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

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.