Superior Index Go to the next: Chapter 27
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The signers of the Declaration of Independence knew they were fighting for a principle far more important than their lives and property. They were fighting for a cause, and the supreme cause of humanity. The cause was liberty. And to them liberty was a flame as it is to us, a threefold flame that burns in our hearts whose call we cannot ignore. Religious liberty was one of the key reasons they had come to America. Their break with Europe was a break with hundreds of years of religious persecution.
On October 5, 1573, in Antwerp, Belgium, a woman named Maeyken Wens was arrested and tortured. As Paul D. Simmons wrote in an article for Church and State, "Her tongue was then screwed to her upper palate so she could not witness to her faith while she was hauled in a cart to the place where the sentence was carried out - death by fire. Her crime? ... She proclaimed the Gospel as she understood it from her personal reading of the New Testament. She was a victim of the Inquisition. She was found guilty of heresy, impiety and disobedience to Mother Church."1
Has not Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre suffered the same fate today, though not so physical?2 Does not Rome yet stand intolerant of the human spirit and the right to find out God and to worship him as one does so choose? And have we not all given our lives at one time or another to keep the flame of religious liberty burning in Europe in these dark ages?
The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in November 1620 had found it necessary to leave England in order to insure their survival as a church, as a community, as one spirit. They had tried Holland, which was said to be tolerant. But because of problems associated with the education of their children as well as economic factors, they set out for the New World.
In the next centuries they were followed by Quakers, Huguenots and Waldenses, Schwenckfelders, Roman Catholics, and Anabaptists. They were leaving behind a long tradition of religious persecution.
In 1545 the French king Francis I had ordered that all Waldenses (followers of the twelfth-century Protestant Peter Waldo) who were found guilty of heresy should be put to death. Waldo had advocated a simple life. He came to the conclusion that the laws of Christ were not being strictly followed. He sold his property, gave away the proceeds, and preached among the poor. Waldenses believed that laymen and women should be allowed to preach. They held that the Bible should be the rule of faith and that God was to be obeyed rather than man; hence they refused to obey the clergy.
French soldiers interpreted the king's order to mean mass extermination. They killed 3,000 Waldenses, burned 22 villages and sent 700 men to the galleys,3 all to maintain control over the minds and souls of the people.
Similar persecutions were conducted throughout Europe during the Reformation. By the next century such massacres were a thing of the past but persecution of minority religious groups was commonplace. Their members were jailed, thrown in stocks, and forbidden to educate their children.
The Swiss government formed a secret police force to hunt Anabaptists (whose modern descendants include the Mennonites). As John A. Hostetler describes it, their mission was "to spy, locate, and arrest Anabaptists for their nonconformist beliefs." They confiscated the Anabaptists' property. "Some were imprisoned, others were sent to Italy as galley slaves. ... Children of Anabaptist parents were declared illegitimate because their parents had not been married by a Reformed minister."4
The Founding Fathers had good reason to make sure that when they secured our political liberties they secured religious liberty as well. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The purpose of the guarantee of freedom of religion was twofold: first to prevent the establishment of a tax-supported, and therefore state-controlled, religion and second to allow everyone to worship as they chose. It was based on the Virginia "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom," adopted January 16, 1786, and the Virginia "Declaration of Rights," adopted June 12, 1776.
As summarized by Winfred E. Garrison, the "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" declared that "the state has no right to compel the citizen to support with money the propagation even of those religious opinions which he believes, much less those which he disbelieves." This was a revolutionary idea. Not since the Roman emperor Constantine co-opted Christianity in the fourth century had the nations of Europe been free of taxation to support a state religion. And that's the way it should be!
The freedom of religion portion of the Virginia "Declaration of Rights" states:
XVI. That Religion, or the Duty which we owe to our Creator, and the Manner of discharging it, can be directed only by Reason and Conviction, not by Force or Violence; and therefore, all Men are equally entitled to the free Exercise of Religion, according to the Dictates of Conscience; and that it is the mutual Duty of all to practice Christian Forbearance, Love and Charity, towards each other.5
This was the spirit behind the First Amendment. But today the intent of the Founding Fathers is being circumvented. Today there is a war on churches and there is a war on religion. And it's being waged by private groups, federal, state and local governments, and by the courts. This war affects you and me and our Church and our right to practice our religion on our private property here at the Royal Teton Ranch.
A report by the Coalition for Religious Freedom found that "the last 15 years have seen more religious freedom cases than any time since the American Revolution." It observed that "two hundred years ago, the primary threat to religious liberty was the intolerance of other religions. ... Today, however, the primary threats to religious liberty come not from churches, but from the bureaucratic secular state."6 They found that key areas in which the attacks take place are in tort liability7 and zoning.
Today over 50,000 ministers and rabbis across the country carry clergy malpractice insurance. More and more pastors are being held liable for spiritual counsel they give. The Coalition for Religious Freedom reports that "there are now nearly 2,000 suits pending in state courts against religious leaders of a variety of faiths."8 In 1986 and 1987 over $100 million was awarded by courts to plaintiffs who sued for clerical malpractice.
