The Oneida Community was a perfectionist religious communal society founded by John Humphrey Noyes and his followers in 1848 near Oneida, New York. The community believed that Jesus had already returned in AD 70, making it possible for them to bring about Jesus's millennial kingdom themselves, and be perfect and free of sin in this world, not just in Heaven (a belief called perfectionism). The Oneida Community practiced communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), group marriage, male sexual continence, and mutual criticism. The Oneida community strongly believed in a system of free love – a term which Noyes is credited with coining – which was known as complex marriage, where any member was free to have sex with any other who consented. Possessiveness and exclusive relationships were frowned upon
To control reproduction within the Oneida community, a system of male continence or coitus reservatus was enacted. John Humprey Noyes decided that sexual intercourse served two distinct purposes. In the pamphlet Male Continence, Noyes argues that the method simply "proposes the subordination of the flesh to the spirit, teaching men to seek principally the elevated spiritual pleasures of sexual connection".
John Humphrey Noyes (September 3, 1811 – April 13, 1886) was an American preacher, radical religious philosopher, and utopian socialist. He founded the Putney, Oneida and Wallingford Communities, and is credited with coining the term "complex marriage".
