Amana
From Pietist Sect to American Community
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4264149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael W Cuneo, Diane L Barthel, Diane Barthel |
| Year | 1985 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 338 |
| Publication date | 1985-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociological Analysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0210 • E-ISSN: 2325-7873 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3710703 |
| OpenAlex | W4299902861 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
In the annals of American utopianism, the Society of True Inspiration, better known as the Amana Society, stands out as one of the country's most successful communal experiments.We can measure this group's history in centuries rather than in months.These sturdy religious communists traced their past to a mystical Christian movement in eighteenth-century Germany.For years the Inspirationist Church remained small and insignificant, but the migration of hardcore zealots to New York State in the early 1840s energized it.The cluster of settlements at Ebenezer, New York grew rapidly in population, from 350 to more than 800.The lure of inexpensive land and the relative isolation of the Iowa frontier caused the society to relocate in Iowa County in 1856 and by 1905 membership there reached its zenith of 1,770.Unlike the Spirit Fruit Society and a few other religious utopias which espoused absolute egalitarianism, the Amana colonies seemed to thrive under a structure that allowed some members to be more equal than others with an "aristocracy of elders."Differing from the famous Shakers and the Oneida Perfectionists, the Inspirationists embraced the traditional family, which contributed to their strength and longevity.Life at Amana did change; the Iowa utopia could not and did not remain isolated.Its economic base was linked to both the national and local marketplaces; booms and busts indeed affected these Iowans.Since the utopia retained an anachronistic, German, villagebased system of cottage industries, it found twentieth-century challenges difficult.So in Í932 Amana experienced the "Great Change," the abandonment of economic communism for a type of "co-operativism."The church remained, but was quickly overshadowed by the capitalistic spirit.Diane Barthel has written the first modern, comprehensive account of the Inspirationists.Rather than write an unimaginative historical narrative
Sect · Theology · History · Moravian Church and William Blake · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 1989 - 2018 (30) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |