Come-outers

 Before there were hippies or even beatniks, there were come-outers. They hung out at Elizabeth Peabody’s bookshop of West Street in Boston in the 1830s.

The come-outers were people who had concluded that social institutions that were supposed to be moral beacons were colluding in an evil so awful they couldn’t be a part of these institutions. The churches of the day were accommodating to slavery.

The peculiar name of these protesters came from scripture:

 

Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.

 

I wish more people knew about the come-outers. I suspect we have some around today. I’ve run across some young people who are progressive in their politics but have come out of the Democratic Party, largely, but not exclusively, because of its stance on Israel and Gaza.

I suspect there are more of these contemporary come-outers than the pundits allow — enough, I’d guess, to account for the bewildering problems in conducting accurate polls in Georgia.

• Source: The quotation is from II Corinthians 6:17. The “come out from among them” is a quotation from Isaiah 52:11.