World Management Master (year 1) Thesis - The case of the Lord of Hosts Church - Diva-portal.org
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Master (year 1) Thesis
World Management
The case of the Lord of Hosts Church
Author: Jonathan Madeland
Supervisor: Per Dannefjord
Examiner: Anna-Liisa Närvänen
Term: VT21
Subject: Sociology
Level: Master (year 1)
Course code: 4SO410
Linnaeus University Abstract: Bringing together current research strands stemming from the Festinger tradition of failed prophecy, and by observing a recent case of a prophetic group dealing with disconfirming events under a period of 210 days, I theorize on what roles cognitive dissonance, rituals and continuous prophetic adaptation play in the management of prophetic groups’ alternative world views. The traditional conception of dissonance management is reinterpreted as a process of maximizing mental desirability, which is contingent on the level of cognitive dissonance as well as cognitive activity. Through the use of rituals, prophetic groups maintain a certain mental network of categories (world) that invalidates the judgement standards of the mainstream society in favor of the prophet. Finally, prophecy itself is considered to be a device that regulates the collective level of cognitive dissonance and activity in order to maintain an ideal state of collective mental desirability; it is a tool to organize the present, rather than a prediction to be judged based on its accuracy. This sociological study is an assessment of the research on prophecy stemming from Festinger and makes the contribution of synthesizing it under the single logic of world management through the study of an empirical case. Key words: prophecy, Festinger, millennialism, netnography, case study, cognition, rituals, cybernetics, consonance management, world construction, world management, the Lord of Hosts Church, Hank Kunneman, Donald Trump
Linnaeus University Thank you! I would like to thank the members of the Kantian Dinner Party for critiquing this text. I also want to thank my dear friends Elin Gunnarsson and Julia Hansson for dropping everything the days before the opposition to provide me with valuable feedback. Finally, a big thank you to my supervisor Per Dannefjord and other distinguished teachers, Ola Agevall, Bengt Larsson and Anna-Liisa Närvänen, for inspiring me during my first master’s year. Jonathan Madeland
Linnaeus University
Table of contents
I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 5
II. RESEARCH OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................... 7
1.1 New research trajectories regarding prophecy and dissonance ..................................................... 7
1.1.1 The status of Festinger’s theory ............................................................................................. 7
1.1.2 Mundane aspects of prophecy: interplay and (re)constructed lifeworlds ............................ 11
1.1.3 Similarities with the conspiracy milieu: “Rolling prophecy” .............................................. 14
III. PURPOSE STATEMENT ......................................................................................................... 15
IV. THEORY ...................................................................................................................................... 16
4.1 Cognition: cognitive chords, tension and activity ....................................................................... 17
4.2 Cybernetics: feedback loops in interacting systems .................................................................... 18
4.3 Consonance management: steering towards desirable mental states........................................... 19
4.4 Rituals: practice and performance ............................................................................................... 20
4.5 World construction: the holy and the profane ............................................................................. 21
4.6 World management: coordination of collective action and beliefs ............................................. 22
V. METHODS AND MATERIALS .............................................................................................. 24
5.1 A non-participant netnographic case study ................................................................................. 24
5.2 An overview of the process ......................................................................................................... 25
5.3 Stream selection and data collection ........................................................................................... 25
5.4 Collected materials ...................................................................................................................... 27
5.5 A naturalistic approach ................................................................................................................ 28
5.6 Ethical considerations.................................................................................................................. 29
VI. ANALYSIS .................................................................................................................................. 31
6.1 The world of the Lord of Hosts Church ...................................................................................... 31
6.2 Regulating dissonance ................................................................................................................. 32
6.2.1 Adaptational strategies: proselytization, rationalization and reaffirmation ........................ 32