Zoning and land use planning are being used to control religious practice around the country. The Coalition cites the example of the Faith Bible Fellowship of Colorado Springs, Colorado. The members "held services in their pastor's home while saving money to purchase a church building. Consequently, the pastor, Rev. Richard Blanche, was cited seven times, fined $32,000 and ordered to perform eighty hours of community service by the city for alleged zoning violations."9 He would have gotten off easier had he been a drug dealer.
The courts are increasingly becoming a battlefield where religious freedom is slaughtered. Virginia Postrel recently documented a few of the cases against religion in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:
Religion is in trouble in America - for reasons that have nothing to do with Jimmy Swaggart or Jim and Tammy Bakker.
While civil libertarians vigilantly guarded the Maginot line separating church and state, the courts have swept across the undefended territory of the free-exercise clause. The Supreme Court's decision last month to let the government build roads through national forest sacred to two Indian tribes is but the latest example of this disturbing trend. Over the past several years, the courts have steadily eroded religious freedom by repeatedly granting government officials control over property central to religious life.
Building a church is a time-honored expression of religious faith, a quintessential example of the free exercise of religion. But it is not a constitutionally protected activity, according to a 1983 decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. A congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses had repeatedly - and unsuccessfully - petitioned the Lakewood, Ohio, zoning board for permission to build a new church, or Kingdom Hall, on a lot it owned in a residential neighborhood. The court held that Lakewood could legally zone religious buildings out of virtually all residential neighborhoods, leaving a mere 10% of the city open to new churches.
The desire for a suitable building, the court said, was merely a matter of finances and aesthetics, not the congregation's religious liberty: "There is no evidence that the construction of a Kingdom Hall is a ritual, a `fundamental tenet,' or a `cardinal principle' of its faith. At most the Congregation can claim that its freedom to worship is tangentially related to worshiping in its own building."
That same year, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city of Miami Beach could bar Naftali Grosz, an elderly Hassidic rabbi, from conducting daily worship services in his own garage. At issue was a city zoning law that prohibits religious buildings, such as churches and synagogues, in single-family residential areas. Rabbi Grosz's garage services generally attracted 10 to 20 people.
As unsettling as the Lakewood decision was, it at least involved a full-fledged church, parking lot and all. But, thanks to the Grosz ruling, homeowners can now find their living-room gatherings lumped in the same illegal category. By stretching the zoning law to encompass services for as few as 10 people, the court made worship illegal where bridge clubs are not. It also gave zoning boards great power to harass and intimidate minority religions - especially since a single disgruntled neighbor can launch a zoning investigation. ...
In the wake of the Lakewood and Grosz decisions, Scott David Godshall noted in a 1984 Columbia Law Review article: "Absent a religion whose beliefs center on the land itself, religious use of land may, under this analysis, be defined as secular and denied protection. The result, in other words, is a per se rule against application of free exercise analysis to church land use controversies."
And now the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment does not even protect Indian religions whose beliefs do center on the land itself. The court could have ruled on narrower grounds - for example, the need to weigh competing uses for the same publicly owned property. Instead, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor issued broad statements about the meaning of the First Amendment's free-exercise clause, statements that dangerously extend the erosion of religious freedom. Free exercise has become, in the eyes of the courts, a mere matter of doctrine and belief - not of true exercise, of practice.
In her ruling, Justice O'Connor writes that the government may instigate logging and road-building projects that "could have devastating effects on traditional Indian religious practices." But, she argues, "the affected individuals [would not] be coerced by the Government's actions into violating their religious beliefs; nor would the governmental action penalize the exercise of religious rights by denying religious adherents an equal share of the rights, benefits, and privileges enjoyed by other citizens."
To rule that wiping out religious practices - and the sacred space that makes them possible - does not coerce people to violate their religious beliefs is perverse. It also betrays a watered-down Christian bias. For many of the world's religions, practice is belief, or very nearly so. As Justice William Brennan notes in his dissent, "For Native Americans religion is not a discrete sphere of activity separate from all others." Nor is it for observant Jews or Moslems or even many Christians.
The Supreme Court's recent ruling shocked many civil libertarians. It shouldn't have, for lower courts had already made the drift clear.
Those of us who care about civil liberties, about the First Amendment's guarantees, must now turn our attention to defending the free-exercise clause - before the only place individuals can exercise freedom of religion is within their own skulls.10
Over the last 10 years various groups and government agencies have tried to exploit federal and local laws and the courts to curtail our religious freedom. Anti-cult groups, fundamentalist Christians, and some who just don't want to have us as neighbors have used every environmental issue as a tool to try to destroy us as a religion. These are people who generally don't really believe in environmentalism. Conversely, environmentalists have tried to use our unorthodox religious beliefs as an emotional appeal or fear tactic to bolster their arguments that we should be restricted from using our land.
It all started in California at our prior headquarters. We were located on a beautiful property in the Santa Monica Mountains, a 250-acre campus that had formerly been a Catholic seminary. Local environmental groups, a few neighbors and an anti-cult group wanted to curtail our use of the land and buildings and prevent us from expanding our headquarters.
Based on testimony from several environmentalists and one crusader against our Church, the Los Angeles County Planning Commission gave us a bureaucratic runaround on our application to build a small addition to our cafeteria and turned it down. We might have been able to get approval if we had put a lot of time and money into appealing it. But their stall tactics effectively prevented us from expanding the use of our land for the entire eight years we were there.
