Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Leader of Controversial CUT Church is Dead
By Jonathan Weber , 10-17-09
When I first came to Montana in 1982, I got a job waiting tables at Chico Hot Springs, and the hot issue of the moment in Paradise Valley was the Church Universal and Triumphant. The cult-like religious sect had just purchased Malcolm Forbes’ spectacular ranch in Corwin Springs, and the locals feared that a big influx of church members would lead to a literal takeover of Park County.
It didn’t happen that way, though the Church achieved more than a little notoriety later in the decade when it stockpiled weapons and built a huge bomb shelter just north of Yellowstone Park. The end of the world is nigh, said the group’s charismatic leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet. When the apocalypse didn’t happen on the appointed date in 1990, the church began to fade.
Prophet was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, and lived her last years in seclusion in Bozeman. She died on Thursday, and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle has a good story on this strange chapter in the history of Southwest Montana.
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Out of that strange cultural morphology came anything and everything that could be imagined, and though the "age of aquariius" was supposedly in full bloom mode, the reality of those times was very much a mixed blessing of sorts.
Despite all the fluffy sounding new age jargon that was permeating the atmosphere at the time, this was also a sort of breeding ground for every conceivable sort of "creative religion" scheme and scam that could be imagined, ranging from Jim Jones and his nightmarish Jonestown debacle, to the Hari Krishnas infesting airports with their incessant chanting, to the Moonies (as in Rev, Moon and his vast minions) to an entire collection of ridiculously corrupt so-called "gurus" . . . you name it, I've seen it.
And out of this stewpot came the unique Elizabeth Claire Prophet and her "church". I was already a sort of street hardened skeptic of what seemed to be an endless stream of so called visionaries, prophets, visionaries and numerous self procalimed new age "spiritual" entities, so when I saw the posters in various SF bay area locations proclaiming yet another spiritual avatar [fill in the blank] whatever, I had already experienced more than my share of this gemre' of psuedo religious carnival acts and cults.
Perhaps I should have taken the time to see her, but I was just tired of the whole new age religious cult thing. The novelty of it all had worn off, and I had a real life and education to focus on.
What I recall from those times was not so much the "summer of love", but more like the summer of parasites, predators, and new age charletons willing to sell anything to anyone that they could figure out a marketing scheme for.
Sadly, a lot of young folks, of which I was one at that time, truly were lost souls, adrift in a world that was evolving around them.
Many were looking for "something" to connect to, and there was quite a range of opportunistic peddlers of "new age in a box" cults, products and services designed to capture that evolving demographic.
In a weird sort of way, the tragic sweatlodge deaths in Sedona, AZ, of 3 participants in a "spiritual warriors in training" seminar, who coughed up $9000 each for this experience, during a recession (go figure), as yet another remnant of those earlier times, coincides with passing of CUT's founder as a sort of metaphorical reality check, and summation of that unique moment in our collective cultural history.
best regards
Charles
Berkeley, CA
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, poops at will like a duck, on everything, leaves feathers strewn about, it is best to assume it is a duck. Even if that is profiling. So when the "too good to be true" dudes and dudettes come calling, think before you act....