6.2.2 Organizing feedback loops: chiliastic isolation ................................................................... 35
6.3 Basic maintenance ....................................................................................................................... 37
6.3.1 Accessing the holy: worship and preaching ......................................................................... 37
6.3.2 Tithing and promises of prosperity....................................................................................... 38
6.3.3 Speaking in tongues: expressing the a-rational ................................................................... 39
6.3.4 Fear and shame .................................................................................................................... 40
6.4 Regulating inactivity ................................................................................................................... 40
6.4.1 Prophecy as a mind-engaging device ................................................................................... 40
6.4.2 The two-fold motion of prophecy .......................................................................................... 43
VII. CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................................... 44Linnaeus University VIII. DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................................... 46 8.1 What now?................................................................................................................................... 46 8.2 Generalizing beyond prophetic groups? ...................................................................................... 46 References ............................................................................................................................................. 48
Linnaeus University
I
INTRODUCTION
Prior to the 2020 U.S. election on November 3, web-based televangelist and prophet Hank
Kunneman (pastoring the Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska), shared the word of God
that Donald Trump would defeat Joe Biden by a landslide. When this did not happen,
Kunneman doubled down, blamed the Democratic Party for voter fraud, and prophesied that
God would bring judgement upon them within 70 days. Within this time, Joe Biden would also
be exposed as a child-trafficking pedophile. There would be a December to remember, a
January of justice, a February of fury, and finally a March of celebration in the year of victory:
twenty-twenty-WON.
As the 70-day window began to close, Kunneman, on January 10, fired a pretend machine gun
at his audience, declaring that God was soon going to expose the Enemy’s plan and that He was
going to blast some devils, some “demon rats” (meaning Democrats), and also some “Republi-
can’ts” (meaning Republicans that have accepted the election results). Kunneman also
reminded his followers that God does not care for man’s calendar and that there were signs in
the weather that something big was about to happen, regardless of Biden’s possible
inauguration. Even after Trump physically leaving the White House, Kunneman declared that
God personally hates anyone who accuses him of being a false prophet (January 24, 2021).
Today (May 27, 2021), Kunneman holds the position that Trump will be reinstated as President
before the end of 2021.
Despite what would seem to be naked contradictions, Kunneman’s followers still acknowledge
him as God’s prophet, and his number of online followers on Facebook has since the election
increased by more than 40 percent, now reaching at 100 000. Kunneman is part of a larger
prophetic network in the U.S. in which there has been a consensus on a second, consecutive
term for Donald Trump. Interestingly, a few of these prophets have since the election
apologized, saying that the prophecy was a mistake. One of them is Jeremiah Johnson, who
upon admitting his mistake immediately, to his shock, received thousands of hate messages
from his and his prophetic colleagues’ followers, calling him a traitor, disgusting and allied
with the Devil. This power dynamic between prophet and follower struck me as interesting and
made me dive further into the subject.
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Persistent faith after failed prophecy is not an unusual phenomenon and has been studied
extensively since the 1950’s, beginning with Festinger’s famous study When Prophecy Fails
(Festinger et al 2011). Often, as I will demonstrate in the research overview, researchers have
focused on the reaction of prophetic groups following a disconfirming event, i.e., how they deal
with cognitive dissonance. Lately, attention has shifted towards more mundane aspects of
prophetic groups, the role of rituals and the conception of prophecy as a tool to enable meaning
in everyday life rather than something that defines groups. In this study, I assess what previous
researchers from different strands stemming from Festinger have identified as research gaps
and try to provide contributions to fill these gaps and connect the dots. I follow the Lord of
Hosts Church (LOHC) online for a period of 210 days, from September 30, 2020, to April 28,
2021, keeping track of the development through the election on November 3, the inauguration
on January 20, and a following 98-day period of non-events.
I pose the question: How is it the case that the Lord of Hosts Church is managing to uphold its
worldview despite the disconfirmation of their prophecy? Guided by previous research, I
theorize on the interactive roles of cognition, rituals and adaptation in this management.
