Utopia evolved: How Indiana commune survived

Padanaram -- It’s a summer night in God’s Valley, and the sun is slipping behind forested Indiana hillsides that hide a cluster of secluded timber lodges, their peaked roofs resembling giant Swiss chalets.

Inside a darkened building with faded 1970s photos on the wall, a single bulb on a chandelier made of branches and canning jars casts a dim light on two rows of folding chairs arranged in a square.

A group of residents, their lives woven together for generations, sit in silence. One man breaks the quiet to talk about an injury and his faith. A woman starts singing a homemade hymn. Aram Wright tells the group that the “paycheck for a communal life” hasn’t diminished despite generations of struggle.

For five decades, the road to utopia has led here, past remote Indiana cornfields about 80 miles northwest of Louisville, to the spot where his father Daniel Wright, a charismatic, gray-bearded minister and “benevolent patriarch,” had a mystical vision that led him to create the commune of Padanaram, named after a biblical homeland.

Read more: http://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indiana/2016/09/10/utopia-2016-how-indiana-commune-padanaram-survived/87892486/