Here we were with 250 acres, over 200 of it completely vacant. We were zoned as a college campus and they wouldn't even let us build an addition to our cafeteria! As a result, we were forced to eat in a temporary tent-cafeteria open to the weather in winter and summer, year after year.
The goal of the environmentalists was to enlist the aid of the state or federal government to buy up all the remaining land in the area. But the state refused to act. Then one day in 1979 we found ourselves in the middle of a new national park, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a pork-barrel creation of Congress.
About a year later we learned that federal officials had determined that our property should be the new park headquarters, all without any prior notice to us. Our main chapel, the Chapel of the Holy Grail, was slated to become a museum and the smaller Chapel of the Holy Family perhaps a curio shop.
What followed was a protracted battle typical of the federal land-grabbing process. First came the sky-is-falling rhetoric from activist environmental groups, then threats of condemnation, numerous appraisals, ridiculously low offers from the government, repeated efforts to get the local government to down-zone our property, and finally totally false and slanderous statements about us, which on several occasions expressed religious bigotry. These were offered gratuitously by National Park Service officials, all in an effort to get us to leave our property and to sell out cheap. (For example, they repeated the lie that has circulated for years that we had armed guards at our Camelot gate; in reality the gate was manned by an unarmed person in an information booth, often a woman, who would direct people to where they should go for appointments or to make deliveries on the sprawling campus.)
In the end the Park Service did not and could not make good on its threats because no money was available under the Reagan administration. [5-second applause]
Since we moved to Montana in 1981 and particularly since the sale and transfer of our California headquarters to Montana in 1986, we have been harassed and threatened by a loose coalition including the National Park Service, a few neighbors, and local and national environmentalists. They have used scare tactics, lies, and gross exaggerations to try to convince the state and federal governments as well as wealthy national environmentalist supporters that we are a serious threat to the ecology of Yellowstone National Park.
They are short on facts intentionally and their intent is clear: they want to prevent us from using our land or convince the federal government to buy us out and force us to move. In the meantime, they are trying to stall us.
Since November 1986, controversy has centered around the Church's proposed new headquarters site at Spring Creek where we want to build a chapel and school with housing, offices, and cafeteria for staff and students. We have already purchased most of the buildings and some of them are on the 50-acre site.
Construction was begun and then halted in the fall of 1986 when environmental groups convinced the State Water Quality Bureau to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, an EIS, before making a final decision on our permit applications for the water and sewer systems. While it meant a delay in starting construction on our new headquarters, we agreed to cooperate fully and to work to mitigate any possible impacts to the environment.
In this we are absolutely sincere - because we are surely environmentalists ourselves. [10-second applause] Not only do we respect nature and the balance of nature and elemental life and the natural habitats that are found here, but to us our land is sacred ground. And as such we treat it as a holy place. It doesn't take too much sensitivity to notice just how beautifully this property is maintained. [10-second applause]
In the meantime, our departments have been functioning out of temporary quarters. The buildings we have purchased have gone unused and the EIS has cost us tens of thousands of dollars in expert consultant fees.
Even before the EIS came out, a group of local activists and environmentalists laid plans to challenge it. Clearly, their concern is not with specific threats to the environment but with the fact that we are here at all. For them there's only one solution: We have to move.
In a newsletter requesting donations for legal assistance, they claimed that we planned to put up housing for 600 staff plus several thousand university students, a total fabrication.11 This is contrary to the plans, which are a matter of public record. All the developments on the ranch will actually house 596 people, including students.12
These local environmentalists have worked hard to plant stories in the national media about our supposed threat to the environment, also before the EIS came out. An article in Flyfishing magazine charged that we "imperil the fishery" on the Upper Yellowstone, and that "a major development - probably illegal - plus plans for a poultry processing plant threaten to pollute the river. Side streams have been ruthlessly channeled, damaging spawning access. ... Join the fight. Send your check to Upper Yellowstone Defense Fund. Lawyers cost money."13 All of these are out-and-out lies.
When the draft EIS did come out in February of 1988 it was a comprehensive 152-page document that studied every aspect of our possible impact, including water quality, air quality, wildlife, fisheries, historical and archaeological sites, geology, soils, vegetation, roads, utilities, county services, local tax base, schools, social values, aesthetics, and Yellowstone geothermal resources.
The EIS found that the effect of our community would be minor and that these could be dealt with and the environment protected through several mitigation measures, most of which were already incorporated into our plans. [9-second applause]
As documented by the EIS, the fact is that we haven't damaged the environment in the seven years we've been here. The study found that our activities had not and would not disturb wildlife migration patterns, the water quality of the Yellowstone, or the quantity or quality of fish in Mol Heron Creek and other streams. In fact, one of the only effects we may have is to displace small nonmobile wildlife, that is, animals like field mice and gophers. In short, the EIS found that the sky is not falling. [8-second applause]
You would have expected that those engaged in fair play and the American tradition would have said, "The decision has been made. The facts have been researched. That's it." But that's not it. It's only the beginning. They have sounded their battle cry.
