[ 2011-05-23 ]

When Doomsday isn't, believers struggle to cope
If you're reading this, Harold Camping's
predictions that the end of the world would start
Saturday (May 21) failed to pan out.

That's good news for most of us, but Camping and
his followers were looking forward to the end.
After all, they believed that they were likely to
be among the 200 million souls sent to live in
paradise forever. So how do believers cope when
their doomsday predictions fail?

It depends, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of
religion at Concordia University in Montreal who
studies the history of doomsday predictions.

"If you have a strong leader, the group survives,"
DiTommaso told LiveScience. "Sometimes the group
falls apart. Most often, the answer given by the
group is that the prophecy is true, but the
interpretation was wrong." [Read: Why People Look
Forward to the End]

In 1994, Camping predicted a September doomsday,
but hedged his bets with a question mark. On his
website (familyradio.com), Camping wrote that he
had misunderstood a key biblical passage, but
since that time, biblical evidence for a 2011 end
had "greatly solidified."

Doomsdays without doom
The classic study of "doomsdays gone bad" took
place in 1954. A Chicago woman named Dorothy
Martin predicted a cataclysmic flood from which a
few true believers would be saved by aliens.
Martin and her cult, The Seekers, gathered the
night before the expected flood to await the
flying saucer. Unbeknown to them, however, their
group had been infiltrated by psychologist Leon
Festinger, who hoped to find out what happens when
the rug of people's beliefs is pulled out from
under them.

Festinger's study, which became the basis of the
book "When Prophecy Fails" (Harper-Torchbooks
1956), revealed that as the appointed time passed
with no alien visitors, the group sat stunned. But
a few hours before dawn, Martin suddenly received
a new prophecy, stating that The Seekers had been
so devout that God had called off the apocalypse.
At that, the group rejoiced — and started
calling newspapers to boast of what they'd done.
Eventually, the group fell apart. Martin later
changed her name to "Sister Thedra" and continued
her prophecies.

Other failed doomsday prophets have struggled to
keep their followers in line. One self-proclaimed
prophet, Mariana Andrada (later known as Mariana
La Loca), preached to a gang of followers in the
1880s in the San Joaquin Valley of California,
predicting doomsday by 1886. But Andrada was not
consistent with her predictions, and believers
began to defect. Trying to keep one family from
leaving, Andrada told them one of them would die
on the journey. Sure enough, the family's young
son soon fell violently ill and passed away. The
family accused Andrada of poisoning him. She was
arrested and found not guilty, but never returned
to preach to her followers.

Searching for explanations
How Camping's followers will cope with a failed
doomsday prediction depends on the structure of
the group, said Steve Hassan, a counseling
psychologist and cult expert who runs the online
Freedom of Mind Resource Center. [After Doomsday:
How Humans Get Off Earth]

"The more people have connections outside of the
group, the more likely it is that they're going to
stop looking to [Camping] as the mouth of God on
Earth," Hassan told LiveScience. "Information
control is one of the most important features of
mind control."

In his experience, Hassan said, about a third of
believers become disillusioned after a failed
prediction, while another third find reason to
believe more strongly. The remaining group members
fall somewhere in between, he said.

Doomsday groups in history have run a gamut of
responses after failed predictions, said Stephen
Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta
who studies new and alternative religions. On
occasion, a leader will admit he or she was wrong;
other groups will come up with a face-saving
explanation. Some groups may blame themselves,
rationalizing that their lack of faith caused the
failure, Kent told LiveScience. Other groups blame
outside forces and redouble their efforts.

"One of the options is for the group to say,
'Society wasn't ready, Jesus felt there weren't
enough people worthy of rapturing. Hence, we've
got to go out and convert more people,'" Kent
said.

After the apocalypse
Often, a failed prediction leads to splinter
groups and re-entrenchment. After Baptist preacher
William Miller predicted the end of the world on
Oct. 22, 1844 — a date thereafter known as "The
Great Disappointment" when nothing happened —
his followers struggled to explain their mistake.
One subset decided that on that date, Jesus had
shifted his location in heaven in preparation to
return to Earth. This group later became the
Seventh-Day Adventist church. [Infographic:
Doomsdays Past and Present]

Sociologists and doomsday experts agree that
Camping is likely convinced of doomsday rather
than perpetuating a hoax or running a scam. A con
artist, Hassan said, would never set himself up
for failure by giving a firm date.

A belief in doomsday gives followers a clear sense
of the world and their place in it, Kent said.
Those comforting beliefs are difficult to maintain
after the world fails to end.

"This could be a fairly sad day for these people,"
Kent said. "There will be some greatly
disheartened people who may be terribly confused
about what didn't happen."

Source - Associated Press

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