The Battle-Axe Letter

John Humphrey Noyes fell in love with Abigail Merwin early in 1834. He met her at the Perfectionist Free Church of New Haven. She was the first person to publicly ally herself with him after he made his public confession of salvation from sin. She was thirty, he twenty-two. She had dark hair and eyes. She was reportedly beautiful. From February 1834 until May 1834 they met often to discuss how to launch a Perfectionist preaching campaign.


Soon after Noyes left New Haven for New York City in the spring of 1834, Merwin began to have doubts about him and eventually broke off their relationship. Noyes was crushed, but he continued his preaching. He wrote constantly and joined with James Boyle in publishing a little magazine, The Perfectionist. Then in January 1837 he learned Abigail Merwin had married and moved to Ithaca, NY. Noyes immediately followed, apparently intending to somehow win her back.


Noyes quickly discovered he was not going to be successful. In the midst of intense emotional turmoil about losing the person he felt destined to love, Noyes suppressed his personal sense of loss and focused instead on the guiding principal of his life, creating a Perfectionist heaven on earth. He later wrote, “I well remember the spiritual lift by which I rose and reached the great idea of a universal marriage, and I wrote the letter to Harrison immediately after that lift.”


The letter to his friend David Harrison was sent from Ithaca on January 15, 1837. In this letter he states the basis for his claim to be the one true leader of the Perfectionists. At the end of the letter Noyes proclaims his belief that in heaven there will be no marriage.

“When the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven there will be no marriage. Exclusiveness, jealousy, quarreling have no place at the marriage supper of the Lamb. God has placed a wall of partition between man and woman during the apostasy for good reasons; this partition will be broken down in the resurrection for equally good reasons. But woe to him who abolishes the law of the apostasy before he stands in the holiness of the resurrection! I call a certain woman my wife. She is yours, she is Christ's, and in him she is the bride of all saints. She is now in the hands of a stranger, and according to my promise to her, I rejoice. My claim upon her cuts directly across the marriage covenant of this world, and God knows the end.”

The letter apparently had a strong impact on Harrison who lent it to a friend, Simon Lovett. Lovett then showed the letter to one Elizabeth Hawley, a young Perfectionist firebrand, who insisted upon having it sent to a Perfectionist preacher, Theophilus R. Gates of Philadelphia. She threatened, if denied, to leave Lovett's house immediately on foot for New Haven during a terrific thunderstorm. The letter was sent.


Gates was no friend to Noyes, but he was just starting his own religiously based campaign against marriage and was looking for allies. By August 1837 Noyes' letter was on the cover of the second number of Gate's broadsheet, “The Battle-Axe and Weapons of War.” Although published anonymously, Noyes quickly admitted he was the author of the letter to avoid suspicion being placed on others. He later admitted he felt that God intended his private thoughts to be made public because thereafter he felt that he was called to defend and ultimately carry out the doctrine of communism in love.

All of the above is well-known Community history, most of it provided by Noyes himself. To truly understand the spirit of the times, and just how far people were willing to go in pursuit of a Perfectionist heaven on earth, we need to take a closer look at Theophilus Gates.

Gates was born on Jan. 12, 1787, in Hartland, in northeastern Connecticut. He initially worked as an itinerate school teacher but by 1810 Gates turned to preaching. Like many others he was swept up in the spirit of revivalism sweeping the country. Gates believed the Bible predicted “a brotherhood of all persons, united by the ecstasies of love and sympathy.” His basic belief in the power of free love would not have been out of place in a hippie commune of the 1970s.

By 1837 Gates had been converted to Perfectionism and had moved to Philadelphia. He had come to believe that in the end days that were fast approaching it was necessary to break down many mistaken human social practices, especially the concept of marriage and the concept of falling in love which he called “an enchantment of the devil."

In place of marriage Gates preached a totally spontaneous and flexible sexual arrangement between men and women. By 1840 Gates and a few followers moved west of Philadelphia to rural northern Chester County near Pottstown where they took up residence in Schenkel's Valley, an area they renamed “Free Love Valley.” There were only a small number of so-called “Battle-Axers.” They had no set codes of conduct, no formal liturgy, and there doesn't seem to have been a set time or location for their meetings. Anecdotal records reveal that group nudity, emulating the pure state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, played an important role in a Battle-Axe service.
Often services ended by a nude procession to a near-by pond followed by what could only be described as an orgy.

It didn't take long for this behavior to attract attention. Four members were arrested for fornication and adultery at the beginning of 1843. Three were convicted and sent to prison. During these proceedings Battle-Axe followers chose to disrupt the Schenkel Church during the Sunday service by marching nude down the main aisle waving their arms and crying out against the established order.

When Gates died in 1846, the sect continued with Hannah Williamson as their leader. Hannah and her followers were often thrown out of camp meetings and church services for their disruptive tactics. She eventually left the area in the late 1850s to spread the word of free love in the wild west. So ends the era of the Battle-Axes.

So far as I know, Noyes never gave any direct indication he knew about the Battle-Axes, but he must have; the world of Perfectionism was just not that large. Noyes did often criticize “Free Love” as wrong-headed in asserting that an inspired sexual pairing, no matter how Godly, could replace marriage. He felt only a communal marriage was indicated by scriptures, although he did admit he could see how the celibacy of the Shakers might derive from the same scriptures.

