Prophet's Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant (Hardcover)

by Erin Prophet (Author)
Key Phrases: ranch headquarters, ranch office, shelter cycle, New Age, Saint Germain, Mol Heron Canyon (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this extraordinary memoir, Prophet pulls the curtain back on the highest levels of life inside a cult, documenting her life inside as the daughter of cult leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet, of the Church Universal and Triumphant, from her birth through 1990, when the Church's long-awaited apocalypse failed to materialize. Without judgment or reservation, but a remarkably clear-eyed view built on more than 10 years on the outside, Prophet's account reveals cult life through the complex relationship with her charismatic, manipulative mother-a figure of equal reverence and alarm. Prophet's straightforward voice makes the facts all the more disturbing and heartrending, but her empathy for her fellow sect-members is both touching and telling, drawing readers into the cult's midst almost against their instincts. Those expecting sordid tales and angry judgments will be surprised by the subtlety and seeming safety of the cult; at heart, Prophet's story is a classic coming-of-age tale, a young woman learning about the family business and facing the inevitable realization of her parent's fallibility, but on a truly awesome scale. Like her own experience, Prophet's intense tale is sure to stick with readers long after they make it through.
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From Booklist
Before diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, a malady that eventually caused her consignment to full-time nursing care, Elizabeth Clare Prophet was founder (with second husband Mark Prophet), popularizer, and executive of the Church Universal and Triumphant, which promulgated a heady mixture of Christian Science, survivalism, UFOlogy, and syncretistic Christianity and is still active. Erin, Elizabeth Clare’s daughter, provides a disillusioned insider’s look at the church, which all four of Elizabeth Clare’s children have left. It can’t be easy being a mother with a supposedly direct line to the deity, but so it was in the Prophet household. Over time, Elizabeth Clare’s prophecies became more extreme—for instance, the one that spurred her to lead family and congregation literally underground in Montana in 1990, where they lived in a network of chambers to avoid the apocalypse. Emerging to find that the world had not ended, Erin began to reassess her mother’s teaching and eventually write this book. Good stuff about a powerful religious entrepreneur and her flock. --Mike Tribby

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press (September 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1599214253
• ISBN-13: 978-1599214252
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #291,088 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gripping Cautionary Tale, September 20, 2008

By	Sean Prophet "BlackSun" (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This outstanding document accomplished two extremely difficult tasks: Providing a history and human context for our mother's life, and demonstrating Erin's difficulty coming of age while faced with the expectations of following in her mother's footsteps. The story is told against a backdrop of constant crisis, "divine revelation," fame and the idolatry of followers.

It is to Erin's credit that she did a decade of research, and consulted a wide range of sources both within our family and outside of it. Her book is factually unimpeachable when it comes to its representation of the lives of our parents and the church they founded. Erin went way beyond due-diligence as an author in having her manuscript vetted and triple-checked by every member of our family.

As someone who was right by Erin's side through most of the events that make up her narrative, I can say that she made every attempt at laser-accuracy. In my view, she has also been gracious and erred on the side of protecting her parents and the feelings of church members at almost every level. As I read through the book, I was often astounded by her dispassionate and unbiased tone even when describing very painful situations. There were many less charitable ways she could have presented the information, and some earlier drafts reflected that.

I speak here specifically to those in CUT who may be disturbed by her revelations, which some have called "salacious." I ask: What better way is there to evaluate a person's ethics than how they lived? I would argue that like running for public office, the very act of raising oneself up as a "guru" invites and even demands just such scrutiny. For it is in the nuance of personal life decisions that character is revealed.

I applaud Erin's discussion of mom's meddling in her marriage. For Erin's marriage was by no means the only one to suffer. I saw countless people humiliated and broken up. Whenever mom used to chastise married staff members, she insisted that their spouse be present--often demanding the spouse take her side and reinforce her position. People were told on a whim that their husband or wife was a "fallen one" or "betrayer"--if that person became inconvenient to mom's agenda. Friendships, relationships and marriages were all expendable. This kind of spiritual hubris only survived as long as it did through the shame of followers to acknowledge it--a code of silence to protect the "sanctity" of the messengership on which they based their lives. I agree with Erin that it must be exposed if it is not to be repeated.

