This chapter covered a lot of information and lots of history in comparison to the other chapters thus far. The background of the Oneida Community was proportionally more of a biography on John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the group and his beliefs. He had an interesting history including getting his license to be a preacher taken away, but he was a proud man and didn’t not lose confidence in himself. After this happened in his life the Putney Perfectionism Association begin. His ideas were radical and communist in nature, but his community found itself growing and quickly developed into a success after certain members were accepted. The text went on touching on important points like who made the decisions within the group, female roles, child rearing, community marriage, sex, contraception, memberships and revocations, how punishments were handled through mutual …show more content…
We have talked about religious communities that are growing tremendously as well as groups like the Father Divine Movement who was rapidly losing their population to old age. Here the perfectionists were creating their own hybrid race to prosper and grow in the future. As inhumane as this idea is, I think it is a really interesting feature that separates the Oneida as their own community. The reader is led to believe as well that the community was very successful with their way of stirpiculture in the mansion. In class, uniqueness is highlighted of one religion from the other and in the text Oneida has many rules and features that make them unique, however, the lengthy use of their eugenics is the strongest separating trait. From the explanation of the perfectionist use of eugenics I learned that not everything that is successful is for the best of society and began to relate it to other aspects of my life that fit the same outline that I had never took time to think