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Article 3/13/05 |
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| CUT
undergoes change of perception
By Scott McMillion, Bozeman Daily Chronicle
3/13/05 |
CORWIN
SPRINGS - Last week, the Church Universal and
Triumphant announced it is breaking ground on a new office
building at its headquarters here.
That's not so unusual. Groups put up structures all the
time.
What is unusual is the contrast with what happened 15
years ago, when the church was wrapping up its last major
construction project: a 756-person underground bomb shelter
in a mountain meadow tucked into the upper reaches of
the church's sprawling Royal Teton Ranch.
At that time, church members were constructing similar,
if smaller, structures in Glastonbury, a Paradise Valley
subdivision then limited to members of the New Age sect.
Church leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet had said nuclear
war was likely, and bombs could land in Paradise Valley.
Church members hoped the bombs would never launch, but
they wanted to be prepared if the missiles did fly.
On the night of March 15, 1990, hundreds if not thousands
of CUT members entered the bomb shelters they had hurriedly
constructed. They had gathered here from as far as Europe
and South America. Some had quit jobs and run up big debt,
anticipating apocalypse.
The times were weird and tense. The media swarmed all
over Paradise Valley.
Then, nothing happened. Church officials maintained the
next day the whole thing had been a drill. But some members
didn't know that: before they left their shelters, they
turned on the Geiger counters.
Long-building controversy
March 15, 1990, was the acme of a long-building controversy
surrounding the church.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, church leaders butted heads
with environmental groups, politicians, anti-cult groups,
state regulators and officials from Yellowstone National
Park, which was next door to the church's 12,000-acre
Royal Teton Ranch. There were lawsuits with county, state
and federal governments. Church officials were arrested
on weapons charges.
Divorced parents who didn't want their kids around the
bomb shelters headed to the courthouse. A handful of teenage
children of CUT members ran away from all the strangeness.
In a couple of bizarre cases, church members were held
against their will. Some described it as "deprogramming."
Others, including prosecutors, called it kidnapping.
These days, things have changed. The church hasn't been
much of a newsmaker for the past several years.
The year 1999 appears to be a tipping point, a time when
the church and its neighbors learned to get along, 18
years after the church bought its first property in Park
County.
On Aug. 31 of that year, politicians of both major parties,
green groups and the National Park Service gathered for
a big party in a sun-baked meadow just north of the Yellowstone
border and heaped praise on church leaders.
"They're a wonderful, wonderful bunch of people,"
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said of the church.
Ten years before that, a Yellowstone official had declared
the church the single biggest threat to the integrity
of the park.
Change of heart
So what changed? For one, all those officials were gathered
that August day to celebrate the exchange of 6,300 acres
of church land and a conservation easement on another
1,500 acres for $13 million in federal money.
The deal put a lot of wildlife habitat in public hands,
and spelled out a major reduction in the church's local
presence.
But 1999 was also the year Prophet announced she had Alzheimer's
disease and would retire, removing the charismatic but
controversial leader from the church's forefront. The
church's membership had already shrunk and money problems
mounted as donations from members kept dropping.
During the "shelter cycle," the church had 600
employees at Corwin Springs and many hundreds of followers
in Park and Gallatin counties. But by 1999, the church
had already laid off 90 percent of them and closed its
construction, engineering, food processing and printing
businesses.
Followers were filtering away to other pursuits. Donations
flowing into the church -- and it needed millions annually
to stay afloat -- dropped every year.
Gilbert Cleirbaut, president of the church at the time,
said he wanted his church to stop acting like "a
cult."
Shortly after the CUT sold half the Royal Teton Ranch,
considered holy land by many members, it sold another
Paradise Valley Ranch to a private buyer for $12.5 million.
It opened up the Glastonbury subdivision to land-hungry
people of any religion or none at all. Along the way,
it abandoned plans to build a new town the size of Gardiner
at the base of Devil's Slide.
The church originally intended to be an exclusive, self-reliant
community in Montana, moving its headquarters here from
California in 1986. That didn't work.
By the end of the 1990s, the church had "without
question" started to learn to live with its neighbors
and adapt to its surroundings, said Murray Steinman, a
former vice president. "Individuals and institutions
have to learn."
And the larger community around the church changed, too.
Nonmembers stopped boycotting businesses owned by church
adherents. Local anti-church groups disintegrated. Members
and non-members began hiring each other and working together.
People started to get to know each other and, for the
most part, started to get along.
Rob Balch, a sociology professor at the University of
Montana who has studied a number of new religions around
the country said such groups often get one of two labels:
"new religious movement"; or "cult,"
generally considered a pejorative.
