Unitarian Universalist Utopias

Luther Elmore

March 25, 2012

How Shall We Live? In the first half of the nineteenth century approximately one hundred utopian societies were established across the United States, several by Unitarians and Universalists. We will look at those UU utopian societies and see what lessons they offer us today.

Times of dramatic and rapid change often lead people to question all aspects of their lives. Such a time in the United States was in the early 19th century. As America entered the early 1800s the country began to take its first major steps toward an industrial society. People no longer stayed on the family farm. The first textile mills were established in New England. Improvements in transportation and printing came at a time when hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from Germany and Ireland flooded the country. The old, traditional patterns of life were altered and individuals looked for new ways to live. Some sought community in utopian societies. Over 100 such communities were established in the United States in the years prior to the Civil War. Some were religious, some were secular, some were entirely economic – all sought a better way of life. A few were established by our Unitarian and Universalist forefathers. Their search for a new life in the 1830s and 1840s still speaks to the way we choose to live our life today.

The most well known of these societies related to our UU ancestors was Brook Farm, established by Unitarian minister George Ripley. Ripley was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and for 15 years the settled minister at Purchase Street Church in Boston. Increasingly attracted to Transcendentalism, in 1840 he attended a Christian Union Convention where participants were encouraged to follow the words of 2 Corinthians 6:17. “Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord.” Ripley envisioned a Transcendentalist “City of God” and plans for the community were made in the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The preamble to his “Articles of Agreement” state the lofty goals of Brook Farm:

To establish the external relations of life on a basis of wisdom and purity; to apply the principles of justice and love to our social organization In accordance with the laws of Divine Providence; to substitute a system of brotherly cooperation for one of selfish competition; to institute an attractive, efficient, and productive system of industry; to diminish the desire of excessive accumulation; to guarantee to each other forever the means of physical support and of spiritual progress; and thus to impart a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement and moral dignity to our mode of life…”

He organized a joint stock company, raised $11,000 in donations and pledges, bought a 200 acre farm eight miles from Boston in West Roxbury and called it “The Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education.” In March of 1841 he gave his final sermon at the Purchase Street Church and he and his wife moved to Brook Farm. They were soon joined by 13 other adults and within a year the community had 70 residents.

Work was chosen and assigned based on personal affinity and skills. Since all were expected to work and all work was equally honored, all were paid the same. Farmers, carpenters, and laborers were paid the same as teachers, poets, and philosophers. Education, social class, age, and gender made no difference. This plot of land had previously been a dairy farm and the soil was rather poor. Nevertheless, they planted a garden. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the early residents, seems not to have enjoyed the blend of intellect and labor. He later wrote, “Mr. Ripley put a four-pronged instrument into my hands, which he gave me to understand was called a pitchfork; and he and Mr. Farley being armed with similar weapons we all three commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of manure.” They opened a school where students were taught history, philosophy, literature, music, Greek, Latin, and German. To achieve their goal of balancing manual labor and the intellect, students were required to work two hours a day. Some of Boston’s finest families sent their children there. The school would prove to be Brook Farm’s most successful undertaking.

The intellectual and social life at Brook Farm were stimulating. They had Elizabethan pageants, Shakesperian plays, concerts, operas, costume parties and dances. Works of Beethoven were played on the pianoforte; the choir sang the works of Mozart. The works of Dante were read in Italian. Literary societies and reading groups were popular. One resident later recalled that “the weeds were scratched out of the earth to the music of Tennyson and Browning.” At night Ripley led philosophical discussions, others led star gazing activities. Charles Dana led a group in translating difficult German texts. Many would close their day by joining hands in a circle and repeating “Truth to the cause of God and humanity.” Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane visited Brook Farm in the summer of 1843 and Lane critically wrote that he found “80 or 90 persons playing away their youth and day-time in a miserably joyous frivolous manner.”

From the beginning there had been a shortage of housing, so additional buildings were constructed, increasing their debt. Work also began on a 3 story high main building that would provide more living quarters, reading rooms, assembly hall, and central dining room.

Many of those who had given pledges of support were unable to fulfill their commitment. Struggling financially, in early 1844 the community was reorganized based on the communitarian socialist proposals of French utopian philosopher Charles Fourier. New workers joined Brook Farm, but many of the original Transcendentalist poets and writers left. Various industries were attempted. A sewing department made capes, caps, and collars for sale in Boston stores. Shoe making along with the manufacture of sashes, blinds, pewter lamps and pewter pots generated a little additional revenue. But not enough.

