GOD & TEXAS: La Réunion

In 1854, Victor Considérant began building a phalanstery on the Trinity River near Dallas. Most people who lived in the dusty frontier town had never even heard of a phalanstery. What was it?

Considérant was born in France in 1808 and was known internationally as a utopian socialist philosopher and economist. He was an avid disciple of François Marie Charles Fourier, a social theorist who dreamed of uprooting capitalism with direct democracy within a communal union called phalanxes. The idealistic concepts that Fourier espoused augured the later notions of Karl Marx, who co-authored “The Communist Manifesto” with Friedrich Engels.

A phalanstery is a cluster of people living in a communal group and is also the name of the building in which they live. After a visit to Texas in 1852, Considérant determined to build his phalanstery named La Réunion on 2000 acres of land on the west side of the Trinity River across from Dallas. Over the next 18 months, about 350 immigrants from various countries in Europe cycled through La Réunion via the port of Galveston.

The immigrants who accompanied Considérant were a diverse group of musicians, artists, aristocrats, and bureaucrats whose skills were extraneous in developing Texas. Each settler was allotted several acres of land for farming, and a communal general store and restaurant were established. While the institution of marriage was retained, the utopian socialists intentionally built no churches.

Almost immediately, problems developed. Unwise investment of phalanstery funds by Considérant led to financial stress. The settler’s inexperience in farming resulted in poor crops. Harsh weather and internal conflicts only hastened the end of La Réunion in January 1857.

All that remains of the phalanstery today is the La Réunion Cemetery on Fish Trap Road in West Dallas. Some of the families that remained in the area became cultural and business leaders in Dallas, and eventually founded First St. Lukes Catholic Church in 1904. Later, two streets in Dallas were named after the two major leaders of La Réunion, Cantegral Street for Francois Cantegral, and Victor Street for Victor Considérant.

Unlike many of the settlers who moved to Texas, La Réunion chose to not build a church. Because they felt no need for the help of God, they relied on their own wisdom and ingenuity. Even though they were educated and professionally successful, their lack of respect for the Creator may well have led to their early demise.

Noted author Francis Chan stated, “God is not just one thing we add to the mix called life. He wants an invitation from us to permeate everything and every part of us.” In the Old Testament, Israel turned their backs on God after they were delivered from wandering in the Wilderness. God sent them a righteously indignant Prophet who scolded them in Hosea 13:6 NIV, “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”

Celebrating self-absorption and forgetting God is a pathway to ruin. Think it over.

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