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II
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
Persistent faith following a failed prophecy is a social-psychological phenomenon that has
attracted wide attention among social scientists since the Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956
study When Prophecy Fails (Festinger et al 2011). Nearly all subsequent research on the subject
is based on this study and its concept of cognitive dissonance (Dein 2016, p. 27). Although
most of this research criticize Festinger (see for instance Hardyck & Braden 1962; Balch et al
1983; Melton 1985) due to, among several things, failed attempts at reproducing the results of
increased proselytization after a failed prophecy, the theory of cognitive dissonance remains
one of the main keys to unlock the apparent contradiction of persistent faith in the face of failed
prophecy. For now, the reader will understand by “cognitive dissonance” an unpleasant mental
state caused by a conflict between one’s belief and one’s experience of reality, forcing some
kind of action to reduce the tension (the opposite being cognitive consonance, meaning there is
no conflict). I will elaborate on this in chapter IV. This chapter will provide a background of
the field, fuel arguments for the value of my research question, and it also contains many seeds
for my coming theoretical discussion.
1.1 New research trajectories regarding prophecy and dissonance
In preparation for this overview, I have familiarized myself with the original study by Festinger
et al (2011)1, all accessible case studies on failed prophecy between 1962 and 1998 (assessed
and analyzed by Dawson 1999), a more recent review of the Festinger tradition (Stone 2009)
and the, to my knowledge, most recent overview of the phenomenon of prophecy (Harvey &
Newcome 2016). See a map of this research in figure 2.1 below. In Stone (2009) and Harvey &
Newcombe (2016) I have identified three current subjects of interest that I will discuss and
place within the history of the field.
1.1.1 The status of Festinger’s theory
First, it would probably be advantageous to address the status of Festinger’s theory of cognitive
dissonance in the eyes of later researchers. For many of them, Stone (2009) writes, the theory
has falsely been reduced to a single statement: that the dissonance caused by a failed prophecy
1
I will sometimes refer to this work simply as Prophecy.
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always produces increased proselytization (i.e., attempts to convert outsiders to the faith). This
is indeed what Festinger et al (2011) observed in the case of “The Seekers”, led by “Mrs.
Keech”, who expected to be rescued from a destructive flood by extra-terrestrials; when the
prophesied event did not occur, the group rejoiced because the world had been spared through
their actions, and they could not wait to tell other people about it. Festinger et al (2011) here
emphasize increased proselytization as a means to reduce cognitive dissonance, but researchers
have seldom been able to reproduce these results and have therefore been dismissive of the
theory. This is a critical mistake, according to Stone (2009, p. 83), who questions if these
researchers have read the whole text, since Festinger is the first to anticipate the case of The
Seekers to be idiosyncratic and that proselytization is only one of many possible ways to reduce
cognitive dissonance.
Figure 2.1. Failed prophecy research overview.
*not accessed and therefore absent from this study.
This common misconception aside, valuable insights have been generated over the years. The
first subsequent case study was made by Hardyck & Braden (1962) who found a chance to test
the Prophecy thesis when they discovered an evangelical Christian group (“The True Word”)
of about 135 people building bunkers in order to survive a prophesied nuclear attack. In this
case, the failed prophecy did not result in increased proselytization but rather withdrawnness.
The group survived by reinterpreting the prophecy, so that their efforts had really served to
draw public attention to the actual nuclear destruction that was to come, but they were not
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particularly interested in talking about it with tourists or the media (ibid, pp. 137–139)2. Social
support is recognized as a prioritized way to reduce cognitive dissonance, since talking with
like-minded minimizes the risk of more dissonance; proselytization only happens if the group’s
ability to support itself is not strong enough (ibid, 139–140).
In a similar case (Balch et al 1983), the leader of a small Baha’i group, “Doc”, prophesied
worldwide nuclear destruction on a specific date. When this date came and went, not only did
the group not proselytize, but they were so demoralized that they abandoned their leader. Balch
et al (1983, pp. 155–156) point to Doc’s failure to act with confidence after the failed prophecy,
so that he failed to quickly restore the group’s integrity (as was the case with The True Word).
