By MATTHEW BROWN (AP) – 9 hours ago
BOZEMAN, Mont. — Members of a Montana-based sect whose influence expanded as it prepared for a nuclear holocaust that never came, now search for new directions after the death of Elizabeth Clare Prophet — "Mother" to her thousands of followers. The Church Universal and Triumphant still keeps its 750-person underground shelters stocked with food — "insurance," its leaders say, against possible dark days ahead. Yet with Prophet gone, it's uncertain the spiritual movement she embodied will prove as lasting as all the concrete and steel hidden beneath a Montana mountainside north of Yellowstone National Park.
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Happy Birthday, Mom!
"Mom, on your 67th birthday, I want to tell you: You didn’t fail me. You taught me a lot. The most important thing you ever taught me was the object lesson of what happened in your community. Learning this was worth all the anguish and all the lost years."
It was a pleasant afternoon at the Royal Teton Ranch. My mom, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, and I were walking outside of her house at the Ranch Headquarters in Corwin Springs, Montana. It was on one of several trips I made to the Paradise Valley in 1997 and 1998. Having left the CUT community at the end of 1993, I went back on a number of occasions to visit family and friends, and for two weddings (one of my sister Erin to John Devine, and the other of my stepfather Edward Francis to his beloved Eileen).
I had made a special trip down to the Ranch to see my mom. I was worried about her. Her mental capacity had been diminishing for some time–she was starting to exhibit the classic loss of inhibitions characteristic of Alzheimer’s patients. Following her divorce from Edward, her fourth husband, she had begun to carry on a series of highly indiscreet emotional and physical affairs with male followers and hangers-on. She had also been actively performing “karmic readings” in which many church members were publicly humiliated. She carried on brazenly at the end, her sense of spiritual infallibility persisting far past her decline of inhibitions.
I had made a special trip down to the Ranch to see my mom. I was worried about her. Her mental capacity had been diminishing for some time–she was starting to exhibit the classic loss of inhibitions characteristic of Alzheimer’s patients. Following her divorce from Edward, her fourth husband, she had begun to carry on a series of highly indiscreet emotional and physical affairs with male followers and hangers-on. She had also been actively performing “karmic readings” in which many church members were publicly humiliated. She carried on brazenly at the end, her sense of spiritual infallibility persisting far past her decline of inhibitions.