And when about a month after the release of the EIS in draft form a public hearing was held in the nearby town of Gardiner to gather comments from interested people, I decided to go to that meeting and place myself in the front row. So whatever those people had to say to me or about me or against me, they could say it to my face. [35-second applause]
What unfolded that night was a well-coordinated but factually vague assault on both the Church and the EIS by environmentalists and those who oppose the establishment of our religious community. Comments emanated from an extreme environmentalist perspective and were liberally laced with religious slurs and even personal accusations.
For example, one local environmental group made the following statement through its spokeswoman: "The numbers of people being located on church property are the staff of a business that has been successful enough over the years to buy 33,000 acres in Park County. ... The moneymaker is Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the selling of her words, and this is managed by that large staff whose presence is bringing the problems of urbanization to this fragile and ecologically important land. ... CUT is a business. It should be evaluated as a business and held responsible for the impacts it will cause."14
The sheer hatred with which this statement was directed at me, unbelievable as it was, was only to be exceeded by the next speaker. Referring to the section in the EIS that explained the background of the Church's move to Montana, she stated for the record: "I also object to the fact of the explanations of CUT's theology being included in an EIS. This is nothing more than propaganda and I don't care what they believe or who they worship. It is inappropriate and, in my opinion, serves as a diversionary tactic to take interest away from what does matter. ...
"It is a total waste of the State's time to type in such poignant scenes as Elizabeth Clare Prophet's late husband Mark telling her from his deathbed to take the Church to Montana because of the grassroots-of-America kind of people. ... The intelligence of the residents of Park County has been insulted by the inclusion of such soap opera scenes in print."15
This woman carried on about her absolute distaste for hearing anything about the Church's background, which was included as a part of our history and how we happened to come to Montana. She went on to claim that there are strong parallels between Rajneeshpuram and our Church.
This is an absurdity. If the speaker had cared to go into detail on Rajneesh, she would have been hard-pressed to find a comparison. Rajneesh was charged with 35 felony counts and received a 10-year suspended sentence after plea bargaining; neither Mark nor I nor any member of the Board of Directors of Church Universal and Triumphant has ever been charged with or convicted of a criminal offense. Rajneesh amassed a 93-car fleet of Rolls-Royces and called himself "the rich man's guru"; I drive a 1987 Chevy Suburban. He called God "the greatest lie invented by man"; we have a profound devotion to God. He said, "I do not teach any belief"; we have a well-codified belief system solidly based on the Judeo-Christian tradition and we teach the mystical truths which undergird the world's major religions.
The Bhagwan advocated free sex; we do not. At Rajneeshpuram he purportedly condoned violence and drug usage; these are antithetical to our beliefs. Since the late sixties Mark and I have been helping young people get off drugs, alcohol and tobacco through a good diet, scientific prayer and fasting, saunas, yoga, outdoor work with Mother Nature and a spiritual path - including expanding conscious awareness of God and communion with the heavenly host without the use of drugs.
The Rajneeshees ran a disco nightclub; our church members don't drink, don't frequent discos and they don't listen to rock music. Rajneesh's cronies took over the city council of Antelope, Oregon, by getting their own members elected and voting out the town residents; we have been here almost seven years and have never had a member run for or be elected to a seat in the local government. And finally, Bhagwan (it means "Lord" or exalted one") allowed his followers to worship him in the tradition of the false gurus of India. I teach my students to worship and practice the Presence of God and I shun all attempts to elevate my person. Clearly, there is no comparison to be made.
The only possible connection between our communities is that we purchased buildings from them when they went belly-up and Rajneesh fled the state and was subsequently deported. We were just trying to make the best use of our members' money by taking advantage of a good deal. That no more makes us Rajneeshees than our buying buildings from a mining company makes us miners.
Referring to our summer conferences in the Heart of the Inner Retreat, one environmentalist claimed, "The impacts of 2,500 people place a great deal of stress on the animals which can only increase the odds against their survival."16
We've lived happily with the wildlife that freely roam our ranch to the delight of our community and members. I can tell you, they're not fenced out and they're not fenced in! [9-second applause]
Another person who testified used this emotional appeal: "With their yearly massive communal gathering each Fourth of July, we have a lot of influx of different people coming in that can bring in different diseases from across the whole United States. This is one of my great concerns is that we are leaving a lot of children here in the Gardiner area unprotected."17
How about the millions of tourists that come to Yellowstone Park and all traipse through Gardiner with their diseases? [7-second applause]
And now we hear from Bob Barbee, Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park - whose payroll is paid for by your and my taxes and everybody else's - who, in representing the government and the people, ought to be impartial. (What kind of a boss is he when his employees tell us they can't eat at our restaurant, the Ranch Kitchen, for fear of being fired? One park employee who was a regular customer said regretfully on her last visit, "You probably won't see me in here anymore. If they knew that I was eating here, I'd probably lose my job.")
Make no mistake about it, Bob Barbee has used his public office and high-profile position to jump on the bandwagon and try to force us out of the area. He released an official statement which read in part:
"We do not want massive development threats on Yellowstone's border, and the people of the United States will not stand for it! ... We strongly urge the Royal Teton Ranch to select another portion of its extensive holdings for these subdivision activities and then submit new plans to the state of Montana for approval."18
Of course, there are no such "subdivisions" included in any of our plans here at the Royal Teton Ranch South.