Interesting to note, Doc was also not a central figure within the faith (as was the case with Mrs.
Keech in relation to The Seekers in Prophecy), which allowed several members of the Baha’i
group, though temporarily devastated by the non-event, to dismiss him as a false prophet
without abandoning their core beliefs. This shows that social circumstances play an important
role in what shape the reaction to dissonance takes. Festinger’s theory alone, Balch et al writes,
is unable to account for these complexities (ibid, p. 156). In a follow-up study, Balch et al
(1997) conclude that it is important to distinguish between prophet and follower in interpreting
their responses to prophetic failure due to their different social positions; two leader figures
reacted in a way that supports the Prophecy thesis, but their followers did not (pp. 77, 88).
Perhaps the harshest critic of Festinger is Gordon J. Melton (1985). Regarding the non-
reproduceable results, he writes: “The main thesis of the Prophecy study has retained strong
support among social scientists, for some reason…” (ibid, pp. 18–19). He goes on to point out
a historical error in the study: the Millerites are claimed to have disappeared in 1845, a year
after “The Great Disappointment” when Jesus did not return as predicted by Miller, but there
are millions of people following the teachings of Miller left today3 (ibid, p. 19). There are two
significant conceptual errors in Festinger’s theory, Melton continuous. First, Prophecy treats
millennial groups as organized around a future event, which is rarely true; The Seekers, for
instance, were organized around the idea of contact with extra-terrestrials, super intelligence
and cosmic truth, which comprised a large and complex set of beliefs, not simply the coming
or non-coming of a flood. Predictions or prophecies of this sort are rather support devices for
these groups; there is something else that lives on after the destruction of one such device.
2
Hardyck & Braden (1962) discussed these findings with Festinger, who agreed with them that his theory is
incomplete (p. 139).
3
They are now called the Seventh Day Adventists.
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Second, Prophecy fails to recognize that, to religious groups, prophecies do not really “fail”.
Given that you operate under certain beliefs, and if the words of a prophet then do not come to
pass, it can, even under sober cognitive conditions, seem more reasonable to assume that
something interfered with the prophecy, that it only seems to have failed, or that it was not
really a prophecy (i.e., that the prophet was mistaken or false), than to hastily conclude that
one’s whole belief system should now be abandoned. That might be easy or even attractive for
an unaffected outsider to conclude, but not so much for an insider (Melton 1985, pp. 19–20).
The case studies display many variations, including a suicide attempt by a prophet followed by
a reinterpretation of the prophecy (Takaaki 1979), staggering activity before the prophesied
event followed by less activity and in-group blame (Singelenberg 1988), and another complete
group failure due to lack of decisive leadership (Palmer & Finn 1992). Dawson (1999, p. 61),
in his assessment of these failed prophecy case studies, identifies five empirical outcomes:
a) some groups survive and begin to proselytize;
b) some groups survive and continue to proselytize;
c) some groups survive but their proselytizing declines;
d) some groups survive but they do not proselytize;
e) some groups neither survive nor proselytize.
By using these findings, Dawson (1999, p. 61) builds upon Prophecy by adding several
adaptational strategies as well as influencing conditions:
Adaptational strategies Influencing conditions
1. Proselytization - Level of in-group support
- Decisive leadership
2. Rationalization - Scope and sophistication of ideology
- spiritualization - Vagueness of the prophecy
- test of faith - Presence of ritual framing
- human error - Organizational factors
- blaming others
3. Reaffirmation
Figure 2.2. Assessment of adaptational strategies and influencing conditions (Dawson 1999).
He suggests that focus should be removed from specific formulations in Prophecy in favor of a
broader perspective on “dissonance management” that is ongoing in all – not just religious –
groups, though prophetic failures might be particularly dramatic instances of this management
(ibid, pp. 60, 76).
