The Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) is a New Age religious organization founded in 1975 by Elizabeth Clare Prophet after the death of her first husband, Mark Prophet. The group developed from the Summit Lighthouse, which Mark Prophet established in 1958. The movement’s teachings combine elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Theosophy, with significant influence from the I AM Activity. The church holds that individuals can progress spiritually to achieve Ascension, ending the cycle of rebirth and uniting with God, and identifies this as the purpose of human life.
Mark Prophet was born in 1918 in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and raised in a Pentecostal family. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps. At age 17, he stated that he was contacted by the Ascended Master El Morya while working on a railway line and was asked to serve a spiritual cause. Ascended Masters are believed to be individuals who have perfected themselves over successive lives, balanced their karma, and ended their rebirth cycle. They are identified with the “Great White Brotherhood,” a term referring to the light of their auras. Messengers act as intermediaries, conveying teachings and predictions from the Ascended Masters to followers.
Mark Prophet first participated in Francis Ekey’s Lighthouse of Freedom, a splinter group of the I AM Activity, providing messages from Ascended Masters beginning in 1954. In 1958, he founded the Summit Lighthouse in Washington, D.C., where he lived with his wife and children. The organization published the messages he claimed to receive in “Ashram Notes,” circulated among followers in the Washington area.
In 1961, while speaking at colleges in the northeastern United States, Prophet met Elizabeth Clare Wulf, a 21-year-old Boston University student with an interest in esotericism. She later said she had experienced a spiritual encounter with Saint Germain in her youth that motivated her interest in the Ascended Masters. Both were married at the time, but they ended their previous marriages and married each other.
Between 1961 and 1966, Mark Prophet trained Elizabeth as a co-Messenger of the Ascended Masters. The headquarters moved to Fairfax, Virginia, in 1962, where the Prophets formed an inner circle called the Keepers of the Flame Fraternity. In 1965, the group relocated to Colorado Springs, purchasing the mansion La Tourelle as its headquarters. There they replaced Ashram Notes with “Pearls of Wisdom,” a widely distributed weekly publication, and launched national conferences called Ascended Master Conclaves. In 1970, they opened the Montessori International School for members’ children. Membership increased during the 1970s.
Mark Prophet died of a seizure on February 26, 1973, at age 54. Elizabeth, then 33, assumed full leadership and stated that her husband had ascended as the Master Lanello. She reorganized the Summit Lighthouse as the Church Universal and Triumphant, a name she said was suggested by the Ascended Master Pope John XXIII. The Summit Lighthouse became the publishing branch of the new church. Elizabeth adopted leadership titles such as “Vicar of Christ,” “Divine Mother,” and “Guru Ma” and emphasized the feminine aspect of divinity alongside the Father. She moved her residence to Santa Barbara, California, in 1973 and expanded educational programming into Summit University.
Under her leadership, CUT opened new centers across the U.S. and abroad. The movement taught that opposition to its goals came from “Dark Forces” or “Fallen Ones,” including communists, left-wing groups, the federal government, mainstream religions, and extraterrestrials. Mark Prophet had originally identified communism and elite power brokers as key obstacles; Elizabeth extended this to what she described as an “International Capitalist/Communist Conspiracy.”
CUT presented Jesus as an Ascended Master who had achieved instant Ascension, and the church promoted the view that Jesus lived and studied in India and Tibet during his youth. Mary Magdalene was referred to as the Ascended Master Magda. Saint Germain was associated with efforts to advance freedom of the soul and was said to have lived multiple notable past lives, including Merlin, Christopher Columbus, and Francis Bacon. The church taught that Saint Germain influenced the creation of the U.S. Constitution.
The organization encouraged abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, endorsed a macrobiotic diet low in red meat, and discouraged rock music. It supported conservative social policies, opposed abortion and socialism, and celebrated American political ideals. American flags were displayed at altars, and the headquarters chapel featured a framed copy of the U.S. Constitution. Affirmations and decrees, considered inherited from the I AM Activity, were used to balance karma and invoke divine light.
