CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT

the largest of several groups that emerged from I AM religious activity, a movement centred upon avowed contact with the Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood, the order of spiritual beings, the saints robed in white that adherents believe guide the overall destiny of humankind. The church was founded by Mark L. Prophet (191873) and, after his death, was led by his wife, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, until her retirement in 1999. Like many new religious movements, it has faced great criticism but has managed to survive and grow. Although the church does not release statistics on membership, it is reasonable to conclude that there are between 30,000 and 50,000 members in the United States and abroad. The church began in 1958 as the Summit Lighthouse under the leadership of Prophet, who had formerly been associated with the Lighthouse of Freedom, another I AM organization. Prophet claimed to regularly receive messages from the Masters, which were published in the periodical Pearls of Wisdom and mailed to followers around the world. Following her husband's death, Elizabeth Clare Prophet soon reorganized the movement as the Church Universal and Triumphant and moved its headquarters to southern California in 1976 and then to its present location in Montana in 1986. The church believes in the I AM, or God Presence, which members believe is the higher, changeless aspect of every individual. Church members may call upon the I AM presence through the repetition of invocational prayers called decrees. As a result of the messages Elizabeth Clare Prophet reputedly received from the Masters, she synthesized insights from all the major religious traditions in the church's teachings. However, the faith's basic goal is to purify the self in preparation for the ascension into the divine realms. The major process of purification is the daily decreeing and the accompanying visualization of a surrounding violet flame that consumes all evil. In the 1980s the church attracted critics who complained that it was a cult. Their criticism escalated after Prophet announced that widespread disasters could occur in the early 1990s, for which Prophet prepared by building bomb shelters on the church's property in Montana. When this period of concern passed, church leaders began an extensive self-study that led to a complete reorganization of the church. Among other changes, the church was decentralized, the headquarters community greatly reduced, and the temporal affairs of the church placed in the hands of a new president, Gilbert Cleirbaut. Shortly thereafter, Prophet announced that she had Alzheimer's disease and retired from leadership in 1999. John Gordon Melton Additional reading The basic teachings of the church can be found in Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Climb the Highest Mountain (1972, reissued 1986). James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton (eds.), Church Universal and Triumphant: In Scholarly Perspective (1994), provides an interdisciplinary, scholarly study of the movement.