But the intent is clear. He believes Yellowstone National Park ought to be able to dictate what we can and can't do on our own private property. That's the bottom line of it all. Whether it's the park people, the environmentalists, or the neighbors, they think they have a right to tell us what to do with our property simply because it happens to be next door to the park.
In a later statement Barbee said he feels that moving our headquarters "is a reasonable and practical solution at this time, before further development takes place."19
It's taken us all these years since 1981 to make this South Ranch a viable place to serve and worship together. We have put in what is expedient and necessary for the daily functions of life. Our staff have become experts at putting in septic systems and drainage fields - and everything you'd take for granted anywhere else. It may not look like there's too much development here, which, of course, there isn't in that sense of the word. But there is a tremendous amount of work that has gone into this South Ranch - not to mention that we believe it's the "Place Prepared of God."20
A lot of work has been done right here in the Heart just so we could put up a tent each year to worship our God as did Moses and the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings. Here we invoke the Flame of the Ark of the Covenant and the covering cherubim. Here we commune with the LORD. Here we gather midst the cloud of his Presence and hear the words he speaks to our hearts.
We reclaimed the land. We have organic farming. It's been a heroic effort by those serving here and by those of you in the field who have supported us in doing it. And now we should just pack up our tents and quietly disappear to the North Ranch. This is amazing on the face of it, that someone can think that he has the right to tell us what to do with our Church.
Bob Barbee has failed to come up with one substantive example of how we have hurt the environment. His litany of concerns is pure conjecture about the possibility of what we may do in the future and what could happen. Clearly he has a fixation on our Church and is obsessed with the idea of getting us out of here one way or the other.
In May he decided to directly attack our religion. In his written comment on the draft EIS he began questioning whether our Church "is actually a religion or an income-producing business." He cited as examples the Ranch Kitchen, Cinnabar General Store, the sale of land and homes at Glastonbury, publishing, annual conferences and our truck farm. Therefore, he said, "it is abundantly clear that the Royal Teton Ranch is a large corporate conglomerate of money-making activities."21
A careful analysis of our activities would reveal that the alleged business operations are either functions of the Church's religious purposes, are incidental to the establishment of a religious community, or are simply insignificant. Publishing and holding religious conferences are time-honored functions of churches. Produce from the truck farm is largely for the sustenance of our community. We sell land and homes at the Community of Glastonbury as part of our goal of establishing a religious community for Church members who share a common life-style, beliefs, and practices.
The Ranch Kitchen and Cinnabar General Store could be classified as businesses. However, they are primarily for the convenience of Church members and the staff. They sell natural foods and products which Church members prefer and which are not available in the area. And in addition to serving our members, they provide an important and needed window into our community for the general public.
Church Universal and Triumphant is recognized as a nonprofit corporation in the State of Montana and Bob Barbee is showing his ignorance and prejudice when he makes such outlandish claims about us. To call an agriculturally based community a "large corporate conglomerate" in the image of IBM and Exxon is ludicrous. The truth is there are no real issues to object to so those folks who simply don't like us or our religion have to make them up.
By questioning the motives of our religious community, Barbee is threatening our freedom of religion. The very idea that he thinks he can tell us to move smacks of federal tyranny, the same kind of tyranny which gave those delegates to the Continental Congress no other choice but to sign that document. [10-second applause]
We own 15,300 acres in the Corwin Springs area. Our total planned and existing developments are 120 acres, less than 1 percent of our land. On the other hand, government statistics show that over 2.6 million people and 892,000 vehicles visit the 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park annually.22 There are facilities, housing, campgrounds and RV parks for up to 17,000 people at any one time right in the park plus restaurants, gas stations, and stores.23 There are at least six "towns" inside the park. And now they are even planning several large additions, including 488 new lodging units at Canyon Village.24
In the town of Gardiner, which is on the park border just four miles from our ranch, three large motels totaling over 100 units and a new mobile-home park have gone up in the last three years alone!25 Has anyone demanded an environmental impact study? Is anyone concerned about environmental damage? Of course not! Clearly there is a double standard - one for the park and Gardiner and the rest of the Paradise Valley and another for Church Universal and Triumphant.
By contrast, in our community we're talking about 600 permanent residents plus perhaps five to six thousand visitors annually on a total of 15,000 acres on the Royal Teton Ranch South, less than half the visitor-density of Yellowstone Park.26
The hypocrisy of our critics should be obvious because it's clear that if Yellowstone Park can successfully handle this kind of activity and new development and still remain pristine and unspoiled, then so can we! [15-second applause]
And here's further evidence of the park's hypocrisy: It is documented that the Gardiner community sewage system next to the Yellowstone River is leaking and doesn't operate properly. Yet the park's new laundry built just two years ago is dumping 40,000 gallons of sewage per day into the town's system. The park hasn't stopped this operation to protect the environment.27 This isn't to mention incidents that have regularly occurred inside the park. Just last month, for example, over 100,000 gallons of raw sewage was spilled into the Yellowstone River.28
Do you hear any outcry? Meanwhile, our water and sewage systems are state of the art!
