Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century

From the Dust Jacket: From the earliest days of settlement to the present, Americans have experimented with varied forms of communal living, alternative marriage and sexual patterns, and other unorthodox lifestyles. During the turbulent decades before the Civil War in particular, thousands of Americans joined communally oriented religious groups which rejected existing family and sex-role patterns. In Religion and Sexuality, Lawrence Foster analyzes the origin, early development, and institutionalization of three such alternative systems-Shaker celibacy, Oneida Community complex marriage, and Mormon polygamy. These three experiments highlight the process by which individuals and groups can radically change an entire belief system and way of life. Based on extensive research in the primary sources-including the first work ever conducted by a non-Mormon with full access to the central Mormon archival holdings on polygamy in Salt Lake City-Religion and Sexuality breaks new ground both factually and conceptually. Foster presents his findings in case studies, sympathetically yet critically describing the development of each experiment. A comparative introduction and conclusion link the groups to each other and to the antebellum crisis in marriage and family life that led eventually toward more restrictive sexual attitudes. Special attention is devoted to the role of women and the reorganization of sex roles in each of these movements. Although many previous accounts have treated these experiments as failures, Foster emphasizes the factors that allowed each of the groups to create and maintain a successful alternative system for over a quarter of a century. He concludes that these communal experiments reveal a distinctive type of religious creativity which has implications for any period of crisis and transition. In each case, an initial overpowering visionary experience of the prophet-founder led not to psychopathic withdrawal but to an active attempt to create a new and more satisfying way of life.