This is reinforced by the example of my own experience. I made the decision in 1985 at the age of 21 to marry Kathleen Mattson, who was then pregnant with my eldest son. Mom was violently opposed to it. She summoned me to her house in Malibu and arranged to have my best friend (a staff member) present at an all-night session where she spiritually threatened and browbeat me and convinced me to send Kathleen away to a CUT center in Vancouver. This separation lasted about 2 months until I realized that my wife-and-son-to-be were far more important to me than mom's blessing or spiritual pronouncements. I sent Kathleen a plane ticket, and brought her back. When I told my mom of my decision, she first threatened to excommunicate us from the church and to cut off all contact. Rather than admit she might have overreached, she preferred to compound the error by instructing followers that I and her future daughter-in-law be outcast and shunned like pariahs. Eventually she saw that I wasn't backing down, and she agreed to marry us in a group ceremony with 9 other couples, and accepted us back into the fold. Contrary to the disaster she had predicted, our marriage lasted 10 years and produced 3 (now adult) sons whom she loved dearly. As this episode demonstrates, more people should have stood up to her over the years.

But many people did not, and allowed their lives to be knocked off track. Of course the biggest example of the folly of her spiritual authority was the decision to squander the lifetime endowment of her church in a massively paranoid exercise in survival preparation.

As Erin documents, both she and I played no small part in the shelter drama, Erin on the spiritual side, and I on the engineering side. I felt that if the prophecies were real, we should spare no expense, and we didn't. Erin gave the confirmations the engineers were looking for, and it became a runaway train of excess.

Twenty years later, now that we have the opportunity to reflect, this memoir should be seen as a cautionary tale. Rather than CUT members circling the wagons because they are uncomfortable, they should be willing to look in the mirror. They need to realize that it was their beliefs and their elevation of the "messenger" to a place of unquestioned authority that led to every abuse. It is the authority-based tradition of "gurus" and "masters" that was the essence of the problem.

Though Erin doesn't quite reach the same conclusion, it is to me the undeniable implication of her courageous book. Once we remove anything, including spiritual authority, from the check and balance of reasoned analysis, all bets are off. Once a person claims (and people accept) prophecy and "divine revelation," all manner of abuses and wrong turns can and will result.

Erin's book succeeds on all counts. It's a gripping story of our mother's downfall into paranoia, a cautionary tale about power and group dynamics, and a very personal memoir of Erin's struggles and triumph over adversity. As her brother, as a philosopher, and as a humanist, I'm proud beyond words.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent insider's look, November 24, 2008

By	Derek Ng - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Prophet's Daughter is a great read and I found it very insightful in terms of how people wrestle with religion especially in a family context. There are times in the book where the belief system should be elaborated even deeper than it already has been especially for readers like myself who don't know much about this church. I think the author did a great job of deconstructing the situations especially given her proximity to them. Very easily an autobiographer can let their biases cloud all the described events and force the reader really to put a skeptical view on the description. I have no such issue with this book. That quality is essential since a grounded perspective helps process these fairly extraordinary circumstances.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, honest, couldn't put it down., October 2, 2008

By	Wilma Warchol (Midwest) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I finished this book in pretty much one sitting. It is very well written, Erin Prophet is a great writer. Even when she wrote letters and other things for the organization, her style was sober and to the point. It's an easy (juicy) read, especially for someone familiar with the story from the outside. I'm an ex member, fairly active in local study groups and teaching centers of the organization (as board member and volunteer).

It's clear the book was written without malice, and with complete honesty. It was confusing to me, a few times, when it doesn't follow the time line from the first to the last page, but rather by segment. I did get used to that though, and it does help understand the different segments of the author's experience.

A great book, highly recommended.