Montanans Wary of Church’s Plans for Promised Land

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, self-proclaimed Messenger of the Ascended Masters, looked every bit a Montana cattle baroness as she rolled up to the roadside restaurant in a muddy pickup truck equipped with four-wheel drive, tool chest and rifle rack--stock accessories in this highland cow country.

Prophet went inside, took a back table and over coffee explained why her Church Universal and Triumphant has traded balmy Malibu Canyon for the rough and tumble of Montana, endeavoring to raise cattle and inner consciousness on the banks of the Yellowstone River.

“We felt that we were divinely led here,” said the 46-year-old Prophet, known to her disciples as Mother or, more informally, Guru Ma.

To Prophet and her people, this is a promised land, a place to satisfy their every need. “You know,” she said, volunteering an example, “it is easier to meditate here than it is in Los Angeles. You have 10 million auras in Los Angeles, and here you have wide open space.”

Certainly not all of Prophet’s new neighbors share her vision. They remain unconvinced that a picturesque mountain grassland on the border of Yellowstone National Park is the best place for the church to build living quarters and other structures necessary to support a self-sufficient, monastic religious community of 500 members.

A few residents straightforwardly admit that they don’t cotton to living next to what they consider a cult, a church that believes its leader can and does converse with “ascended masters” ranging from Buddha to Pope John XXIII; they are scared. A larger body claims to be more open-minded on spiritual matters, but nonetheless is concerned that a church community of this size will rob the tiny river valley of scenery and serenity.

“I want people to have a piece of paradise,” said a resident of nearby Gardiner, Mont., who floats tourists down the Yellowstone for a living. “But I want them to rent it. I don’t want them to buy a piece of it, develop it and then sail it on down to Rio.”

These views are fairly predictable, as are the comparisons a few neighbors have tried to draw to the experience of Antelope, Ore., and the contentious occupation there by followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

What complicates the situation here, and may prove to be the most significant threat to the church’s exodus, is the close proximity of Prophet’s spread to Yellowstone National Park. Parts of the church’s 33,000-acre Royal Teton Ranch--including the headquarters where a church, university, houses and and other structures are to be erected--abuts the park.

Concern for Wildlife

Park officials and environmentalists worry that the church buildup will deprive certain wildlife species, especially a 500-head herd of pronghorn antelope, of grasslands vital to their survival during harsher winters.

They say bison, bald eagles and bighorn sheep might also not fare well when forced to coexist with Prophet’s followers, livestock and crops. They fear effluent from the river bank community might eventually work its way into the Yellowstone River, threatening fish, despite precautions by the church. Yellowstone officials question, too, whether the church’s drilling of a well to tap hot water resources could jeopardize some of the park’s spectacular geyser systems.

Church officials have developed counterpoints to all entries in this extensive environmental blotter, and question whether it cloaks a more elemental attempt at religious persecution. Prophet herself offered a spirited general defense of the church’s stance on ecological preservation.

“To us,” she said, “this land is hallowed ground. . . . There is no other place like it in the whole nation. We are extremely careful with this land. You will not find a cigarette butt on 30,000 acres, a beer can, or a scrap of paper.”

Beyond any divine authority she might claim, Prophet has a powerful, if more prosaic, ally in the dispute. It is, after all, the church’s land, and in Montana grant deeds are mighty trump cards. With ownership of private property comes sanctuary from government regulators, meddlesome neighbors and any other would-be interlopers.

Weak Land-Use Laws

Park County, where the ranch is located, has weak subdivision laws and no comprehensive land-use plan, and thus no significant jurisdictional entree into the fray.

“As an expression of independence,” said Steve Pilcher, chief of the state water-quality bureau, “in particular in rural areas, the people of Montana have opposed land-use planning. They look at it as an infringement of rights.”

The reverential attitude toward property rights has reduced the role of church neighbors to spectators at what some of the more blatant pessimists consider their own demise. As one put it: “We feel like we are an island. We have this problem and the rest of the state is laughing at us because we have it, and they don’t.”

