Wallkill is it a Commune?

PaintedToeNail

After reading how many people live at the Wallkill facility, it made me ask the above question. After looking up what 'commune' meant in secular sources, it seems that Wallkill has all the hallmarks necessary to actually be a commune. Meals complete with assigned seats and required attendance, dress requirements, wake up times, music and tv restrictions, work assignments, heirarchy making all decisions, no money being earned by the workers, the vow of poverty....

Gopher

The Wikipedia entry for "commune" has a section where it talks about Ron E. Roberts' three main characteristics of communes.

The WTS facilities have grades of social status ("Bethel elders" leading each table) and bureaucracy directing the lives of the inmates, erm, Bethelites there. So while the Bethel homes (Walkill included) do share some of the restrictions of communes, they don't seem to share their egalitarian qualities. Just my 2 cents.

From the Wikipedia article:

Roberts' three listed items were: first, egalitarianism - that communes specifically rejected hierarchy or graduations of social status as being necessary to social order. Second, human scale - that members of some communes saw the scale of society as it was then organised as being too industrialised (or factory sized) and therefore unsympathetic to human dimensions. And third, that communes were consciously anti-bureaucratic.

zeb

I always thought of bethels as monasterys.

DATA-DOG

Was The Village a commune?

Tylinbrando

Had to go to meetings outside the facility. Not everything you needed was available in the store either. The influx of temporary workers always livened things up a bit. Construction in the dead of winter SUCKED.

Other than the natural beauty in the surrounding landscape it was one of the most surreal and somewhat depressing times I experienced.

blondie

zeb, then do married Bethelites practce celibacy today?

Band on the Run

I recall communes from the sixties. The WT don't appear to be commune people. Has the meaning changed?

My memories are of hippies a bit older than me. They were a big deal around colleges.

Greenwich Village had a ton of them.

I thought perhaps I would find a family atmosphere.

My friends' husband was a member of the Sojourner community, a group of radical Christians living together similar to the accounts in Acts. They stressed social justice and chose to live in the worst neighborhodds, rehabing homes. The funny thing is they had problems b/c their property appreciated so much.

Has anyone heard of communes? A friend told me of Israeli kibbutzes. I also wanted to try them out but I am not the farming type.

PaintedToeNail

Band-From what I've been reading, communes of the 1960' & 70's weren't true to type, with free love and drugs. It seems like communes really got going in the 19th century as religious groups started places like the Amana Colonies in Iowa, Harmony Society in Pennsylvania, Oneida Community in New York and the Shakers. All having major religious influence and say over peoples lives. Many have died out. There are a few communes on going today that seem to be more of back-to-earth movement thing associated with the 1960's, than with religion.

It would be awful to have to get up early in the morning, get dressed up and be nice to people before having morning coffee, I don't know how the Bethel people do it.

Gayle

I had started to make coffee first thing in morning in my room before morning text/worship so I could stay awake during text.

Diest

I always thought of communes as self supporting. They get their money from outside sources. Granted you could say that the money they recieve was purchasing the fine literature they print.

Wallkill is it a Commune?

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