Abstract
Millennial expectation is an intensively studied and broadly discussed scholarly issue. Yet, surprisingly little was written on the possible connections between millennialism and ritual.
This paper extends Susan Palmer's and Natalie Finn's suggestion that the ritual context of millennial expectation is crucial in future existence of this movement by offering a new ritual perspective on millennial event. The point of departure is the classic field research made by Leon Festinger and his co-workers, followed by a briefly summarization of the most influential approaches: theory of increasing proselytization and managing cognitive dissonance (Festinger et al.), modes of dealing with millennial disappointment such as rationalization (Joseph Zygmunt) and spiritualization (Gordon Melton), stressing the emic view.
The main innovative part of this paper, however, lies in focusing on process of the millennial expectation in the mirror of ritual studies. It is argued that the millennial event fits in fuzzy polythetic definition of ritual proposed by Jan Snoek.
The argumentation goes further and shows, that although this ritual has to be in some extent improvised some universal structure of this millennial ritual could be found. It is argued that considering millennial event as a ritual of transformation allows new perspectives on crucial moments in the process of dealing with the millennial disappointment and provides better understanding of the millennial expectation in history of millennial movement and of the structural changes in their next development.
These hypotheses are tested on several millennial movements, such as The Seekers, The Institute for Applied Metaphysics or the Adventists.