For more than five years, since the church first began to buy property, the neighbors have watched, wondered, gossiped and waited. A former church member, who was awarded $1.5 million by a California jury after claiming in a lawsuit that he had been subjected to thought control, came to Montana and gave speeches about his experience with Prophet’s fold, feeding the fear.

A few residents have sought to develop expertise on the subject of unconventional religions, contacting so-called cult experts around the country and Oregon sociologists who studied the Rajneeshee movement. A fellow said to have “read a part” of one of Prophet’s many books is recommended as an authority on her teachings. And a 2-year-old videotape of a Los Angeles television station’s expose on Prophet and her church that quoted cult experts about potential for violence and former members about hidden caches of weaponry--labels and accusations the church has denied--is in demand for Tupperware parties and menfolk meetings.

Christian Base to Church

The beliefs of the Church Universal and Triumphant, like those of most any religion, defy shorthand description. The church appears to have a Christian base, with a variety of distinctive extras tossed in. Members believe in reincarnation, and in karma, and in connections between the two. They mix elements of Western and Eastern religions, and believe that an assortment of ascended masters from both spiritual hemispheres have managed to break the cycle of birth and rebirth and obtain heaven.

Fundamental to the church is a belief in the powers of Prophet, understood by church members to be God’s messenger on earth. The ascended masters give Prophet “dictations” about the “lost teachings of Jesus” and other matters.

“I have a very profound calling in Jesus,” she said in an interview in the Ranch Kitchen Restaurant, owned and run by the church. “ . . . I have always walked with Jesus. He showed me the saints in heaven.”

Prophet said she was also shown that the future of her religious movement was in Montana. Disciples, through the ascended masters, were guided to establish a rural existence that could protect them from the vagaries of modern man--the church has built a fallout shelter as a preparation for nuclear war--and at the same time enhance a spiritual enclave.

‘Certain Qualities’

“We set about,” Prophet said, softly, evenly and with seemingly great conviction, “to find the place which would have certain qualities--a mountain retreat, a land bordering on the wilderness . . . and a place where we could survive by growing our own food, doing our own ranching, that had enough access to arteries of commerce and transportation that we could have egress and ingress of membership and distribution of our books.”

The search brought them to the Upper Yellowstone River Valley. Corwin Springs consists of a post office, a frozen-yogurt stand and the Ranch Kitchen Restaurant. Like the restaurant, the yogurt stand is an outpost of Church Universal and Triumphant.

The closest real community is Gardiner, 10 miles south. Gardiner is a rustic town of 400 or so people, a few bars abundantly stocked with local color, an approximately equal number of chapels, and several motels and cabins catering to hunters and tourists. Most of its residents have jobs associated with Yellowstone Park, and many are seasonal workers, unemployed during the winter.

Gardiner, Corwin Springs and the headquarters of Church Universal and Triumphant share a tiny, almost desert-like, prairie encircled by steep mountains. The terrain is spectacular.

Prophet recalled her first impression of the land as “electric and electrifying. It was very much a sense that this was the place we had been searching for.”

Sprawling Ranch

And so, in 1980, the church began to assemble the sprawling ranch that eventually would make it one of the largest landholders in the state.

The first parcel purchased was a 12,000-acre ranch bordering the park, a little-developed and little-used grassland property that had become almost a de facto extension of Yellowstone itself. Negotiations between the previous owner of the ranch and the federal government to purchase the land and declare it a wilderness preserve ended when President Reagan took office, and the church stepped forward.

All of Montana is economically depressed, for a variety of reasons, and there was plenty of property to be snapped up. Ed Francis, Prophet’s husband and the church’s business manager, said the organization spent between $10 million and $15 million on Montana real estate building the Royal Teton Ranch. It now runs for eight miles along the Yellowstone River.

