the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

Lesson #1
READ THE FINE PRINT
the eroto-utopians of upstate new york
John Humphrey Noyes’s sexually adventurous Perfectionist
commune was one of the most successful utopian religious
groups in 19th- century America. Alas, the devil was in
the details.
IF YOU FOUND yourself living near Putney, Vermont, in 1847, it
would have been hard to ignore the gossip that was rampant in local sewing
circles, and harder still to resist the temptation to ask a few curious
questions. For the past six years, John Humphrey Noyes, a local boy and
renegade former licensee of the Yale Theological School, had been leading
a rather unorthodox Christian community in that orthodox New En gland
town. Utopian experiments weren’t unusual during that period; similar
groups such as the Shakers and the Mormons were just getting started as
well. But Noyes’s “Perfectionist” gospel had a particularly interesting
twist—its enthusiastic embrace of sex as a means of spiritual enlightenment.
In marketing terms, this is what later became known as a unique
selling proposition. The Shakers had one, too, but they were pushing celibacy,
a tough sell even in Victorian America, and certainly a deterrent to
recruiting and a hindrance to long-range viability. The Mormons allowed
men to take more than one wife, but not everyone saw that as a win-win.
Noyes and the Perfectionists, on the other hand, were suggesting that the