Criticism of Brook Farm began to circulate. Charles Fourier – the utopian writer – had believed that sex should follow the same patterns of work. That is, it should be based on attraction, alternation, and variety. Unfounded rumors of varied and alternating sexual partners began to be spread. Some parents withdrew their children from the school. Some parents opposed the equality or “leveling up” practiced at Brook Farm. One financial backer wrote to Ripley complaining about the presence of what he called “impure children” and called the social mixing of the children an “enormous evil.” In 1845 a student visited relatives in Boston where he was exposed to smallpox. Smallpox soon spread through the community and, although no one died, almost 1/3 of the population was quarantined. More students withdrew from school.

By 1846 about 65 residents and 12 students remained. In March the incomplete and uninsured main building caught fire and burned to the ground in two hours. Within a few months, 30 residents remained and virtually all of the students were gone. The following year bankruptcy proceedings were completed. Brook Farm was no more.

Ripley went to work for Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune. He later published a tremendously successful New American Cyclopedia and paid off all of the debts. Brook Farm lasted from 1841 until 1847, but Ripley’s dream of a Unitarian Transcendentalist utopia had failed.

Shortly after Brook Farm was founded, Adin Ballou established another utopian community, Hopedale. Ballou envisioned a pacifist cooperative community that would incorporate productive farming and industrial activities among a group of committed Christians. Ballou was almost 40 old when he began this enterprise, having served seven years as a Universalist minister and another eleven years in a Unitarian church. He had became a radical reformer, supporting the abolition of slavery, the temperance crusade against alcohol, equal rights for women, and pacifism. He believed in what was labeled “Practical Christianity,” a movement that supported Christian doctrine as closely related to the early, “primitive” church as possible.

In 1841 he organized and became president of “Fraternal Communion Number One,” a society dedicated to Christian living in a community setting. A joint stock company was organized at $50.00 per share, with the promise of a 4% annual return on the investment. The largest investors were Anna and Ebenezer Draper. With the money they raised, they purchased a 600 acre farm just west of Milford, Massachusetts and christened it Hopedale. Members of the Hopedale community agreed to a constitution that stated the following, “I believe in the religion of Jesus Christ as he taught and exemplified it according to the scripture of the New Testament.” They furthermore pledged that they would never assault, injure, slander, envy or hate any human or serve in the armed forces, use liquor, file a suit in court, or vote. Personally, they were committed to never indulge in covetousness, deceit, idleness, or have an unruly tongue. Thirty-two men and women signed this rather strict Christian pledge as they began their life at Hopedale.

In March 1842 twenty-eight individuals – about one-third of whom were children – occupied the Hopedale farm. All 28 moved into the old farm house. They were expected to work 60 hours a week during the summer months, 48 during the winter. And work they did. That first summer they planted 10 acres in potatoes and beans, 4 acres in corn, and 3 acres in other vegetables. They repaired the old buildings, erected a new one, and opened a school for the children. Every two weeks they printed a paper, “The Practical Christian.” They began manufacturing shoes and boots.

On Sundays they had morning and afternoon church services. On Tuesdays they had singing; on Thursdays they had religious discussions and on Saturdays they met to read and discuss public papers and periodicals. Thus, they practiced their Primitive Practical Christianity. Ballou would later write, “I…longed most ardently to see New Testament Christianity actualized.”

Within a few years Hopedale had grown to 170 people and annual business meetings reflected assets of over $50,000. But conflict had crept in. Many of the newer members did not have as firm a commitment to Practical Christianity as the original members. Divergent beliefs such as spiritualism, vegetarianism, and phrenology were practiced by some. Housing had always been inadequate and as new facilities were built, people argued about who would live where. The industries did not produce the revenue expected. As members withdrew, they were paid for their investment and labor, draining Hopedale of valuable financial resources. The end of Ballou’s Christian experiment came in 1856 when the Drapers, the largest investors, withdrew their financial support. The community could no longer be sustained and the Hopedale industries became private companies.

