IRON BOY: Searching for Freedom Inside a Family Religious Order

Iron Boy is about my twelve-year escape from my childhood seminary, a radical, religious “Family Order” indirectly founded by the World Council of Churches via the Ecumenical Institute, spanning the tumultuous sixties and seventies—and my road to freedom.

In the 1970 bestseller Future Shock , Alvin Toffler cited my boyhood home in a chapter about potential solutions to the fractured family: “In Chicago, 250 adults and children already live together in ‘family-style monasticism’ under the auspices of a new, fast-growing religious organization . . . .”

Iron Boy is based on a true story covering my experience in a religious commune from age six to eighteen. It is an unusual tale of oppression, discovery, freedom and triumph. I grew up in the Ecumenical Institute—or the Order as it was known to insiders. The Order’s mission was to renew the decaying church and lead the way in urban and rural community development, by building Iron Men who would change the world.

The Order was on the vanguard of the Christian reform movement. My parents saw themselves as revolutionaries making a difference in the world. They were social activists supported by progressive theology combating fundamentalism. They gave up everything for the mission, but lost their children along the way.

My conflicts were with the institution, as embodied in the charismatic head of the Order, my parents, who supported the institution and its leader, the dangerous Chicago black ghetto where I was raised, and with myself. I had a love-hate relationship with the Order. I wanted to get out, but became mesmerized by the training. I struggled through oblivion, despair and destruction, suffering from fear, violence, abandonment, brainwashing, and racial conflict. But I sang the songs with gusto, declared vows to my boyhood brotherhood, enjoyed tremendous adventures, and found my freedom.

I plotted my escape from the beginning, with bobs and weaves along the way. I spent my grammar school years behind the walls of the Order compound in Chicago. At twelve I was shipped off without my family to Iowa, New York, Malaysia, Colorado and California to spread the Good News . The physical walls came down as the indoctrination walls went up. I got out in 1974—with some surprising philosophical and spiritual treasures that still ground me today.

The Order had nearly two thousand members at its peak in the late 1970’s. A half million people attended seminars from the Ecumenical Institute. Many of them joined the “Spirit Movement,” donating time and money to support the cause. Over five hundred children survived the Order. This is an inside look from the beginning.