Church members, rapidly developing agrarian skills, run several hundred head of cattle and sheep, and raise crops that range from hay to carrots. Like any agriculturists, they can rattle on endlessly about irrigation methods and cattle prices. Prophet herself is conversant about a particular variety of weed that is the scourge of Montana pastureland.

Also, the church has developed two small subdivisions on its property farthest from the park, up in the next valley. These homes are intended to be sold to non-staff members who want to be close to its headquarters. The church also has bought warehouses in Livingston, 50 miles north, for its publishing, and a trailer park.

Middlemen Purchasers

Francis said middlemen purchasers were used in some transactions to disguise the church’s involvement, but defended this as a tactic borne of necessity. Many landholders did not want to sell to the church, he said. Francis also stated on various occasions that the church had no intention of moving its headquarters here. Rather, this was to be a ranch and summer retreat, nothing more.

But in July, after selling its enclave, called Camelot, in the Santa Monica Mountains, the church announced that it was moving its entire operation here--headquarters, university, Montessori school and publishing operations--and that it would build living quarters for 500 or so staff members on the ranch, and houses for an equal number of members in the subdivisions. Francis explained that he had not known when or if the wholesale move would be made, and to announce it earlier would have been premature.

Nonetheless, the subterfuge in the purchase of some property and the denials about a full relocation in Montana were interpreted as sneakiness on the part of the church, and it riled up some already distrustful residents. When earthmoving equipment started to hack out roads, often working through the night, and semis began hauling dozens of mobile homes to the banks of the river, feelings hardened.

There have been a few tense incidents involving hurled beer cans, and some local sports have made runs past the church enclave, hanging their bared backsides out car windows. But brave bar talk about rooting the church out violently has remained only talk.

Snobbishness Seen

Sometimes residents give the impression that their feelings have been hurt by the church’s disinclination to blend in with the rest of community. They interpret the church members’ apparent desire to live monastic lives as snobbishness.

“We are talking about an entirely different culture,” said Hank Rate, a surveyor who owns a small place near the church headquarters. Grasping for an illustration, he said, “These are people who won’t drink a beer with you.”

Other neighbors and townsfolk in Gardiner complain about nightly noises on church property, about the constant roving of church security vehicles, about the unsightliness of its temporary living quarters. They ponder why the church felt compelled to build a massive fallout shelter, and fear that dark rumors--as yet unfounded, according to law enforcement officials--about huge arms caches and paramilitary training might be true.

“These are idle people with a lot of time on their hands to be afraid,” said one Gardiner resident.

Conversely, it is not difficult to find people in the valley who don’t object to the presence of Prophet’s followers, who find them tolerable neighbors and “just like anyone else.”

‘Good Neighbors’

Hank Mikolich, a 68-year-old retired rancher whose small place makes him the closest neighbor to the church headquarters, said Prophet’s disciples “have been all right to live with as neighbors. They’ve been good neighbors.”

All the same, the lifetime resident of the valley would prefer no neighbors whatsoever, a common sentiment. “We live in this country because we don’t like to live in big crowds--or else we’d live in Los Angeles.”

The hubbub over the newcomers from California had all but faded away by last summer, but the church announcement that it was moving its headquarters here reopened the whole host of questions about life with Prophet and her people.

The announcement finally drew Yellowstone Park officials into the discussion, and for the first time in their six years of dealing with the immigration, townsfolk felt their complaints might gain a forum.

“Yellowstone has a hell of a lot more of a constituency than Gardiner, Mont.,” said Richard Parks, 43, who runs a sports shop in town.

Park Supt. Robert Barbee has made public his apprehension about the potential for threats to Yellowstone resources posed by the church’s proposed developments.

‘Quantum Leap’

“Over the last five years, with considerable alarm, we have watched this thing grow and grow, and then all of the sudden take a quantum leap,” he said in an interview. “ . . . We now, in effect, have served notice to them that we are really concerned about the extent and impact of that whole operation on Yellowstone National Park. We expect them to realize that we are going to be watchful of the resources of his park.”

