Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy / Edition 1

by Jon R. Stone

Overview

The expectation of an end to time and the yearning for a millennial paradise have been recurring themes in Western religious thought. But when we speak of expectation of the world's end we are mindful of the fact that generation after generation of millenarians have been disappointed. Their endtime hopes and prophecies have not come true. What happens, one might ask, when prophecies fail? Does failure spell the end of the very movements that embrace such expectations? The aim of this anthology is to gather together in one volume the essential research from the fields of sociology and psychology that seeks to answer this intriguing question as first raised by Festinger in his 1956 work, When Prophecy Fails. Cross-cultural and comparative, this collection chronicles forty years of research into failed prophecy and response to the attending cognitive dissonance it produces that is at once timely and informative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415923309
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/20/2000
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jon R. Stone

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Introduction	1
1	Unfulfilled Prophecies and Disappointed Messiahs	31
2	Prophecy Fails Again: A Report of a Failure to Replicate	55
3	Prophetic Failure and Chiliastic Identity: The Case of Jehovah's Witnesses	65
4	When Prophecies Fail: A Theoretical Perspective on the Comparative Evidence	87
5	The Effects of Prophetic Disconfirmation of the Committed	105
6	Prophecy Continues to Fail: A Japanese Sect	119
7	When the Bombs Drop: Reactions to Disconfirmed Prophecy in a Millennial Sect	129
8	Spiritualization and Reaffirmation: What Really Happens when Prophecy Fails	145
9	Had Prophecy Failed?: Contrasting Perspectives of the Millerites and Shakers	159
10	How Do Movements Survive Failures of Prophecy?	175
11	"It Separated the Wheat from the Chaff": The "1975" Prophecy and Its Impact among Dutch Jehovah's Witnesses	191
12	Coping with Apocalypse in Canada: Experiences of Endtime in La Mission de l'Esprit Saint and the Institute of Applied Metaphysics	211
13	When Festinger Fails: Prophecy and the Watchtower	233
14	When Prophecy Is Not Validated: Explaining the Unexpected in a Messianic Campaign	251
15	Fifteen Years of Failed Prophecy: Coping with Cognitive Dissonance in a Baha'i Sect	269
	Sources	283