The way Barbee and the environmentalists are talking we might as well be living in a Communist country. Did you really think that you still lived in the land of the free? The tactics being used against us are the same tactics used by the KGB - lies, distortions, and rumors. In other words, disinformation!
These federal bureaucrats act like they own our land and like they're above the laws of God and man.
And if you want to know what Edward Francis has been doing a large percentage of the time since we've moved here, he's been defending us against all of these lies - having to write meticulously detailed articles, letters, statements, press releases, and he's constantly being interviewed to correct those lies. And when they are corrected and the corrections are printed, the same people come back and tell the same lies all over again! And what's more, they told their bag of lies at that Gardiner meeting, knowing full well what our responses had been and what the true facts were and that they were easily verifiable.
So you see, they not only persecute you and your religion, but they tie up your time and energy, your money and your private property to prevent you from fulfilling your mission. And it's absolutely criminal the way this orchestrated attack on our Community of the Holy Spirit is consuming the energy of our staff and Keepers of the Flame throughout the field, not to mention the funds we have had to raise to defend ourselves from these broadside attacks against our free exercise of our First Amendment rights as well as our private property rights.
One local activist, talking about us on TV, said, "They feel that they have an absolute right to do anything they want to with their private land."29 That's absolutely not true! Nobody has the "absolute right to do anything they want to with their private land." Whatever we have done or intend to do we do out of concern for the environment, and the EIS has borne out that our activities have not significantly impacted the land, the wildlife or the natural resources.
As I told the first reporters that came along at the end of and into 1987, "To us this land is hallowed ground. ... There is no other place like it in the whole nation. We are extremely careful with this land. You will not find a cigarette butt on 30,000 acres, a beer can, or a scrap of paper."30 [9-second applause] I personally have never found any litter on this property.
We have definitely managed this land with more responsibility and more diligence than any federal agency would or could have. [5-second applause] (For instance, we have sprayed our forests with organic biological compounds rather than toxic pesticides to protect the trees from pine beetle and spruce budworm infestations, while Yellowstone National Park allows thousands of acres of trees to die and then burn, on the theory that nature should be left alone and this is all part of the functioning of the ecosystem.)
In referring to our private property, one government employee said, "Why should any special interest group be given preference to degrade a unique natural area which should be able to be enjoyed by all members of the American public?"31
He's talking about your land and my land! And he's accusing us of degrading it, or being given the preference to degrade it, by virtue of our private property rights. Why, we would never think of degrading this cathedral of nature, much less consider it our preference to do so!
We secured this property as an international shrine of religious freedom. And we are pledged as its stewards to keep it beautiful and in balance as Mother Nature intended it to be - a haven for humans and wildlife, sons and daughters of God and all of the elemental kingdom!
It is a religious shrine and all people who would come here for religious purposes are welcome to enjoy it. All others are already free to enjoy Yellowstone National Park, which, with its 2,221,766 acres has never proven inadequate to meet the needs of American and international visitors and to serve as a well-managed wildlife preserve. It is only the expansionist motives of the advocates of a new superpark that has resulted in the coveting of our land and the claims that it is needed by the animals.
One environmentalist suggested that restrictions should be imposed on our summer conferences. She asked why the EIS didn't stress "human management" more by moving our conference site, by making us hold it at a different time of year or by "confining the activities of the conferees."32
Can you believe that there are people in this country who actually think they should be able to tell us how, when, and where to hold our religious conference!
The annual summer conference in the Heart of the Inner Retreat was chosen as a particular bone of contention by those commenting on the EIS. While the use of the conference site is not even the subject of any pending applications for permits or licenses from the state, it was included in the EIS as a collateral issue. Although the Draft EIS found no significant impact, individuals at the public hearing spoke of alleged impacts to wildlife, vegetation, and even public health.
When Elohim created the earth in seven cycles of creation and placed upon it God's sons and daughters, they blessed them and gave the command: "Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."33 And when "there was not a man to till the ground," the LORD God took Adam "and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."34 And after the flood God gave the same blessing and commission to Noah and his sons, saying:
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.
Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. ...
Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.35
It's an ancient tradition to tend the land for God as God's caretakers. It all started way back with Noah after the Flood. And he was God's caretaker. He was a husbandman. He planted a vineyard and dressed it. The Noachic Covenant brought the dispensation of human government. It was to be a government of man over man and Noah was God's first "overman." Hereafter man was responsible to govern the world for God.
After the Flood that responsibility rested upon the Lightbearers (the I AM Race) but when they disobeyed the laws of God and disregarded the warnings of his prophets and the dispensations of his covenants, they were taken into Assyrian and Babylonian captivity under the rulership of the "Gentiles." And to this day the children of the Light have been subject to the rulers of this world.
Yet by the Lord's intercession through the grace of Jesus Christ and the freedom flame of Saint Germain, once again the Lightbearers have emerged from their long karma of the dark ages to know a republican, representative form of government, a democracy "of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed."36
The Constitution of the United States is a covenant of the people with their Creator and with their representatives. It defines the limits of government and the rights of the governed. It is based on the self-evident truths that all men are created with equal opportunity and with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It guarantees the four sacred freedoms of religion, speech, the press and assembly as well as the right to private property, so that even prior to God's final judgment of the Gentile powers of this world, sons and daughters of God can once again serve as God's overmen and as his just stewards of the land, the resources, and the law.