Barbee said the church can expect not only the National Park Service, but also a host of environmental groups, to apply close scrutiny to its settlement of the grassland property. And he said the concern now being expressed is only the beginning: “The sleeping giant has just been aroused.”

The predicament frames a larger issue facing parks across the country. An emerging attitude among preservationists is that parks should be viewed, not as sanctuaries within man-made boundaries, but as whole ecosystems that do not adhere to neatly mapped borders.

“The fundamental problem that we continue to run into in the management of this park is that it is not in many cases a complete ecological unit, “ said John D. Varley, chief of research for Yellowstone park. “Consequently, if we are going to perpetuate these wildlife species, then we are dependent upon lands outside of the park, and the mode of management those lands receives has a lot to do with how successful we are in hanging on to these various wildlife populations.”

Varley said the church’s intention to occupy the grasslands is not, in his opinion, compatible with this definition of the park’s charter to preserve its resources.

Grizzly Habitat Nearby

“I’ll give you a good example,” he said. “Their produce farm is located within a quarter-mile of (prime) grizzly habitat. And as long as they are raising things like carrots and sheep--those things are like magnets to grizzly bears--I can’t see any compatibility with that species at all. . . . I just think it’s a collision course.”

After lobbying by residents and park officials, one state agency has finally managed to find a way to perform a comprehensive review of the church’s development plans for the first time.

Under the auspices of Montana’s Environmental Protection Act, the state water quality agency has begun a study of what environmental impacts, if any, might be created by the church development. In addition to water and wildlife resources, the agency also will consider any archeological resources that might be threatened by church construction and, to a lesser extent, the aesthetic values threatened by the river bank buildup.

When state officials came to Gardiner in December to poll residents about their concerns at a public meeting, for many it served as the first public forum. One hundred people showed up, a large turnout by Gardiner standards.

Many residents seem to hold out excessive hope that this process might somehow check Prophet’s settlement. But the official conducting the review said the most likely outcome would be negotiated alterations in church development plans, not a wholesale shutdown of the project.

For its part, the church says the review is a welcome opportunity to allay unwarranted fears. Francis, the business manager and Prophet’s husband, said the church can address all of the environmental questions. He said dimensions of the development have been overblown; structures would exist on only a tiny fraction of the church’s holding.

Park Called Hypocritical

Francis argued that the park’s stance is hypocritical, an attempt to place restrictions on the church development that it has not placed on itself. He noted the enormous size of the park, 2.2 million acres, and suggested that somewhere lines must be drawn to check its growth. Further, Francis noted, concerns about migrating wildlife are a product of the park service’s philosophy of wildlife management, a philosophy that he said has been challenged more than once by outside experts. And finally, the church has obtained an independent hydrologist’s assessment that there is no evidence that its wells could undermine the park’s spectacular geyser systems.

Prophet, with her head more attuned to the poetic, said all the dialogue about development has obscured a greater point. The establishment of the church community here is “the event of the 20th Century,” she said.

“It’s a story,” she said, “of a people who have formed this community, who in the course of their lifetime have found that mainline religion has not met their needs. . . . When they have found our teachings and our books they have said, ‘This is what I’ve always believed, and I’ve been looking for a place to make it work.’ ”

There is a difference of opinion here about how the saga of the church’s occupation will end. Some residents maintain that time and the harshness of the Montana climate will eventually erode the newcomers’ willingness to carve out a community here, and they will one day simply pull away. Others subscribe to the buy-out plan--that an environmental group will locate a wealthy “white knight” to buy out the church and deed the property to a federal agency to protect.

The buy-out theorists do acknowledge this scenario would require cooperation from the ascended masters. They are convinced that if enough dollars are offered, Prophet’s disciples would move on to another promised land. “She will just have a new vision,” is how they put it.

Prophet, however, said the land, and presumably the dream, are not for sale.

“This is home,” she said brightly. “This is really home.”