to the Celestial Kingdom even though they outnumbered the righteous priesthood holders. It also aided in raising children to the gospel, because more children could have righteous fathers and mothers.
Polygamy became the purge of the Mormon religion: it separated the wheat from the chaff. It culled the herd by clearly dividing those who were willing to abide by the Church’s dictates no matter how distasteful those dictates were personally from those who were unable to conform. In short, it separated the true believers from the fair-weather friends. Much like Shaker celibacy and Oneida complex marriage, polygamy was originally introduced to a select few who were judged by the hierarchy as likely to go along with it. The principle had been around for a good thirty years in enlarging circles of practice before it was announced to the public at large.
Polygamy among the Mormons was a viable system. The practice ceased due to governmental pressures and persecution from local communities. It did not cease because it was not working, like the Oneida and the Shakers. Polygamy, in fact, gets easier to live as a workable system the longer it is practiced. Children who are raised in polygamous households know instinctively how to live in one. The successful practice of the system no longer requires a hierarchy to tell the practitioners how to go about structuring their lives after a few generations. Polygamy was and is a successful marriage practice.
In light of the Four Basic Principles of kinship put out by Robin Fox in Kinship & Marriage, one could argue that the reason the Shakers and the Oneida failed while the Mormons succeeded was that the former did not uphold the four basic principles of kinship. This argument works well for the Shakers, who violated the first two principles with their celibacy: no one was having any babies, so it was a moot point who impregnates and who carries. Shaker men were also not dominant over the women. The Oneida are a slightly different argument. They did uphold the first two principles, and according to Noyes’s doctrine, the men were theoretically dominant. Both systems upheld the fourth principle, the incest taboo. The Mormons upheld all four principles. Why then did the Shakers and the Oneida fail while the Mormons were succeeding when they were forced to break off their practice?
The answer probably lies in the fact that the family and familial relations are not as flexible as Ann Lee and John Humphrey Noyes believed them to be. Exclusive emotional attachments are a basic need, as is evidenced by their universality. In our current society, the nuclear family takes on many forms: single-parent households, single-sex couples, and polygamous families. All have the exclusive emotional relationship in common, whether it is the parent-child bond or romantic love. Also in our present society is the random sexual relations, similar to but less structured religiously than Oneida complex marriage. According to Noyes this should break down jealous relationships and contribute to a community feeling. Yet people still look for romantic love, and people still get married to one person.. It seems certain, then, that the need for deep emotional ties to another person is a basic need among humans. Marriage systems that last are able to last because they fulfill this need. The Shakers and the Oneida did not fulfill the need for emotional attachments, and so they did not succeed. The Mormons did fulfill this need, and so they did succeed.