Doomsday sect's future in doubt

BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) ? As many as 1,000 followers of a New Age spiritual leader and doomsday prophet are expected to come to her memorial service this weekend at the sprawling Montana ranch she used as a headquarters.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet died last month in Bozeman after a decade-long decline caused by Alzheimer's disease. She was 70.

The church she founded still maintains a network of bomb shelters in a mountainside north of Yellowstone National Park. But it's uncertain whether the spiritual movement Prophet embodied and its publishing juggernaut will last as long.

Robert Balch, a University of Montana sociologist who specializes in unconventional religions, says that with no clear successor, Prophet's death could throw the Church Universal and Triumphant into a "tailspin."