Growing out of the most radical fringes of the abolitionist movement, Universal Inquiry and Reform brought together New England evangelicals with Hicksite Quakers from Ohio and Indiana. They founded eight utopian communities which, though short-lived, were the setting for the most radical questioning of antebellum American society.

The advocates of Universal Inquiry and Reform renounced all forms of coercive government, relying instead on initiating the Government of God. They were fierce critics of competitive capitalism, looking instead toward an economy based on cooperation. They experimented with new forms of education. They advocated equality for women and played important roles in the early women's rights movement in the Old Northwest.

In religion, they repudiated "sectism" and "priestcraft" for a religion of humanity that sometimes verged on atheism. Though they are less well-known than other reform groups of the time, theirs was one of the most ambitious communitarian movements of the nineteenth century.