Ballou would write of his experiment. “It will go out to the world and down to coming generations…a laudable but ill-fated experiment entered upon and prosecuted, not to advance any selfish or unworthy interest or course, but rather to show the way of a better, truer life…”

In 1843 Bronson Alcott, the father of writer Louisa May Alcott, established a short-lived vegetarian community called Fruitlands. Prior to this community, Alcott had led a curious life, primarily fashioning himself as a philosopher, educator, and reformer. One historian claims that he was probably the closest personal friend to both Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Born in Connecticut in a large farming family, he had little formal education, but he loved learning.

After traveling to Virginia and failing to secure a job as a teacher, he returned to Connecticut and served as an innovation school master in two townships. He emphasized openness, respect, and self-expression, employing the Socratic method. Educational reformers helped him establish schools in Pennsylvania. Noted Unitarian minister Samuel Joseph May heard of Alcott and secured him a position in Boston. There, Alcott met May’s sister, Abigail, and in 1830 they married. He was attracted to the Unitarian faith of the Mays and for years attended William Ellery Channing’s Federal Street Church. But later, he drifted away from the church.

In 1836 he helped organized the Transcendentalist Club; the first meeting was held in his home. He even provided the name for the Transcendentalist paper, The Dial.

That same year he also published a very controversial book, Conversations on the Gospels. Included in these “Conversations” were discussions of human conception and birth. The book created a storm of protest and many parents withdrew their students from his school. Three years later, when he admitted a young black girl into the school, the remaining students withdrew and the school closed. To make ends meet, he became a day laborer and his wife and young daughters took in sewing. In the meantime, the Alcotts had become vegetarians.

Emerson paid for Alcott to take a trip to England where he met other innovative educators, including Charles Lane. Lane returned with Alcott to Boston and, along with Abigail’s brother Samuel, put up the money to buy a 90 acre farm 30 miles from Boston. During the early summer of 1843, the Alcotts – with their four daughters, age 2 to 12 – along with Lane and his son and five other adults moved to the farm, Fruitlands.

In spite of only having about ten apple trees, they expected to establish an orchard and grow their own food and live according to their radical vegetarian principles. This site had poor soil and was not suitable for a thriving farm. Nevertheless, they spent most of the summer plowing and planting. They planted corn, beans, potatoes, and carrots. They consumed no meat, eggs, milk, butter, coffee, tea, or molasses. The preferred diet was raw fruit and vegetables and water. Later, Alcott would ban the growing of food that grew downward. They felt animals should be as free as humans and so used no wool, honey, manure, or animal labor. In order to not be attracted by money, they tried to grow only as much as they could consume. They had little to worry about, because over production would not be a problem at Fruitlands. Neglecting their farm duties, Alcott and Lane traveled widely to Boston, New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut unsuccessfully recruiting additional members. As a result, when the grain needed to be harvested in the fall, Lane and Alcott were away and so Abigail and the girls led the harvest.

The few adults at Fruitlands were a motley crew. One resident insisted on wearing a long beard in an era when all men shaved. Another was a nudist, believing that clothing was spiritually restrictive. He agreed to practice his nudity only at night. One male believed that cursing and profane language elevated the spirit and regularly greeted people with “Good morning, damn you.” One resident – an elderly female – was caught by Lane eating a piece of fish. Defending herself she said, “I only took a little bit of the tail” to which Lane replied, “Yes, but the whole fish had to be tortured and killed.” She packed her bags and left.

By the fall, only the Alcotts and Lanes remained. When Samuel May refused to make an installment payment on the farm in January of 1844, everyone was forced to leave Fruitlands. Alcott’s dream of a radical vegetarian community was over. It had survived less than a year.

