Prophecy fails again: A report of a failure to replicate.

Abstract

On July 4 of a recent year, a group of 135 men, women, and children vanished from their homes in a small southwestern town. Their homes were sealed; the windows were covered with newspapers; the cluster of houses was deserted. The only message they had left was a sign on the door of their church, reading "Gone for two weeks, camp meeting."The neighbors of the group and the town officials soon discovered where the members of the Church of the True Word 3 had gone. In response to prophecies of a forthcoming nuclear disaster, the group had for many months been building and stocking underground fallout shelters, with as much secrecy as possible. On July 4, one of their prophets received a message, "The Egyptians are coming; get ye to the safe places," and they immediately obeyed what they believed to be a command from God. They were huddled in their shelters, awaiting the nuclear catastrophe. For 42 days and nights they remained there, in expectation of imminent disaster. While they stubbornly sat underground, the authors walked around the hot, dusty desert town piecing together the history of the group from interviews with townspeople and the few group members who, disillusioned, left the shelters.The Church of the True Word is an evangelical Christian church associated with the Pentecostal

''By Faith Alone'': Religious Agitation and Cognitive Dissonance

“…Based on Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter's (1956) field observations of increased religious fervor among members of an apocalyptic religious group following a predicted cataclysm that failed to transpire (see also Hardyck & Braden, 1962), this paradigm assumes that cognitive dissonance can occur when a cherished belief is disconfirmed, leading to the use of dissonance-reducing strategies such as belief intensification. Based on Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter's (1956) field observations of increased religious fervor among members of an apocalyptic religious group following a predicted cataclysm that failed to transpire (see also Hardyck & Braden, 1962), this paradigm assumes that cognitive dissonance can occur when a cherished belief is disconfirmed, leading to the use of dissonance-reducing strategies such as belief intensification.…”

"By Faith Alone": Religious Agitation and Cognitive Dissonance

“…Based on Festinger, %ecken, and Schachter's (1956) field observations of increased religious fervor among members of an apocalyptic religious group following a predicted cataclysm that failed to transpire (see also Hardyck & Braden, 1962), this paradigm assumes that cognitive dissonance can occur when a cherished belief is disconfirmed, leading to the use of dissonance-reducing strategies such as belief intensification. This paradigm has been remarkably underutilized in dissonance research relative to the so-called "induced ~ompliance'~ and "free choice" paradigms.1 A rare exception is Batson (1975), in which women attending a church youth program were asked to declare publicly whether or not they believed in the divinity of Jesus.…”

Doing Ideology Amid a Crisis

“…For instance, after the crackdown, the company that printed the Zhuan Falun immediately ceased printing the text and almost all bookstores immediately took it off the shelves. As Hardyck and Braden (1962) hypothesized, public ridicule, more often than not, boosts proselytizing, because members feel the need to justify their position. This may partly explain the fact that more public FLG collective activities took place in Hong Kong relatively compared to Chicago.…”