A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

Like other movements which have as their credo the “saving of America,” the flag
of the American republic is displayed prominently on the stage…Also, little American
flags are displayed prominently on the lapels and white dresses of men and women in the
audience. The man on the stage has his little flag too. Everywhere there seems to be
flags—little stripes of red and white and rectangles of blue—adding more color and
sentiment to gala event.
But you soon learn to your surprise that the color red is simply intolerable to Saint
Germain and his “Accredited Messengers.” It is the color of the communists and all that
is vicious, says the announcer. “You students should not wear it... No Ascended Master
ever uses it.” The only exception seems to be the flag of our country.
“Some day, however,” the announcer quotes Saint Germain as saying, “when the
Ascended Masters take charge of the affairs of this country, there will be gold stripes
instead of red ones in the flag of the new American republic!”
“This is not a religion,” the announcer adds, “but a patriotic movement.”
He goes on to extol the “marvelous” patriotic work of the “Minute Men of Saint
Germain.” This you learn is a men’s patriotic organization within the parent body which
has dedicated itself to fly to the rescue of America, as did the minute men of 1776.
You learn also of the activities of the “Daughters of Light,” a
sort of ladies auxiliary, with similar patriotic aims and purposes. 187
Under the guidance of the Ascended Masters, America was to serve a privileged role in the
world to come. Bryan’s exposé (not an unimpeachable source given the author’s estranged
relationship with the Great I Am, but generally consistent with other sources of information on
the Ballards relates that one of the stated goals of the church was to replace the then current
American government (Roosevelt was a great villain in the Ballards’ creed just as he was in
Pelley’s) with a more enlightened version - presumably led by Ascended Master Daddy
Ballard. 188
Both the Silver Legion and the Great I Am, like Spiritualism before them, draw on
the political sentiments of their day, specifically anti-communism. 189
The nativist chauvinism indicated by the Ballardian sense that America was to lead the
world into the new millennium bore a striking resemblance to the broader terrestrial chauvinism
187 Bryan, 9-10.
188 Rosemary Ellen Guiley, “The ‘I AM’ Religious Activity.” in Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal
Experience (New York: Harper Collins, 1991); Texe Marrs, “I AM,” in Texe Marrs Book of New Age Cults and
Religions (Austin, Texas: Living Truth Ministries, 1990).
189 The Ballards largely jettisoned the overt anti-Semitism of Pelley, though anti-Semitism and anti-Communism are
bound together at the root.
111