I therefore believe that it is beneficial for private individuals, groups, societies, foundations and nonprofit organizations to own land and use it for public and private purposes, mindful that they are caretakers of God's natural resources. I believe we have a divine duty as well as the divine right to be just stewards of the land and the people's right to enjoy that land. Therefore we must preserve it as much as possible in nature's purity for posterity. The only reason I can see to ever have federal or state ownership of land is to preserve it for the people where the people cannot or will not effectively do so themselves. [7-second applause]
We are here to affirm our right to religious freedom, our right to worship our God in this wilderness land, under this tent of the Lord so reminiscent of the earliest stirrings for freedom in the hearts of our ancient forebears. For they kept the same flame of liberty and knew the same Divine Presence that sparked and guided those signers of the Declaration of Independence. And it is that divine document that we must keep alive by signing it again today with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. With our fiery spirits, our voices raised, and our bodies strong we shall defend in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ our right to be doing what we are doing! [23-second applause]
Keepers of the Flame, you paid for this land. You own this Royal Teton Ranch free and clear, every inch of it. [10-second applause] And that money was hard earned and you made sacrificial gifts.
You have a right to worship on this land wherever and whenever you please! [8-second applause]
You have a right to assemble on this land wherever and whenever you please! [7-second applause]
You have a right to speak freely what you think and what you believe on this land wherever and whenever you please! And together we have a right to exercise our freedom of the press on this land wherever and whenever we please - and we do! [10-second applause]
Mark and I learned a long time ago that freedom of the press doesn't mean that you are free to publish in somebody else's newspaper. No, freedom of the press is the freedom to start your own press, [6-second applause] where you have editorial control and can publish abroad in the land whatsoever you wish. [5-second applause]
Saint Germain came to us and told us that in order to found and sustain this organization we had to be able to publish our teachings ourselves, and it was he who urged us to purchase our first printing press. Not only was it necessary in order to retain our freedom of religion, he told us, but it was expedient because it was far too expensive to have our work printed out.
And so, I was the one who learned firsthand what it meant to exercise my freedom of the press - because there were only two of us and I knew it wasn't going to be Mark Prophet who was going to run that press. So I guess you all know the story that I did run that first printing press that I had set up in the living room of my apartment on the 10th floor of Arlington Towers in Virginia.
And I learned to run that press and I ran it for a year or so until someone came along and learned to run it too. It was a great thrill for me to find out that I could actually run a printing press. And it was an even greater thrill to see how in running that press, a single page that I would type on a plate (which in those days were made of paper) could suddenly become a thousand pages and how you could multiply the word of the Lord and publish those Pearls of Wisdom and Keepers of the Flame lessons. There was something very precious and profoundly meaningful in working by the hour at that Davidson offset press and feeling the tremendous freedom, and power, of the press to deliver the teachings of the Ascended Masters to the world.
What we are here to determine this Fourth of July 1988, then, is whether we are ready, as our Founding Fathers were ready, to do whatever it takes to defend our First Amendment rights and our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on our private property. Keepers of the Flame, are you ready? [31-second applause]
I consider the powers that be who are moving against us to be the greatest threat we will ever face in the challenge of our right to religious freedom and to own this private property and to do with it what God intends us to do.
Environmentalists have recently taken the press, one or more members of Congress, and ecology activists on airplane flights that buzzed our ranch. Despite the transparency of their tactics, the park-environmentalist alliance appears to be making headway at the national level.
The National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA) is a private lobbying organization which is the chief advocacy group for the National Park Service. It recently published a nine-volume National Park System Plan: A Blueprint for Tomorrow, which says that our national park heritage is being threatened and calls for legislation to expand the existing boundaries of the parks. All of our Church property in Corwin Springs is targeted by them for acquisition in their proposed park boundary line changes. In fact, we are the only property adjacent to Yellowstone Park that is targeted.
The park's assistant superintendent, Ben Clary, said recently that "federal officials are considering suing the ranch, if necessary, to protect the park."37
A bill called the American Heritage Trust Act introduced into Congress by Arizona Representative Morris K. Udall would set up a secure, untouchable interest-earning trust fund of about $15 billion which would provide a guaranteed $1 billion of funding each year for federal and state land acquisitions. This money would be available perpetually and Congress would have little oversight as to its use.
Hence a private, independent dictatorship would be set up and given this funding to spend as they see fit. And they could buy any property they want to buy that they believe is necessary to the integrity of the National Park Service and federal public lands.
If the government can delay or prevent a group of people from building a church, that is religious persecution. If our land can be bought out from under us against our will, that is religious persecution. Make no mistake, that is exactly what they have in mind.
Whether or not those fighting against us are doing it on religious or environmental grounds, the effect is to deny freedom of religion. This is religious persecution. This is religious hatred and hatred of those who embody the Light. I've seen it. I've experienced it.
And just because they're not screwing our tongues to our palates or burning us at the stake doesn't mean it's not. We're in a different century. The tactics are different. But the intent and the results are the same, to "muzzle the mouth of the ox,"38 as the Bible says. And we're not doing anything to this land but caring for it and tending it as custodians for God and for anybody, and I say anybody, who wants to come and worship here. [11-second applause] The EIS, prepared by an unbiased state agency, has demonstrated that very fact.
