Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003, Page 82
Branch Davidian debacle came to a tragic head in a holocaust. All of these cases had
political implications that deeply affected CUT at the time. Whitsel mentions only the Branch
Davidian event. After a failed attempt arranged by her family to deprogram a CUT member
in late 1991, the three accused deprogrammers were arrested and later brought to trial in
State of Idaho vs Szimhart, et al (yes, this writer was involved). A jury acquitted two us of
all charges, while charges were later dismissed against the third defendant. In its long-
standing battle against ―anticultists‖ CUT sent many operatives, including the current
guardian of the disabled Elizabeth Prophet to closely advise the prosecutors with whom he
sat throughout trial. The acquittals were another blow to the group‘s struggle to improve its
post doomsday image. Whitsel does document other significant image improvement efforts
and setbacks in detail, especially in Chapter Six. For example, Whitsel reports that Elizabeth
Prophet‘s last major stump to recruit new members was a thirty three-day tour of South
America in 1996. Prophet emphasized CUT teachings about reincarnation, not survival
shelters.
Unfortunately, as Whitsel surmises in Chapter Six, CUT may never reincarnate as the vital,
thriving group it once was. He offers a host of factors, including the leader‘s decline in
mental health—she was diagnosed with dementia by 1998 and stepped down officially as
the group‘s spiritual leader in 1999. Whitsel reports that Prophet suffered from epileptic
seizures from a young age, a fact not known to the general membership. During the 1990s
after the failed prophecy, CUT began selling off assets and radically downsizing staff to
curtail the shortfall in donations from the declining membership.
Earlier in the book on page 157 Whitsel frames CUT as a ―totalist‖ sect whose ―[d]octrinal
impenetrability allows the group to turn increasingly inward and further lock itself into its
own belief structure.‖ He is absolutely correct as CUT‘s teachings are rarely understood well
or completely even by long-term members who have had a difficult time keeping up with
the stream of subtle changes in ―progressive revelations‖ from the leaders. A major reason I
rejected it in 1980 was the long list of CUT‘s internal contradictions I encountered after
getting past the ―impenetrable‖ language of the doctrine. Whitsel acknowledges that any
group like CUT that defines the outside world as inherently evil tends to live in a paranoid
state. Such groups necessarily attract suspicion and criticism, thereby bolstering their
beliefs about outsiders.
Whitsel loses me, however, when he appears to lay much of the blame for the group‘s
negative image on something he and previous writers call the ―anticult movement‖ (pp. 48,
123, 133) as if the group‘s behavior was not responsible for its public image. Whitsel follows
the opinion of a small group of scholars who have dominated sociological circles with a
characterization of cult critics as monolithically naïve. For example, on page 48 the author
states: ―Observing no distinctions among new religious groups, the anticultists pursued a
policy of discrediting all organizations that deviated from the religious mainstream. For this
reason, the Church Universal and Triumphant became a tempting target for their attacks.
Anticultists subscribed to anachronistic theories of mind control and psychological coercion.‖
Whitsel never defines what or who constitutes the anticult milieu, but I suspect he is
referring to elements of the old Cult Awareness Network and to paranoid evangelicals who
regard everything other than fundamentalist Christianity as a ―cult.‖ Ironically, his overall
analysis of CUT would satisfy those same ―anachronistic theories‖ that more sophisticated
cult critics might use to characterize CUT as totalist and to explain how the group managed
to keep such a tight bond around so many devotees for any time at all. For example, on
pp.52-53 Whitsel discusses ―boundary control‖ citing a ―widely used‘ concept in social
studies about groups: ―Just as the self-contained group raises its defenses against the
perceived encroachments of the outside, the surrounding society forms a reciprocal set of
attitudes that is hostile to the insulated social system.‖

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003, Page 83
In Chapter Four we read about CUT‘s relocation from Southern California to Montana. The
title, ―The Road to Armageddon,‖ is utterly appropriate. Whitsel sketches the intriguing
details of group end-time philosophy stemming from its inception and reveals the then
clandestine plans as CUT staff secretly moved a cache of weapons and eventually got
caught illegally purchasing and transporting more guns. The book contains photo images of
the huge underground shelters under construction. Whitsel explains how the community
―functioned more effectively as a self-contained social network‖ after the move. He
describes the required and inadvertent information control as most members were just too
busy and tired to read or watch any news had the ―Masters‖ even recommended it. This
chapter and the following, ―The Apocalyptic Nonevent,‖ give the reader an in-depth view of
how a large group of basically intelligent adults succumb to a frenzied preparation for an
attack that was imaginary.
I can understand why any writer might overlook or choose to omit a good portion of CUT‘s
history, teaching, ritual, and belief—even with my extensive familiarity with the group I was
regularly surprised by what new informants revealed. I am impressed with what Bradley
Whitsel did manage to include as it gives any reader a solid basis from which to understand
CUT. To his credit he avoids the apologetic, reactionary approach taken by the authors of
Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholarly Perspective (1994) and he does mention the
criticism of that pseudo-study by scholars who dropped out of the project. However, Whitsel
neglected any mention of CUT‘s extensive use of and claims to the Theosophist teachings
and illustrations of Nicholas and Helena Roerich. This late Russian couple who founded the
Agni Yoga Society had a significant international following, especially from 1921 through
1955, the year Helena died. Elizabeth and Mark Prophet claimed that their youngest
daughter, Tatiana, was Helena Roerich reincarnated, and they also claimed in their early
book The Chela and Path that the Ascended Masters appointed them to continue the work of
the Roerichs as well as of the Ballards. Several books from the Agni Yoga series were
teaching tools only at the higher levels of CUT‘s Summit University, then a 12-week per
level esoteric indoctrination program.
Whitsel does not suggest that the CUT leaders were at all cynical. He never ventures to ask
if Elizabeth or Mark, the Messengers, knew all along that they had no psychic contact with
Masters or future events. Although his thesis was not about psychoanalyzing the
Messengers, I believe Whitsel missed an important discussion about a pervasive character
feature that helps explain group anxiety and the high turnover rate among CUT staff—
Mark‘s and Elizabeth‘s volatile tempers. Emotionally unstable and insecure, these
Messengers could not trust their alleged psychic abilities, so they often and irrationally
berated the performance and misinterpreted the motives of the inner core staff. Whether
they deserved it or not, targeted staff were demoted or dismissed if they had not already
managed to slink away. Though the Messengers claimed to represent and communicate with
the same Ascended Masters, CUT staff reported observing them argue and disagree about
the sacred teachings especially while composing CUT‘s first testament, Climb the Highest
Mountain. Not unlike an abusive spouse, the charismatic Messenger increased control of
staff by not only keeping them very busy, but also with a labile, authoritarian style that kept
sensitive devotees of the Masters back on their emotional heels. CUT members even had a
label for the Messenger‘s outbursts—they called it ―blue-raying,‖ group jargon derived from
CUT doctrine about blue rays of energy denoting the divine power they invoked daily in
decrees and meditation.
To place CUT‘s decline and domestication in context, Whitsel invokes a Weberian notion of
―formal rationality‖ when authority seeks approval from social systems. Without charismatic
leadership CUT has entered a ―rational/legal‖ phase and is now led by a democratically
elected committee of three. As he notes, CUT appears to be following the pattern of
previous Ascended Master sects, especially the ―I AM,‖ which operates quietly today with a