The Ministers' War : John W. Mears, the Oneida Community, and the Crusade for Public Morality (9780815635765)

Unbridled passions threatened nineteenth-century America, a vulnerable young nation already feeling beset by foreigners, corruption, and disease. Purifying crusaders like Hamilton College philosophy professor and Presbyterian minister John W. Mears mobilized to fight every sin and carnal lure, from liquor to free love. In Upstate New York's famed Oneida Community, Mears encountered his stiffest challenge. Oneida's founder and patriarch, John Humphrey Noyes, oversaw a radical Christian commune where men and women sexually mingled through the practice of ""complex marriage."" While others struggled to dislodge the community that had evolved since 1848 into a successful business venture and congenial neighbor, it was Mears who, after years of trying, rallied New York's church and university leaders for a final, concerted anti-Oneida campaign.

In The Ministers' War, Doyle traces the full story of Mears and the crusade against the Oneida Community. He explores the ways in which Mears's multipurpose zeal reflected the passions behind the nineteenth-century temperance movement, the fight against obscenity, and the public animus toward unconventional thought. As an author, political candidate, and controversialist, Mears was a prominent moralizer at a time when public morality seemed to be most at risk.

Product details

• Format Hardback | 248 pages
• Dimensions 152 x 229 x 17.53mm | 825g
• Publication date 15 Mar 2018
• Publisher Syracuse University Press
• Publication City/Country New York, United States
• Language English
• Illustrations note 5 black & white illustrations
• ISBN10 0815635761
• ISBN13 9780815635765

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