Page 19 - C.A.L.L. #45 - Summer 2019

Communes Carry On In

Individualistic America

st
May 1 2019

KU News Service.

Timothy Miller, professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas, has just published

“Communes in America, 1975-2000.” It follows his “The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth-
Century America, Volume I, 1900-1960” and “The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond,” all
from Syracuse University Press.

“Rumors of the demise of the commune are greatly
exaggerated,” he wrote in the latest book.

Miller lived in a commune outside Lawrence for a time
during the 1970s, and he has always been fascinated
by the subject.

“My specialty was new religious movements,” Miller Sitting in his Smith Hall office on the KU
said. “I’m just intrigued with people that do things campus, Timothy Miller holds a copy of his

differently, people who go against the flow.” latest book, "Communes in America: 1975-
2000."
Miller tries throughout the new book to tamp down
hysterical reactions, pointing out the many more peaceful, successful communal forms of

living, in contrast with the few high-profile failures, which he also sketched.

Miller pointed out that not all communes have a religious purpose.

He wrote, “Most American communes see themselves as either arks or lighthouses. In the
former case, communitarians band together to protect themselves from the outside world –
from environmental collapse, millennial tribulation or other threats of disaster or

catastrophic change. In the latter, persons equally despairing, perhaps, but nevertheless
hopeful … build communities as shining examples of just how wonderful the world could be if
we would live in better ways ...”

Miller wrote that whereas he once saw those two forms as mutually exclusive, some
communes he calls “ecovillages” try to combine those two ethics.