Back in its heyday, House of David was considered to be “Michigan’s finest summer resort.” The religious colony in Benton Harbor, Michigan consisted of an amusement park, zoo and baseball empire. Members abstained from all vices, celibacy was enforced and profanity was outlawed. Another tenet of their faith was that they must neither shave nor cut their hair. Co-founded by Benjamin and Mary Purnell in 1903, thousands of acolytes flocked to the colony until it all came crashing down in the 1920’s when the group’s leader, Benjamin “King Ben” Purnell, was accused of having sexual relations with minors. The colony split in two and slowly died off over the years. The policy of celibacy among followers resulted in a notable lack of new generations of acolytes to keep the commune going. There are only a few members left now, waiting for the day when Jesus returns and establishes the Garden of Eden on Lake Michigan.

With their utopian goals, messianic movements like House of David are seen by some as models of progressive communitarianism, in ideals if not in execution. But it’s worth remembering that America was shaped by religious renegades seeking a strategic retreat from society. “America began as a fever dream by those who abandoned everything because of their beliefs, dreams and fantasies,” says Kurt Andersen in “Fantasyland.” Every November, we celebrate the seventeenth-century Puritans who arrived at our shore with the desire to build set-apart communities in the American wilderness. The group that set out from Plymouth, in southwestern England, in 1620 included 35 members of a radical Puritan faction known as the English Separatist Church. America represented a fresh page. Throughout American history, religious groups have walled themselves off from the rhythms and mores of society. A hunger for the magic and drama of Holy Roller theatricality combined with the tendency to withdraw into small, private societies is, perhaps, as American as apple pie. And baseball.