Pre-dating these three communities by a few years was the utopian settlemen Of Abner Kneeland, Salubria, Iowa. Kneeland was ordained as a Universalist minister in 1804 and for 25 years served churches in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. Throughout his ministry, he continued to shift his theological and societal beliefs and came to support the radical beliefs of socialist reformers Robert Owen and Francis Wright. He supported women’s rights, racial equality, divorce, birth control, and interracial marriage. Theologicallly, he drifted away from Christian doctrine and came to define himself as a pantheist. In 1830 he was declared out of fellowship with the Universalists and no longer recognized as a Universalist minister. He established the First Society of Free Enquirers, and preached to crowds of about 2,000 on Sundays. After 3 years, he was challenged by Universalist minister and editor Thomas Whittemore. In response, Kneeland wrote an article which was published in the “Boston Intelligencer.” Kneeland wrote: “Universalists believe in a god which I do not…Universalists believe in Christ, which I do not…Universalists believe in miracles, which I do not…Universalists believe in the resurrection of the dead… and eternal life, which I do not.” For those statements over a period of five years he underwent five trials for blasphemy. Ultimately, he was convicted and in June of 1838, at the age of 64, served 60 days in jail. Famously, he was the last man in this country jailed for blasphemy. While in jail, Kneeland made plans to move west and establish a new community of free thinkers. He sought a community where no one would be persecuted for their religious or social beliefs. He chose the newly opened territory of Iowa for his project of free thinkers. By the spring of 1839, less than a year after his release from jail, he was in Iowa. He purchased 230 acres, setting aside 80 acres for himself and offering the rest for sale. Friends and supporters bought 200 more acres. Ten other families soon joined him, “united in desire to free inquiry.” He advertised his new community of Salubria in the Boston Intelligencer, describing the new land in glowing terms. He built a large two-story house, the finest in the county. Now in his mid-60s, he had two more children by his fourth wife – the first three having died.

Although Kneeland was busy in his new, small community, new settlers did not arrive and the land did not sell. He had not taken into consideration the Panic of 1837 – a 7 year long depression – the worse that the United States had faced up to that time. If others had planned to move to Salubria, there was now no money. To make ends meet, Kneeland taught school, sold his livestock and his 200 books.

Local citizens had been tolerant of Kneeland and his free thinkers and a group of nearby Mormons. One local resident regarded the settlers at Salubria as a group of people who just read a lot of books. However, young men from the American Home Missionary Society invaded the area and reported there were a “considerable body of men here…who are in various degrees infected with infidelity.” Of course, they were referring to Kneeland and his free thinkers. As a reflection of their mindset, one Kneeland supported named his son Voltaire Paine Twombley.

Kneeland became active in local politics, was elected county chairman of the local Democratic party, but lost in a bid for the territorial legislature. In 1842, although Kneeland was not on the ticket for any office, the Democrats were attacked by their Whig opponents as the “”infidelity ticket.” The entire slate was defeated.

Two years later at the age of 70, Kneeland suffered a stroke and died. Some of his followers stayed and became absorbed in the area. But the free inquiry community of Salubria was over.

Utopia – “a place of ideal perfection, especially in laws, government, and social conditions.” Ultimately, these four communities tied to our UU forefathers failed. What had they sought? They sought communities of free thinkers, Transcendentalists, vegetarians, and practical Christians. They sought economic stability, religious freedom, and intentional communities of like minded individuals. They sought a better, more meaningful way of life. They sought to set an example for others to follow. Although their experiments in living failed, their quest still resounds with us today. The question remains, how shall we live?

On the one hand, I believe that Brook Farm reminds us to be open to our life- long search for truth and meaning – to associate with those who can give us inspiration, guidance, and encouragement. If we accept the principles of George Ripley’s “Articles of Agreement,” then we would strive to “diminish the desire of excessive accumulations.” Yes, we would learn the boundaries of “enoughness,” focus on what is truly important, and in the words of Ripley achieve “a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement, and moral dignity.” Adin Ballou teaches us to be true to our beliefs and to live life accordingly, wherever it may lead. Bronson Alcott should encourage us to live a life of simplicity, not only in our choices of what we eat, but in how we treat others, animals, and the environment. Abner Kneeland teaches us the value of freedom of speech and thought. For me he also gives encouragement to persevere, no matter what your age, circumstances, or obstacles. Shall we establish our own utopia? The First UU Utopia of Austin, Texas? After all, we have 132 acres of Hill Country land at U Bar U. Perhaps we can raise our own chickens and have farm fresh eggs. Perhaps we can have bee hives and have buckets of honey. We do have church members who can help us in those areas, you know. Perhaps we can raise goats and sell goat cheese to the finest restaurants in Austin. Or perhaps we have already addressed this issue. Our church mission statement states that “We gather in community to nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice.” We will most likely never establish a UU utopia, but perhaps, we can live out our mission, discover meaningful lives, do good works, and have a positive impact on those about us. That in itself would almost be a utopian community.

May it be so.