Elizabeth Prophet; led sect preparing for Armageddon
NEW YORK - Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the retired leader of a New Age religion who called on her followers in the late 1980s to prepare for nuclear Armageddon, died Thursday at her home in Bozeman, Mont. She was 70.
The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said her daughter Erin of Boston.
Mrs. Prophet took over the leadership of the Summit Lighthouse in 1973 on the death of her husband, Mark L. Prophet. He had founded the organization in 1958 to spread a message combining elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Theosophy.
In 1975, she founded the Church Universal and Triumphant, a formal religion with ceremonies and sacraments, extending the work of the Lighthouse. The religion’s teachings were derived from divine messages believed to be transmitted by the Ascended Masters, a pantheon of mystic saints and sages, among them Jesus and the Theosophist master El Morya. Its worldwide membership was once estimated at 30,000 to 50,000 people.
In the late 1980s, Mrs. Prophet issued warnings of an impending nuclear strike by the Soviet Union against the United States. More than 2,000 of her followers left their homes and gathered at the church’s compound near Corwin Springs, Mont., near the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park. There they began stockpiling weapons, food, and clothing in underground bomb shelters.
Mounting tensions with local residents subsided when the predicted attack did not occur, and church members began returning home. At the same time, a looming face-off with the US government was averted when church leaders agreed not to store weapons in return for a reinstatement of the church’s tax-exempt status, which had been revoked in 1987.
Elizabeth Clare Wulf was born on April 8, 1939, in Red Bank, N.J. As a child she was a Christian Scientist. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston University.
In 1963, after her first marriage ended in divorce, she married Mark Prophet, whom she had heard speak in Boston. Together they administered the Summit Lighthouse. In 1971, she founded Montessori International, a school run on Montessori’s progressive principles. They also wrote “Climb the Highest Mountain,’’ the first of a planned multivolume work articulating their religious beliefs.
In addition to her daughter Erin, she leaves four other children, Maria, Tatiana, and Sean, all of Los Angeles, and Seth of Bozeman.