Now that Noyes had announced his belief in Bible Communism and especially in communal marriage, there remained the question of how exactly his ideas might be made concrete. That is the story of the Putney Community, and that is where I will turn next.

Bible Communism

During the period between 1832 and 1838 John Humphrey Noyes traveled the northeast. He met and argued with other Perfectionists. He wrote exhaustively. He read the Bible daily.


He slowly became convinced that all other Perfectionists and indeed all other millenarians misunderstood the Biblical prophesy of the coming end times in one crucial way. They believed on Judgment day that the righteous would be lifted up into heaven. During the period leading up to Judgment the righteous need to pray and strive to live a moral life. Other than that they simply need to wait for the appointed time.


Noyes did not believe in waiting. His Bible study convinced him that the millennial process was to be gradual. In his view, Perfectionists who had experienced salvation from sin could and should begin to immediately live a life identical to life in heaven. This example of a perfect life would be an inspiration to others. Once all sinless persons adopted a heavenly life-style, heaven would be the reality on a transformed earth. Here's how Noyes describes the process:

“It is clear from the New Testament descriptions that the New Jerusalem is not a city to be hereafter instituted, but one long ago established, the place into which the primitive saints passed either by death or by change at the second coming, and where they met the Father, Son and holy angels. This organization is to be revealed ultimately in this world. Its distinctive character when revealed will not be changed. It will still be the home of angels and just men made perfect, entirely exempt from sin and death. Yet it does not appear that it will at once embrace the whole population of the world. On the contrary John represents it as a city standing in the midst of nations, assessable to them and shedding its healing influence over them, but not including them within its walls.”

Even though Noyes was an inspired and even mystical thinker, he was a realist. He believed it would take many years for the Perfectionist “heaven on earth” to grow and be accepted. When pressed to estimate the time this process would take he opined it would take less than 300 to 400 years. He felt certain, however, that once he understood what life would be like in heaven, he could convince his most inspired followers to begin living that life.

The New Testament became his guide. He clearly understood that the one thing God required of all believers was selflessness. It is individual egoism that leads to sin and all the vices. To live a life free of sin required that the ego be sacrificed. Noyes is squarely in the Protestant main-stream in seeing the essential message of the New Testament as an argument against personal ego and in favor of love of mankind. Where he goes with that belief is what sets him apart.


He carefully studied the practical advice in the writings of Jesus' Apostles as well as the teachings of Paul to the early Christian churches. Here he discovers what he called “Bible Communism.” We must remember that when Noyes composed his early writings, Karl Marx was unknown in America and had not yet published the Communist Manifesto (1848). The word “Communism” would not assume its full contemporary connotation for almost a century. For Noyes “Bible Communism” meant totally renouncing all claims of ownership, both over things and over people.


Noyes' argument is spelled out in the early publications of the Oneida Community roughly as follows:

"We hold - 1, That all the systems of property-getting in vogue in the world, are forms of what is vulgarly called the 'grab-game,' i.e., the game in which the prizes are not distributed by any rules of wisdom and justice, but are seized by the strongest and craftiest and that the laws of the world simply give rules, more or less civilized, for the conduct of this game.”

“The Association believes that in the kingdom of heaven 'every man will be rewarded according to his works' with far greater exactness than is done in the kingdoms of this world; but it does not believe that money is the currency in which rewards are to be distributed and accounts balanced. Its idea is that love is the appropriate reward of labor; that in a just spiritual medium, every individual, by the fixed laws of attraction, will draw around him an amount of love exactly proportioned to his intrinsic value and efficiency, and thus that all accounts will be punctually and justly balanced without the complicated and cumbersome machinery of book-keeping.”

Noyes believed the first step to ending egoism is an end to private property. He saw all proper ownership as communal co-ownership with God. He believed that abolition of private property and establishment of totally communal property would abolish “the curse of excessive labor.” He went further, however, and held that an end to egoism, if allowed its full scope, would not only abolish private property but also abolish property in persons. He believed St. Paul expressly placed property in goods and property in persons in the same category, and spoke of them together as being abolished by the coming of the Kingdom of God.


For Noyes ownership of persons only incidentally included the institution of slavery. His primary concern was with the institution of marriage. Noyes found adequate Biblical evidence that in the Kingdom of God marriage does not exist, but his search of the Bible revealed no evidence that sex and procreation does not exist in heaven. Because of this fact, he believed a new relationship of men and women is required, totally free of ownership and of what Noyes would later term the “special love” of just one person for one other. Furthermore, he knew first-hand that exclusiveness in marriage poses unfair challenges to women, chief among which was “the curse of excessive childbearing.”


In short he believed the practical object of Perfectionism was “to break up the worldly social system and establish true sexual and industrial relations.” Here's Noyes' summary of the project of the Oneida Perfectionists:

“We can now see our way to victory over death. Reconciliation with God opens the way for reconciliation of the sexes. Reconciliation of the sexes excludes shame, and opens the way for Bible Communism. Bible Communism increases strength, diminishes work, and makes work attractive. Thus the antecedents of death are removed. First we abolish sin, then shame, then the curse on woman of exhausting childbearing, then the curse on man of excessive labor, and so we arrive regularly at the tree of life.”

