The Year of Obedience: Documents

Documents

A copy of the FBI file on the Church Universal and Triumphant This doucment was obtained from the federal government via a freedom of information act and is in the public domain. Most of it is sort of procdedural bookeeping and not very interesting. However, it does confirm a number of interesting facts. People as powerful as US congresmen were concerned about the CUT. The FBI was asked to investigate the CUT. The rumors that the CUT could have turned into another Waco disaster are pretty farfetched. And of course, the fact that an FBI file on the CUT exists. It also contains a good reproduction of a newspaper article detailing the arrest of Vernon Hamilton on weapons charges.
A letter regarding punishment of Hilarion Lynn. The letter constitutes documentary evidence that authoritiy figures in the upper echelons of the CUT power structure were aware that child labor was occuring and in fact, explicitly demanded child labor.
A memo from Elizabeth Prophet outlining work arrangements from staff mothers. Within, Elizabeth sows fear of the outside world and refers to having families not as a right, but as a privilege that is bestowed by the masters.
A letter from William Lynn to the CUT hierarchy. A memo from William's supervisor is included as well. The leter contains some evidence of the financial sacrifices that ordinary staff families made during the shelter cycle.
A humerous Treasure Map. Treasure Maps were a fad that the church went through in late 1989. Chelas were instructed to create a visual image of all the wealth that they wanted. This was either done by drawing or cutting and pasting a montage together. The Treasure Map was then used to assist in visualization of money. The church members believed that by focusing on their Treasure Maps and decreeing, they would become magnetically attractive to money and that money would magically find its way into their lives without them having to work for it.
A math assignment. This assignment dates from the period when Miss Uyeda abandoned traditional scholastic instruction in favor of blatant religions indoctrination. This assignment was based upon the content of a pearl of wisdom entitled "Quietly comes the Buddha". Although this assignment came from a math class, the subject matter is clearly not math but numerology.
Egregious Indoctrination This "assignment" closely followed miss Uyeda's "I am on the warpath" speech. Shortly before, miss Sechi and Uyeda had threatened to have my family kicked off of staff. This would have been tantamount to being evicted, excommunicated and fired all at once. When we received this "assignment" I was cowed and fearful and willing to say anything to appease them. I am ashamed that I ever wrote this.
A research paper on the CUT written by Merci Hammon to fulfill an anthropology class requirement. The paper is available online at artserf.net. I'm mirroring it here in case the link ever goes down. The paper contains some information about the impact that living in the Church had on children.
Pearl Test 1 An early test on the pearl of wisdom entitle "Quietly Comes the Buddha". The tests were characterized by senseless study material, obtuse questions & extremely rigorous grading. My low score is typical of the period before I resorted to rote memorization.
Pearl Test 2 Another early and low scoring test. This one contains a humerous question involving the 9 headed hydra of Lerna.
Pearl Test 3 This one is a good example of the tests I turned in after abandoned any attempt to understand the pearls and instead resorted to memorization. My answers are a word for word regurgitation of the text of the pearl. My score rose accordingly.
Tunnels and Discipline An article regarding a bomb shelter from the Bozeman Enterprise. The shelter in question is one that was controlled by the Dratz and Kline families. The article made the front page of the Bozeman Chronicle on July 23, 1989. The Dratzes attempted to soothe the fears of the public by demonstrating that they had a policy that anticipated the psychological difficulties of living underground. Read on to find out whether low blood sugar is an excuse and when it is permissible to force a shelter inhabitant out into the irradiated wastes.
Miscellaneous CUT Dogma Look here for charts, diagrams and documents about CUT doctrine that are difficult to categorize elsewhere.
The CUT and weaponry In 1993, the CUT sued the IRS in an attempt to have its tax exempt status re-instated. The case was settled out of court, but not before a lot of pre-trial documentation was generated. The Bozeman Chronicle & the Livingston Enterprise filed freedom of information access requests to get copies of the pretrial documents. The requests were granted. Over 1,200 pages of documentation was released. A small subset is reproduced here. These are primarily documents that were seized when Vernon Hamilton was arrested in 1989 for the illegal purchase of heavy sniper rifles. Documents from the earlier criminal case were entered into the record for the later civil case. Since these are part of the public record, I've placed them in the public area of the site.
A collection of scans of newspaper articles related to the Church Universal and Triumphant. These articles were collected and assembled by Peter Arnone between 1992 and 1998. The primary sources are the Livingston Enterprise and the Bozeman Chronicle. There are also occasional articles from other papers, usually after the Church was involved in something that made the news on a national level.

The Year of Obedience

or The Shelter Cycle of Church Universal and Triumphant and The Last Days of Montessori International

Documents