Paradise Under Siege

By Michael P. Harris

Back in Malibu it seemed like just another chanting, channeling new-age religion. But under the big skies of Montana, where Elizabeth Clare Prophet moved her Church Universal and Triumphant in 1986, the newcomers struck the locals as ominous. Starting out on a 12,000-acre ranch purchased five years earlier from publisher Malcolm Forbes for $7.7 million, the church rapidly expanded its holdings to 33,500 acres, attracted some 1,000 followers to the region, and launched extensive construction projects. Neighbors feared that the mushrooming community might damage the delicate ecological balance of Yellowstone National Park, which the ranch abuts.

Environmental concerns were overshadowed last month when Vernon Hamilton, a leader of C.U.T.'s Cosmic Honor Guard security force, was arrested in Spokane while driving a pickup truck carrying illegally obtained weapons. The find that day included seven large-caliber semiautomatic rifles, five assault rifles, $26,000 in cash and gold coins, and plans for the arming of 200 people.

Last week Prophet, 50, who is also known as Guru Ma, and her husband Ed Francis, 39, appeared before a grand jury investigating alleged church involvement in illegal arms gathering. Prophet denies any wrongdoing, but if evidence implicates the two, they will face possible jail sentences and the crumbling of their empire. Says Park County commissioner Larry Lovely: "I think their credibility is slipping, and it's time to get this out in the open."

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the usual operations have been neglected while Prophet and her followers gear up for surviving the Armageddon she predicted in 1987, when she received a message from what she calls her "ascended masters." This exalted band includes Jesus, Buddha and Guru Ma's former husband the late Mark L. Prophet, who three decades ago founded the religion on an amalgam of Christianity and Eastern faiths.

Guru Ma claims to be the channel through which these spirits speak to earthbound mortals. Despite their warning that the U.S. will suffer a nuclear attack in October this year, "America the Vulnerable," she grumbles, has not even "seen fit to have an ABM system in place."

Prophet took matters into her own hands by inviting all her faithful, who may number some 30,000 worldwide, to move to Montana and escape the coming doom. Followers have begun to converge on the region and lease homes in a church-owned subdivision. At the main headquarters, dubbed the "inner retreat," the group is constructing a system of tubular underground shelters for 756 people. The guns, according to former members, are meant to defend the 600 staffers against a Communist invasion. Former bodyguard Ken Paolini charges that members are being told, "If we come under attack, we'll all go into the etheric together."

But even as she seeks to gather the flock around her, Guru Ma is having trouble keeping her own family intact. Daughter Moira Lewis, 21, has joined a growing phalanx of outspoken defectors and accuses her mother of pursuing an opulent life-style, dining on lobster and prime rib, while keeping her followers in a constant state of austerity as they prepare for World War III.

With reporting by Patrick Dawson/Livingston