When Festinger Fails: Prophecy and the Watch Tower

✍ Scribed by Mathew N. Schmalz

• Book ID: 102977109
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 746 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-721X
• DOI: 10.1006/reli.1994.1025

✦ Synopsis

Within its history, the Watch Tower has often set dates for the coming of Christ's millennial reign. The ability of Jehovah's Witnesses to endure the failure of these interpretations of Biblical prophecy reveals the power of the Watch Tower to withstand what would seem to be fatal challenges to its system of belief. In what has become a classic study, the social psychologist Leon Festinger has argued that such disconfirmations of prophecy lead only to deepened conviction and increased proselytism to persuade others that the original belief was correct. Applying Festinger's hypothesis to the prophetic speculation of the Watch Tower, I argue that his model fails to recognize how complex organizations and systems of belief shape responses to disconfirmed prophecy. Indeed, the history of Jehovah's Witnesses demonstrates that organizational structure and ideology constitute crucial variables for any analysis of reaction to prophetic failure. It is the very power of the Watch Tower as a millenarian movement that allows not only the rationalization of disconfirmation but the retrospective denial of the prophecy itself.