Communes in America, 1975–2000 by Timothy Miller

Abstract

Reviewed by: Communes in America, 1975–2000 by Timothy Miller Devin R. Lander (bio) Communes in America, 1975–2000 By Timothy Miller . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2019. 280 pages, 6″ x 9″. $65.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. Timothy Miller, professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas, has done more important work on the history of intentional communities in the United States than any historian I can think of. Communes in America, 1975–2000 is the third and final book in his series that examines the history and relevance of American communes from 1900 to 2000 and includes the previous volumes The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth-Century America (1998) and The '60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond (1999). Collectively they represent a groundbreaking approach to the subject by deeply mining the archival record, oral history, and quantitative methods. According to the Foundation for Intentional Community's database, there are currently forty-seven "established" (including four or more adults in residence and in existence for at least two years) intentional communities in New York State, which is more than any other state except California, Washington, and Oregon. 1 New York has a long and varied history as the home of prominent intentional communities ranging from the Shakers settling in New Lebanon in the late eighteenth century, the Oneida Community's founding in 1848, and the establishment of the turn-of-the-century communal art colonies of Roy-croft in East Aurora and Byrdcliffe near Woodstock, to the Gate Hill Cooperative avant-garde artists' commune cofounded by John Cage in 1954 near Stony Point and Timothy [End Page 392] Leary's psychedelic commune residing on a 2,500-acre estate in the village of Millbrook, all of which are touched upon in Miller's series. His most recent work also notes the important communal Hindu ashrams Shree Muktananda Ashram in the Catskills and Shanti Mandir in Walden, as well as the Buddhist communes Dai Bosatsu Zendo and the Zen Mountain Monastery, also both in the Catskill mountains. The number and variety of intentional communities that called New York State home is truly amazing. In the preface of Communes in America, 1975–2000, Miller outlines his criteria for inclusion in his study, which is consistent with the previous volumes and includes the following four "must haves" that a group must possess to be considered an intentional community: 1. The group must be gathered on the basis of some kind of purpose or vision and not simply just people living together by chance or family ties. 2. The group must live together on property that has some clear physical commonality. 3. The group must have some kind of financial or material sharing. 4. The group must consist of at least five adults who are not related by blood or marriage. Miller adds that to be considered for the study, a group also must have "a sense of being withdrawn or set apart from conventional society," which is why he does not include Native American tribes, which he rightfully defines as being of the conventional society of their time and place, not outside it. Miller also does not include groups such as monasteries or convents belonging to traditional religious institutions. Communes in America, 1975–2000 is broken down into seven thematic chapters and two appendices. Chapters 2 and 3 illustrate how intentional communities reacted and adapted to social and environmental challenges in the larger society through such innovations as cohousing communes and ecovillages. Chapters 4 and 5 are dedicated to intentional communities with a spiritual purpose, and chapter 6 outlines activist and social justice communities, including feminist and LGBTQ groups. Chapter 7 investigates the often negative public perception of intentional communities during the period of 1975–2000 as a result of tragedies such as the mass suicides at Jonestown and Heaven's Gate and the deadly assaults on MOVE and the Branch Davidian compounds. Miller cautions the reader not to paint all intentional communities with the same brush based on these horrifying (but rare) catastrophes. The appendices provide excellent quantitative material drawn from the entire series as well as Miller's other works on the subject. Appendix A uses evidence going back...