As far as I'm concerned the government of the United States of America, my beloved country, is threatening to interfere with my right to religious freedom, my right to assemble, my right of free speech, my freedom of the press and my private property rights.
What is going on in Park County, Montana, today is a part of the history of persecutions that brought our Fathers to the cosmic necessity of making their Declaration of Independence. When one is pushed to the wall and life itself has no meaning without the spiritual flame of liberty, one must make a declaration of independence and say, "I shall not be moved!" [26-second applause]
Persecutions are not over and the battle that must be fought is for the ultimate liberty to expand and fully realize one's inner God-potential.
There are a great many people on this planet who long ago determined that they had no desire to realize that God-potential. So much enmity did they have with our Father-Mother God that they denied their very own birthright and they allowed the flame that burned upon the altar of their hearts to go out. They would rather be the self-extinguished ones than to bend the knee and confess the Universal Christ - and themselves a part of the very issue of God.
Now these individuals roam the earth, "wandering stars," as Jude called them quoting our Lord, "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."39 And they wander about the earth seeking to devour those who yet keep the flame God gave them, who are winning the crown of eternal life.
These keepers of the flame are working the works of the Lord and the mighty work of the ages: they accept the sacred labor of their karma and they don't ask anyone else to earn their daily bread for them. Work is their ethic and they embody the Word of God. They are the spiritual overcomers and overseers. They are the true founders of civilizations, religions, and even empires. On their backs the world is built. These hearts of flame, when reaching toward their Christhood, become the ultimate threat to these hollowed-out ones, these empty whited sepulchres.
So what we see today is that the fire that burns in our breasts must be a united fire. It must be and become a conflagration that Saint Germain has called "the fire on the mountain."40 [12-second applause] And there is a fire on Maitreya's mountain. It's the flame of freedom that we must keep alive and burning bright for all who come after us who will also defend the cause of religious liberty on earth.
We begin to understand that for more than any other reason we plant our feet on this land in this Inner Retreat and in this Community of Glastonbury to guard the last bastion of religious liberty that there is and will be in the United States of America. [13-second applause] Because if we don't win in this cause, who coming after us meeting the same threat can or shall overcome?
We are a New Age religion. We are not orthodox in the Jewish sense of the word, the Islamic, the Protestant, the Catholic. But we draw from the eternal truths and mystical experiences of all the world's religions, saints, and sages. We are a people who because of our sponsorship by the Ascended Masters and our self-knowledge in God have forged this Community of the Holy Spirit.
We represent the peoples of all nations, the mechanics, the farmers, the teachers, those of the professions, the builders, the shopkeepers, the homemakers, all who share the American dream. We have the dedication and the foresight to set aside some of our private interests for the greater good of Community that we might hold dear a land such as this that we can call "Home."
"This land is my land" personally and collectively!
We have done this and we know that because we have done it people all over the world who are rising with the rising star of Aquarius, beloved Saint Germain, can also do it. They can come together on their own properties to worship in their own way as they follow the Inner Voice and discover, as we have discovered, what is important to them in their religious worship.
The Royal Teton Ranch includes our working farm and ranch community combined with our international Church headquarters, Summit University and Montessori International with our extensive publishing department where we produce all our own books, magazines, and weekly Pearls of Wisdom. It is our experiment in community living, not as communalism or Communism but as the mystery school of the Lord Jesus Christ and the sangha of the Lord Buddha.
Here we understand that by mutual creativity and reinforcement we can have the best benefits for ourselves and our families educationally, spiritually, and in the pursuit of what is most important to us - a way of life in the service of our Lord, the performance of his Work and the publishing of his Word as we daily endeavor to put it into practice together.
If an off-beat religion that has cherished values, whose members are intelligent, responsible, not cult members, not brainwashed but just plain everyday, ordinary American people - just common folk who share a common light - if we can do this, any other group of like-minded souls anywhere in the world any time in the next two thousand years can do the same.
If we do not do it, if we do not take our ultimate stand for freedom today, I can assure you that none others coming after us will have the spiritual fire nor the example to achieve it. That is the mark we make in this day. And we must make it. [40-second applause] Thank you.
Since this American Heritage Trust Act has come to the fore and I have realized just how much power is about to be placed in the hands of a private group with a hidden agenda - religious persecution in the name of environmentalism - I have felt as never before the fire of liberty burning within me.
Being a part of this great nation, our heritage and the spirit of our Founding Fathers, I have come to the place where I realize that unless I can take my stand to preserve a free land for this religion and this people that God has given to me, nothing else will have meaning to me in this life.
It becomes my all-consuming cause, my reason for being. And to consider that this that we have built could be lost to my children or grandchildren or to yours or to all the Lightbearers who will come after us is the absolute unthinkable.
We must make this land secure today. We must do this. [21-second applause]
An address by Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivered on Monday, July 4, 1988, at FREEDOM 1988 in the Heart of the Inner Retreat at the Royal Teton Ranch, Park County, Montana, updated for print as this week's Pearl.