Social Applications: The Shakers, the Oneida Community and Race Relations

The Shakers were an American communitarian groups drawing their model from Genesis 1:26-27.  For them, God is both male and female because in the text God's image is described as male and female ("God created man in his own image...male and female created he them" -Genesis 1:27).  Shaker Elder Fredrick Evans wrote that God must have some element of the feminine in him.  He asks, "How can there be a father where there is no mother?"  And so, since God had been incarnate in Jesus (male) he would become incarnate in a woman.  The Shakers believed that this woman was Mother Ann Lee and that she was Christ's second coming.  Mother Ann Lee was the founder of the Shakers.  For them, she was essential for salvation along with Jesus.

In the Shaker community women and men jointly rule and women have higher social status then American did at the time the Shakers were founded.  Still, in a sense the men and the God the Father was somewhat higher in status than women and God the Mother.  In Shaker interpretation of the Garden of Eden story, the punishments of the Fall are contrary to nature, and so, the domination of men over women is contrary to nature.  In the animal kingdom, the female rules and governs reproduction, but this is not so in the human species.  Stretching this even further, Elder Fredrick Evans argues that he snake represents the persistence of male domination over woman and it was this that comprised the Fall itself.  Taking this view, the Shakers shaped their society to be one which sought to return to the state of Eden by giving women more freedoms and governance.

Another Shaker writer, Pauline Bates writes that in the beginning there were two opposing kingdoms: one ruled jointly by God and the Holy and Eternal Mother Wisdom and the other ruled by Satan and the mother of harlots.  From the latter, she believes, come lust and vile affection.  The duality of God and Mother Wisdom and more importantly Adam and Eve necessitates a female Christ figure.  She also quotes Paul in 1 Corinthians: "woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman."  

The Oneida community was quite different.  Their founder John Humphrey Noyes believed in free love.  His reasons: (1) marriage reduced women to propagating slaves (due to the absence of reliable birth control), (2) marriage formed people into exclusive pairs and hindered the development of a genuine Christian community.  His aim with the Oneida community was to develop reliable birth control and  allow members of the community to be sexually intimate with whomever of the opposite gender in the community they pleased, who was willing of course.  Monogamy was banned.

Noyes claims to have drawn his inspiration from Genesis 1-3.  From this scripture, he learned that sex had a twofold purpose: conception of children and expression of love.  He believed that the love Adam and Eve had for each other was originally a reflection of the love the Father in the Godhead had for the Son in the Godhead.  This love was then ruined by the Fall.  And, the Fall led to our traditional view of marriage.  The marriage where women are at risk of dying in childbirth, women can have many children causing men to need to work more to provide financially, and this excess work takes a man away from his family, leaving him and his wife isolated.  The price of sex is no longer love and enjoyment but pain and isolation for both genders.  They become estranged with a broken relationship that reflects the broken relationship between humans and God.

The Oneida community sought to throw off this and return to the marriage of the originally Eden: allowing men and women the freedom to work together and exist as equals and liberating women from being strictly baby-makers.  Sexually expression was free of restriction or shame and work was a community endeavor.  Noyes believed by living like this, mankind had found the tree of life (Genesis 3:22).  

What Noyes blatantly forgets in the Fall.  He completely leaves out snake and temptation, the reasons for mankind's disobedience.  He offers no explanation or tie in for his argument.

The story of Adam and Eve was appropriated in the struggles for and against slavery.  To some rabbis, people of over races and ethnicities were the offspring of Eve and the snake (Sammael) or that of Adam and Lilith.  They were considered inferior, illegitimate and even evil.  In the United States' struggle over the issue of slavery, proslavery orators sought support from the Bible.  They found plenty of support from the New Testament, which teaches that slaves should be obedient to their laster and masters should treat their slaves kindly. In the Old Testament, they looked to passages like the statutes governing Israel slavery as taught by Moses and Noah's condemnation of Ham and his son Canaan (and further demand that Shem allow Japheth to live in his tents).  Some even went so far to say that this event is God's blessing of African American (Ham) slavery and God's order to the Native American (Shem) to hand over their land to the Europeans (Japheth).  In connection to Eden, it was argued that the subordination of women as a result of the Fall went hand in hand with the enslavement of African Americans.

Our instructions for the Race Relations homework: Each student will lead discussion on one text and outline how Gen 2-3 is being used in the argument.  I have done the above but I don't know if we are to analyze all the passages.  If so, I will do so.