Introduction

In October 1845, James White, a future leader of the Seventh-day Adventist church, made public his view that to marry at that particular time was to deny faith in the imminent second advent of Christ, which, he believed, would take place later that year. It was, he said, ‘a wile of the Devil’. Although he soon renounced all time-setting, and within a year was himself married, it is clear that for him and his fellow believers the demands of human sexuality had to be strictly sub-ordinated to the requirements of human spirituality.

Given this situation of tense expectation, it would not have been surprising had the sabbatarian adventists adopted an extreme teaching on marital relationships, as did some other religious groups developing at the same time. The Shakers, for example, held that, since the Bible taught that there would be no sexual relations after the resurrection of the just, they should abstain now by way of preparation. The practice of celibacy was an expression of unselfishness and a sign of triumph over sin. The exclusive attachments of normal family life were eliminated, and all energies devoted to the glory of God and the well-being of the community, which was rigidly segregated along sexual lines. While John Humphrey Noyes acknowledged the undesirability of exclusive emotional attachments, he advocated a rather different remedy.