The story of how Bible Communism became a reality for nearly half a century began with a small band of followers in Putney, VT in about 1840 and continued at Oneida, NY after 1848 until about 1880. As will be seen, there were ample examples of how one might abolish private property. There were few examples of how to abolish marriage. For that reason, I will take a closer look at the argument for abolishing marriage in my next posts.

Perfectionism

John Humphrey Noyes was an intensely intellectual person living in a time when almost all moral discourse was framed in religious terms. It is not surprising, therefore, when Noyes thought about the social and personal upheavals of his time he did so in a religious framework. I assume he got the fundamentals of his religious education when attending Dartmouth College (Class of 1830). In the period before the civil war, a college education was basically a religious education. Any “philosophical” education was conducted personally by the college president and was designed to indoctrinate students with the basics of that distinguished clergyman's personal religious outlook.

Like most old New England colleges, Dartmouth was founded by a Congregational minister (Eleazer Wheelock) and remained firmly a Congregational institution when Noyes was there. At the core of the Congregational faith was a belief in the essential sinfulness of all humans and in salvation by grace alone. Perhaps the most eloquent expression of this belief can be found in Jonathan Edwards' 1741 sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/je-sinners.htm

Put simply, this doctrine holds it is impossible for humans not to sin. Even though a person may know God's laws and faithfully try to do what is right, failure is inevitable. Despite this fact, God still judges certain persons worthy of salvation and sends them to heaven after death. Others will be damned. The choice is God's alone and cannot be known during a person's life. In this view, the intention and effort to always do what is right is no guarantee of salvation. The believer must work hard to do good all his or her life, aware of the inevitability of committing some sin, with no sense of whether he or she will be saved in the end. The role of the Church is to guide the faithful, hopefully maximizing their chances of salvation.

This issue received a new formulation in the 18^th century by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804). Kant called the Christian belief in original sin a “moral puzzle.” He held that a fundamental principle of all morality is that “ought” implies “can.” Kant did not believe it made sense to claim we have a moral obligation to act in a certain way if, in the practical world, it is impossible to perform such acts. In his view, valid moral rules cannot require more than we are able to give.

John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of the Methodist Church, also believed that God's laws for living a moral life could not require behavior that is not attainable. He preached that any human being, who truly devoted him or her self to live a moral life, could live a “perfect” life without sin. He spells out this view in some detail in A Plain Account of Christian Perfectionism (1725). He recognized the reality that humans dwell in a corruptible body marked by a thousand defects arising from ignorance, infirmities, and so on. In his view, a truly devout person who loves God with all one's heart, soul, and mind has the ability to live without deliberate sin.

In Wesley's formulation, achieving the state of “perfection” is accomplished by a religious conversion experience followed by a revelation of personal salvation. During conversion a person is freed from the outward sins he or she committed in the past. Salvation allows the believer to transcend the inner limitations of original sin. He exhorted his followers that salvation from sin is not the end of their spiritual search, but the beginning. Once saved, a person still has to strive daily to live a good life.

In 18^th century England and in early 19^th century New England Wesley's views were seen as heresy. It is easy to see why. So long as salvation from sin could only be achieved within the framework of an established church, the existing social order was not threatened. The Church, be it Catholic, Anglican, or Congregational, could largely control society so long as all moral authority emanated from the pulpit. If individuals outside of the church were allowed to believe that personal salvation can be achieved without Church guidance, chaos would reign.

By the time John Humphrey Noyes was attending Yale Theological Seminary the term “perfectionism” was shorthand for a sort of Wesleyan belief in personal salvation from sin. On February 20, 1834, when he stood up in the Free Church of New Haven and declared his personal revelation that he was free of sin, he was actually publicly taking sides against the established religious order. It is little wonder, then, that he quickly lost his license as a Congregational minister.

The interesting question for me is what happens next. The act of taking a public stand against established religion, threw Noyes into an emotional turmoil. His account of his life in the time following his departure from Yale sounds like a description of a nervous breakdown. He moved briefly to New York City and wrestled with what he had done. I'm sure he considered returning to Vermont to work at his father's successful dry goods store or to practice law. In the end he realized he had to share his revelation. He spent the next four years he eked out a meager living as an itinerant perfectionist preacher traveling throughout the settled parts of the northeast from New York City to Vermont.

His efforts to make sense of Kant's “moral puzzle” drove him deeper and deeper into scriptural interpretation. Like many other perfectionists he believed the final days were destined to occur within his lifetime. This belief added urgency to his effort to understand how greater personal moral perfection could be practically achieved. He published his thoughts on these issues in the little religious newspapers he edited, first in The Perfectionist and later The Witness. By 1838 he had collected a small following and his ideas had matured. He returned to his home town of Putney, Vermont, married Harriet Holton, one of his followers, and commenced the process of founding his own religious society.

He had an outline of how to create “heaven on earth.” He was determined.