BOZEMAN, Mont. | It wasn’t long ago that thousands of members of the Church Universal and Triumphant followed their leader’s call to donate their life savings to build underground shelters against a coming nuclear apocalypse.
Yet Armageddon never came, and after a decade-long decline caused by Alzheimer’s disease, Elizabeth Clare Prophet - “Mother” to her followers - died last month at age 70.
In the waning days of Mrs. Prophet’s reign as the church’s divinely chosen messenger, its focus shifted from civilization’s end to the development of a New Age publishing juggernaut, producing hundreds of books and recordings drawn from Mrs. Prophet’s mystical declarations.
The church still keeps its 750-person shelters stocked with food - “insurance,” its leaders say, against possible dark days ahead. Yet with Mrs. Prophet’s death, 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.
“You had a clear figurehead that became the focus of the organization, the object of adoration. When that’s suddenly removed, it throws people into a tailspin,” said Robert Balch, a University of Montana sociologist specializing in unconventional religions.
He said Mrs. Prophet’s death sparks a “crisis of succession” over who will take her place.
As her followers convene at the church’s sprawling Corwin Springs compound this weekend for a three-day memorial gathering, the struggle to lay claim to Mrs. Prophet’s legacy already has begun.
Within days of her death, former church member David Lewis claimed to channel her spirit.
Mr. Lewis said this week he wants to “carry Elizabeth’s message forward” and is inviting church members to “make a fresh start” with a spinoff group he started several years ago, the Hearts Center.
Like Mrs. Prophet, he claims the ability to channel the words of Jesus, Buddha and more obscure spiritual figures such as St. Germain and El Morya.
Church leaders have denounced Mr. Lewis and said it’s too soon to say if another messenger will step forward.
Mrs. Prophet led the church since the 1973 death of her second husband, Mark Prophet, who founded the church’s parent organization, the Summit Lighthouse, in 1958.
The couple preached that one’s soul progresses through a series of earthly incarnations. His past lives were said to have included Aesop, Lancelot and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Hers included Nefertiti, Queen Guinevere of Camelot and Marie Antoinette.
Soon after her husband died and became an “ascended master,” Mrs. Prophet began to channel his holy dictations. Over the next two decades, she attracted an estimated 50,000 followers around the world.
Melding mysticism, Christianity and Eastern religions with strong doses of patriotism and self-sufficiency, she promised adherents a newfound path toward personal enlightenment.
Yet long before Mrs. Prophet’s death, Mr. Balch and others who tracked her career saw her power base beginning to crumble.
The grip she held over her followers first began to loosen after her doomsday predictions went unrealized in 1990.
As the church’s membership dwindled, she cut back its staff from an estimated 700 workers to fewer than 100. Thousands of acres of church property in Montana’s Paradise Valley were sold to bring in extra income.
Mrs. Prophet’s five children - including two daughters once groomed as heirs - have since abandoned the church. Others who claim to be the next messenger, including Mr. Lewis, are regarded as charlatans by her more fervent followers.
Daniel O’Connell, a 42-year-old video producer and Web site designer who was attracted to Montana from California by Mrs. Prophet’s teachings, said he expects her would-be replacements to become more assertive now that she’s gone.
“It’s syrupy, sentimental hogwash,” Mr. O’Connell said. “They make it up as they go along.”
In contrast, he said, Mrs. Prophet “spoke directly to your soul” and conveyed a “divine presence” in the dictations she delivered. Mr. O’Connell and his wife, Valery, said they planned to keep following Mrs. Prophet’s teachings but outside any organized group.
Church leaders contend that Mrs. Prophet - the tie that binds the faith’s disparate religious and historical elements - lives on through 22,000 hours of video and audio recordings of her teachings. “We were told this is the Bible of the next 2,000 years - the everlasting gospel of the Aquarian Age,” Mr. O’Connell said.
The tapes and other material are stacked on pallets inside the bomb shelters on the grounds of the Royal Teton Ranch, the church’s 7,000-acre Montana compound. Less than half has been transcribed or edited. Church leaders said it will be released gradually in coming years.
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