Communal Family
Attempts to live a common, communal life separate from society have existed
throughout the history of Christianity. Interest in the concept was especially
popular in America from the 1960s on.
Communal groups after 1960 were often formed in connection with the hippie
movement and a desire for an alternative to the middle class lifestyle. Many of
the young adults involved came to be distinguished by their use of psychedelic
and other illegal drugs.
After the media, time, and drugs destroyed the hippie communities in the
urban areas, many of the former hippies headed for rural America and launched a
back-to-the-land movement. Others scattered through the cities and formed
various kinds of urban cooperatives. The impulse remained strong through the
1970s, but has shown signs of waning in the 1980s. Of the hundreds of
communities formed, however, a number (mostly religious) have survived to take
their place in communal history.
One new set of the recent communities shared the common roots of the hippie
and the Jesus People, the Christian evangelical movement that emerged among the
hippies. Numerous Christian communes, Jesus People U.S.A. of Chicago being
possibly the most successful, sprang up. They were joined by occult New Age
communities which combined hippie values with New Age visions of communes as
transforming agents in society.
Page was last updated on 08/14/00