History of the United States I / Unit 13 USH1 1820 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Same Premise, Opposite Practice
The idea
The Shakers and the Oneida community began from the same premise and ended in opposite places. Both held that the millennium had begun or could begin, and that people living rightly could be freed from sin in this life. The Shakers concluded that sexual intercourse belonged to the lesser spiritual life and prohibited it entirely. Noyes concluded that people who had achieved perfection could not sin in the act at all, and instituted communal marriage in its place.
In practice
Two communities founded on the same doctrine, one practising total celibacy and the other communal sexuality.
Where people slip
This is the cleanest twin in the unit and it teaches something general about the period. Perfectionism is a premise about human capacity, not a programme. Once a movement believes people can be made perfect, the question of what perfection requires is wide open, and reformers reading the same doctrine reached conclusions that could not both be right. Note also what the two shared in practice. Both abolished private property, and both gave women a standing their surrounding society did not.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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