Polygamy In The 19th Century

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In the Antebellum 19th century, the approach to the human body, from a religious standpoint, would vary among different congregations. Some African Americans factions preserved traditions of Conjure, which practiced the manifestation of body healing or harming through spiritual treatment (Goff & Harvey, 2004, p. 84). While others used religion as an instrument to justify outrageous acts of controlling and/or harming other individual’s bodies such as with slavery and the relocation of Native American tribes (Goff & Harvey, 2004, pp. 145, 243). Dissimilarly, Mormonism practiced polygamy out of fear being controlled, while the Oneida Perfectionists viewed monogamy as unholy thus practiced a complex form of polygamy (Goff & Harvey, 2004, pp. 214-215). Historically, religion has frequently put an emphasis the human body, though the way in …show more content…

The Oneida Perfectionists, led by John Humphrey Noyes, believed that marriage was an unholy practice that encouraged “special love” as opposed to social harmony. Instead, a polygamous-like system was set up in its place. Within this system men and women “could enjoy – with the approval of Father Noyes – a sexual relationship with one another” (Goff & Harvey, 2004, p. 214). Whereas nineteenth-century Mormons practiced polygamy for unrelated reasons. Mormons believed that women had gained an “unnatural” control within the family by controlling their husbands sexually. According to Mormon followers, polygamy provided a system that reestablished appropriate relationships between men and women (Goff & Harvey, 2004, p. 215). The focus on sex from the Mormon standpoint was that it was, allegedly, providing women with too much power, while the Oneida Perfectionists’ focus was that sex with only one partner was an unholy act. However the path led to polygamy, the end result remains that religious beliefs were regulating the sex lives, and therefore bodies, of the

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