Perfectionists, also called BIBLE COMMUNISTS and FREE-LOVERS, a small American sect, founded by John Humphrey Noyes, who was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, 6th September 1811, graduated at Dartmouth in 1830, then studied law, and afterwards theology at Andover and Yale. While a theological student, he experienced a second conversion, discovered that the prevailing theology was wholly wrong, and lost his license to preach. He held that the gospel if accepted secures freedom from sin; that God has a dual body (male and female); that the author of evil is uncreated, not God; and that communion with Christ not merely saves from sinning, but from disease and death. He now founded a 'Perfectionist' church at Putney, Vermont. He and his converts, men and women, with their children, put their property into a common stock; they gave up the use of prayer, all religious service, and the observance of the Sabbath; those who were married renounced their marriage ties, and a 'complex marriage' was established between all the males and all the females of the 'Family.' Having dispensed with law, he set up public opinion as a controlling power in its stead; and free criticism of one another by the members of the society became an important feature of his system. In 1848, after not a few difficulties, the community removed to a new home in the sequestered district of Oneida, in the state of New York, and soon numbered some 300 members, living in strict order and with much outward comfort on thoroughly communistic principles—the community of women and of children being an outstanding feature carefully regulated by the 'mutual criticism' of the family. In 1880, however, the pressure of outside opinion forced the family to modify their peculiar principles; marriage and the ordinary family relationship was introduced; communism of property gave way to limited liability joint-stock, each member having a separate share represented by so much stock in the Oneida Community, Limited. Various co-operative institutions were also established. The headquarters are at Kenwood, New York, and works have been started also at Niagara Falls, Ontario. Noyes, who assisted in elaborating the new constitution, died at Niagara Falls, 13th April 1886.
See works by Noyes, The Second Coming of Christ, Salvation from Sin the End of Faith, and History of American Socialism; the periodicals conducted by him (nearly 40 vols. 1834-80; in British Museum); Hepworth Dixon's New America, &c.; Charles Nordhoff, Communist Societies of the United States (1875).