IX. Social Experiments and Strange Utopias

Before turning to the imposing list of early nineteenth-century expositors of prophecy we must, in order to get the over-all picture of the time, mention certain imported religious and social experiments and strange indigenous Utopias which, along with the accepted and established religious bodies, marked these turbulent decades. Experimentation was characteristic of the times, along with the upspringing of numerous marginal cults and communities. Transcendentalism nourished among certain of the elite. And some sections were dotted with short-lived communal systems, such as the Shakers, the Ephrata Colony, the Rappites, the communities of Bethel and Aurora, the Separatists of Zoar, the Amana Society, and similar smaller groups.PFF4 54.5

This was a period of social ferment, with America as a testing ground for the freakish as well as a haven for the orthodox and established. Utopias of an allegedly religious origin, but generally socialist in aim, included the Hopedale community, Fruitlands, the Oneida Colony, New Harmony, and the Fourierist phalanxes. ^{65Full portrayals appear in Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment; Whitney L. Cross, The Burned-Over District; David M. Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont; A. E. Bettor, Backwards Utopias; Victor F. Calverton, Where Angels Dared to Tread; and Gilbert Seldes, The Stammering Century.} These were often motivated by strange hopes of an idealistic “millennium.” Thus religious flux characterized the times, with varying “reforms” as an accompaniment. These dot the margin of the over-all picture, with its complex pattern.PFF4 55.1