The CUT maintained millenarian expectations from its early years. It taught that accumulating negative karma would lead to a global catastrophe associated with the transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age. Elizabeth Prophet described society as in decline and used allegories such as Atlantis to illustrate the consequences of straying from divine order. During the 1980s, she identified the AIDS epidemic as part of an apocalyptic pattern, expressing suspicion that it was intended to block the development of a “golden age race.” The church believed disasters could be averted through prayer and decrees.
In 1977, the church purchased a property in Malibu, California, called “Camelot.” During the early 1980s, CUT acquired more than 24,000 acres of land near the Teton Mountains in Montana, eventually relocating its headquarters there in 1986 and selling Camelot to Japanese investors. Approximately 600 members settled near the Royal Teton Ranch, establishing a community called Glastonbury. The site was promoted as a place of protection from societal and global disruptions.
By the late 1980s, survivalist planning became more prominent. Prophet told followers that a Soviet nuclear strike was imminent and characterized reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev as deceptive. In 1986, she announced that Ascended Master Saint Germain urged construction of underground shelters. The church built a large underground complex known as “Mark’s Ark” near Mol Herron Creek, costing more than $3 million and designed to house about 750 people. Supplies and equipment were stockpiled in preparation for months or years underground.
In July 1989, a senior member, Vernon Hamilton, was arrested while attempting to buy weapons under a false identity. Authorities confiscated weapons and ammunition valued at over $100,000. Edward Francis, CUT’s acting vice president and Elizabeth Prophet’s fourth husband, acknowledged his involvement and served a brief prison term.
The shelter was completed in early March 1990. Elizabeth Prophet identified March 15, 1990, as the expected date of a nuclear attack. Around 7,000 members entered the shelters for what the church later called the “shelter cycle.” When the prediction did not materialize, many exited the shelters the next day. Prophet maintained the disaster had been prevented through prayer or suggested that the event functioned as a drill.
In April 1990, leaked storage tanks at the site released thousands of gallons of fuel, prompting Montana to ban further shelter use. Federal authorities later questioned the church’s tax-exempt status due to weapons stockpiling, and the IRS revoked the exemption in 1992, requiring $2.5 million in back taxes and penalties. After legal proceedings, the exemption was restored in 1994.
Elizabeth Prophet and Edward Francis divorced in 1996. In 1997, the church announced that Prophet had developed a neurological disorder, later identified as Alzheimer’s disease, and she reduced her public activities. Leadership responsibilities had already shifted to Gilbert Cleirbaut in 1996. By this time, the Prophets’ children were no longer involved in the organization.
Financial challenges led to major restructuring. The church reduced centralized control, promoted teaching centers, and attempted to reposition itself as a New Age corporation. In 1999, CUT sold or placed into conservation easements about half of its 12,000 remaining acres at Royal Teton Ranch, raising $13 million. The local workforce was reduced significantly. These changes were contested internally, and Cleirbaut was removed later that year.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet retired in 1999 due to health concerns and died in 2009. Membership statistics were never officially released. Scholars have estimated peak active participation anywhere from around 10,000 members to 25,000–50,000 followers in the late 1970s and early 1990s. By the 2020s, the group had declined substantially and sold most of its assets, although splinter groups remained active. Several hundred followers continue to participate near Billings and Yellowstone, Montana. The church still holds quarterly conferences at its headquarters in Corwin Springs, Montana. The Temple of the Presence, formed in 1996 by former members, is the most prominent offshoot. A 2006 report from a CUT official counted 17 schismatic groups overall.
Key Sources:
Barrett, D. V. (2001). The new believers: A Survey of Sects, Cults and Alternative Religions. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Grimes, W. (2009, October 17). Elizabeth Prophet, 70, Church Founder, Is Dead. The New York Times.
Kissel, C. (2015, October 26). The Sound of Doomsday in America: How a Cult Leader Made a Cherished Tape Freak Classic. Vice.
Lewis, J. R. (1994). Church Universal and Triumphant: In Scholarly Perspective. Center for Academic Publication.
Rock, P. (2013). The shelter cycle. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Whitsel, B. C. (2003). The Church universal and triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s Apocalyptic Movement.
Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religious Movements 