“In the month of August, 1817, fourteen years after the advent of George Rapp with his communistic band of followers in America, Joseph Baumeler, a German, landed in Philadelphia.” Accompanying him were a few followers, from Germany, “that veritable hot-bed of religious radicalisms.” Not unlike the Harmonists, the Zoarites were separatists from the established church who were uniting against the lack of faith in their own country’s followers of Christ. “Their refusal to send their children to the schools—which were controlled by the clergy—and to allow their young men to serve as soldiers, brought upon them persecution from both the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, resulting in flogging, imprisonment and fines.” “To the end that they might enjoy full freedom to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, untrammeled by Church or State, decided them to seek new habitations in a strange country.” A settlement was established in the Ohio Valley where “an arrangement was soon reached in which those of the more well-to-do among the number were to assist those of no means whatever in getting started in their new homes, by furnishing stock and tool son credit.” The Zoar community saw many struggles in its first years of existence and consequently, Joseph Baumeler was faced with a state of emergency. He decided that a communism of property was the only way to save their community. “They must hold together and form an association of power in the community, the strong sustaining the weak and the children in the families cared for and educated until they should become useful members of society.” “As soon as we adopted community of goods we began to prosper.” The Zoarites set up shops, kept cattle, farmed laboriously, established blacksmith’s, carpenter’s and joiner’s shops and opened a woolen factory, several mills and a brewery. As of the spring of eighteen seventy-four, they had three hundred members and their property was worth well over one million dollars.
The members of the community at Zoar believed in the Bible and were devout Trinitarians, believing in the God, the Father, Jesus Christ, the Son and in the Holy Ghost. They decried all ceremonies and, as is stated in their Principles of Separatists, they separated from all ecclesiastical connections, because true Christian life requires no sectarianism. “The religious ordinances of the Zoarites stand out in singular contrast to those of the Shakers and Harmonists.” They held very few meetings, and those that were held on Sundays were very poorly attended. “Celibacy was enjoined upon all for a time, but more as a matter of policy than from religious principle, this feature of their institution being abolished after a duration of about fifteen years.” The main reason for the change from celibacy to marriage was to ensure the perpetuation of communistic believers in their society.
The Community of Zoar was divided into two classes. “The probationary members and children constituted the first class, while the second class consisted of all those who had donated their possessions to the Community, and hereby endowed themselves with the right of suffrage in the society, and eligibility to office.” The members of the first class signed an agreement stating that: “for the furtherance of their spiritual and temporal welfare and happiness, they bind themselves to labour, obey, and execute all the orders of the trustees and their successors and to use all their industry and skill in behalf of the exclusive benefit of the said Separatist Society of Zoar.” “The constitution of the society provides for the election of all officers by a full vote of all the members; also for the annual election of one trustee, who shall hold office for the term of three years.”
The Zoar community experienced much dissidence, especially amongst its youth in the latter days of its existence. “They fell into the fashion and ways of the world, and would not brook the restraints that religious Communism required.” In his article, Edson states that: “the ordinances of the Zoar community are few and weak and I am forced to admit that I saw there few signs of superior culture, and that many a village of the same size in our Northern states surpass it in enterprise, and in facilities for educational development.” Such weaknesses in the Zoarite government and ordinances led to the decline of the community and its eventual disappearance in 1898, just eighty one years after its inception.
For over two hundred years the United States provided the framework for the establishment of various communistic societies. Religious adherents fleeing their countries of origin in order to find civil liberty and freedom of worship founded these societies. Three notable communities of this sort were the Shakers, the Rappites and the Zoarites. The Shakers saw their beginnings in England and through an established set of rigid doctrines came to be the longest lasting and most successful communistic society in America. The Rappites were a group of religious dissenters within the German Lutheran Church who fled their homelands after repeated persecution. Here, they founded flourishing communities and emerged as the wealthiest society of their type on U.S. soil. The Zoarites also came from Germany, where they experienced a denial of their civil and religious privileges. In the United States they founded a community that although admirable in its pursuits of the common good, floundered amidst internal dissention. All three of these communistic societies were enviable in their distinctions as true believers in charity and restraint and are to be admired for their selfless wills and Utopian ideals.