After a period of growth and controversy, such groups
sometimes become more isolated and secretive. "But
some groups go the opposite direction, mellowing out,"
he said.
As for CUT, which he has studied since 1991, "I never
thought they'd be a dangerous cult or anything like that,"
he said.
"Their beliefs are still outside the norm. But it
seemed like every time I went down there, it was a little
less cult-like."
The church today
"Many people have the idea the church has just dried
up and moved away," said Erin Prophet, Elizabeth
Prophet's oldest daughter, now a technical writer in the
Boston area.
Not so, say church officials.
It still has about 200 groups of followers in the United
States and 38 other countries, according to the church's
Web site, www.tsl.org.
The church proselytizes in Africa, Latin America and Russia.
Internet technology has made it easier to reach out long
distances, church spokeswoman Destyne Erickson said, and
reduced the need for a big staff at headquarters.
Even without Prophet, the church says it has the spiritual
answers people want.
CUT theology is vast and complicated. It relies on notions
of karma and reincarnation, while incorporating elements
of Christianity, Buddhism, Zoraastrianism, Taoism, astrology
and Confucianism. Critically, all of this is overlain
by the teachings of "Ascended Masters," celestial
beings that spoke through Prophet, before her health failed.
"Is there a church for the age of Aquarius that unites
the world's religions?" the Web site asks rhetorically.
"The answer is yes. Church Universal and Triumphant
is that church."
Erickson said neither of the church's presidents, Lois
Drake and Kate Gordon, were available for an interview
with the Chronicle, despite repeated requests over a 10-day
period.
Much of the church's outreach work now is done through
Internet broadcasts and the printing and translation of
church literature, Erickson said. Books are printed in
24 languages, and sales hit an all-time high this year,
a February newsletter said.
However, the church continues to operate at a
deficit.
"We are not yet out of the woods," the newsletter
said.
The church spends $6 million a year while income is only
$5 million. Last year, tithes and donations from members
grew to $3 million, an increase that constituted a reversal
of a nine-year trend of shrinking donations, according
to the newsletters.
There have been snags in the church's attempts to spread
out internationally. In 2003, the church underwent a major
internal rift when its board of directors fired several
directors of its Moscow, Russia, affiliate. CUT is a growing
religion in Russia, despite reports by members of persecution
there. Some have been jailed or institutionalized for
their religious beliefs, some Russian members said in
e-mails.
In lengthy e-mail exchanges obtained by The Chronicle,
there were accusations that Russian CUT members were pirating
church materials, and counteraccusations that Montana
CUT officials demanded expensive luxury hotels paid for
by impoverished Russian followers.
The rift lingered for some time, with some church officials
accusing the board of directors of heavy handed and unfair
treatment.
"When Elizabeth Prophet was in charge, that kind
of authoritarian style was acceptable," Balch said.
She was the boss, the one with a unique pipeline to God.
"Without her, it's seen as heavy handed and illegitimate,"
he continued.
The rift appears to be settled now, and CUT recently has
been granted official recognition by the Russian government.
New messengers
Bradley C. Whitsel, a political science professor at Penn
State-Fayette, published a scholarly book about the church
in 2003. "The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth
Clare Prophet's Apocalyptic Movement," details the
church's history and different incarnations back to the
1950s.
The church lost lots of members and money after apocalypse
never arrived, Whitsel found. That, in part, forced some
of the land sales.
Now the CUT is trying to refocus itself from its origins,
which Whitsel described as "steeped in conspiracy
and feelings of besiegement."
He predicted the rise of "splinter groups,"
some focused on survivalism, others focused on more spiritual
matters.
In addition to financial challenges, at least eight people
around the world are now calling themselves messengers
and trying to "undermine the foundation" of
the church's mission, CUT announced in a March 3 memo.
Whitsel predicted that would happen.
"As the church's attempted metamorphosis takes shape,
new splinter organizations will almost certainly appear"
and claim the "true" doctrine, he wrote.
Church officials say they predicted it, too.
"Mother and Jesus told us that in the latter days
there would be many false prophets in the land who would
imitate the voice of the masters," the memo says.
"There is a razor's edge of difference between a
true and false messenger."
Those are internal matters.
Looking at the church from the outside, observers see
a quieter, much smaller operation at the Park County headquarters.
The intensity of the "shelter cycle" is 15 years
in the past. The church retains about 6,000 acres at Corwin
Springs. And its recent announcement that it intends to
build an 18,000-square-foot office building indicates
a clear intention to stay put.
"We're here to stay and we look forward to many decades
and centuries of harmonious living with our neighbors
and friends," Erickson said.
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