Intentional community
[1][2][3] Members typically unite around shared values, beliefs, or a common vision, which may be political, religious, spiritual, or simply focused on the practical benefits of cooperation and mutual support.
[8] Hundreds of modern intentional communities were formed across Europe, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand out of the intellectual foment of utopianism.
Using the biblical book of Acts (and, often, the Sermon on the Mount) as a model, members of these communities strive to demonstrate their faith in a corporate context,[20] and to live out the teachings of the New Testament, practicing compassion and hospitality.
The Suffolk-born radical John Goodwyn Barmby (1820-1881), subsequently a Unitarian minister, invented the term "communitarian"[24][failed verification] in 1840.
Others are based in anthroposophic philosophy, including Camphill villages that provide support for the education, employment, and daily lives of adults and children with developmental disabilities, mental health problems or other special needs.
Located at the top of Mount Toolebewong, 65 km east of Melbourne, Victoria at an altitude of 600–800 m, this community has been entirely off the electricity grid since its inception in 1974.
[35] They often pursued nudism, vegetarian and organic agriculture, as well as various religious and political ideologies like anabaptism, theosophy, anarchism, socialism and eugenics.
Historically, German emigrants were also influential in the creation of intentional communities in other countries, like the Bruderhof in the United States of America and Kibbutzim in Israel.
Some of the urban communes have members who are graduates of zionist-socialist youth movements, like HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed, HaMahanot HaOlim and Hashomer Hatsair.
The members of the commune met for the last time on 23 November 1833 and placed on record a declaration of "the contentment, peace and happiness they had experienced for two years under the arrangements introduced by Mr. Vandeleur and Mr. Craig and which through no fault of the Association was now at an end".
[41] In imperial Russia, the vast majority of Russian peasants held their land in communal ownership within a mir community, which acted as a village government and a cooperative.
[42][43] The very widespread and influential pre-Soviet Russian tradition of monastic communities of both sexes could also be considered a form of communal living.
After the end of communism in Russia, monastic communities have again become more common, populous and, to a lesser degree, more influential in Russian society.
Various patterns of Russian behavior — toloka (толока), pomochi (помочи), artel (артель) — are also based on communal ("мирские") traditions.
In the years immediately following the revolutions of 1917 Tolstoyan communities proliferated in Russia, but later they were eventually wiped out or stripped of their independence as collectivisation and ideological purges got under way in the late 1920s.
[48] A 19th century advocate and practitioner of communal living was the utopian socialist John Goodwyn Barmby, who founded a Communist Church before becoming a Unitarian minister.
[59] One commune that played a large role in the hippie movement was Kaliflower, a utopian living cooperative that existed in San Francisco between 1967 and 1973 built on values of free love and anti-capitalism.