In concluding this section, Stone (2009) writes that it is time to stop asking what happens when
prophecy fails; people employ any of a number of adaptive strategies to reduce dissonance,
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either adapting to disconfirming information, seeking new confirming information, or reducing
the importance of disconfirming information (which in fact were anticipated by Festinger and
have now been illustrated in different ways by mentioned case studies). It is now time to ask
why people invest in prophetic movements in the first place and what keeps them there (ibid,
p. 86). Stone (2009) hypothesizes that joining a prophetic movement is itself an act of reducing
cognitive dissonance; cognitive consonance is not the natural state of humans that is sometimes
threatened by crises – dissonance is the natural state, and acquiring some means of connecting
the dots of the complicated world (i.e., subscribing to and exploring a compelling and
comprehensible narrative) reduces this dissonance, and sticking to and/or mending the narrative
is a process of managing and achieving consonance.
1.1.2 Mundane aspects of prophecy: interplay and (re)constructed lifeworlds
Sarah Harvey & Suzanne Newcombe are the editors of the anthology Prophecy in the New
Millennium (2016), which comprises contributions from and references to many already
mentioned researchers. Their introductory chapter is titled “From the extraordinary to the
ordinary” and emphasize the role of prophecy as mainly something different from dramatic
end-time predictions, but something that in the context of everyday life can provide meaningful
narratives, critique contemporary society, coordinate attempts to fix current problems, and
provide personal guidance and development (Newcombe & Harvey 2016, pp. 1–3). This shift
to more mundane aspects of prophecy is certainly consistent with the aforementioned case
studies (see figure 2.1), which up to the early 80’s have focused on group members’ immediate
reactions to failed prophecies (testing and modifying the Prophecy thesis, see, in chronological
order, Hardyck & Braden 1962; Takaaki 1979; Balch et al 1983). The exception here is
Zygmunt (1970) who made an early break from studying short-term dissonance management
in favor of a “long-term mode of adjustment” (p. 926). His object of study was the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, at the time a century old movement, which he classified as a chiliastic and quite
isolated collection of members. The isolation from and adversity towards the outside world has
enabled them, Zygmunt writes, to cultivate a symbolic-interactional system which allows them
to downplay the significance of the empirical world and instead organize their conversations
around the “supernatural realm” (ibid, pp. 941–942).
After 1985 the failed prophecies and their respective immediate reactions stop being the main
focus; it is instead the interplay within the groups and how prophecies are used to sustain or
enhance this interplay that become interesting. I have already mentioned Melton’s (1985) idea
of prophecies being support devices for larger belief systems. Singelenberg (1988) is a
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borderline case in that it seems like he intended for a Prophecy test in line with previous case
studies, but he realized that the prophecy in question was not specific enough to be comparable.
He picks up another trail and suggests, with reference to the anthropologist Schwartz (1976),
that dissonance is sometimes created within groups as a means to keep things interesting. This,
I believe, is a very important idea that I will explore later in chapter IV.
Palmer & Finn (1992) describe the inner logic of millenarian4 groups as a collective process
rather than a set of beliefs (p. 399); waiting for the end of the world is not a natural expectation
given certain beliefs so much as a ritual – or “collective rite of passage” (ibid, p. 414) – causing
a cathartic experience that allows the group, if it survives the process, to redefine itself and thus
attain a new and invigorated identity. The reason this ritual might be necessary is if the group
begins to anticipate its own disintegration. In my own interpretation, it is a willingness to go all
in to win back the fire that has been lost, since continuing as usual seems to lead to disintegration
anyway (as illustrated in figure 2.2). The destruction of the world (which in this case, regarding
the Institute of Applied Metaphysics, was successfully interpreted to have happened on a
spiritual level) becomes a meaningful event that marks the group’s new identity or purpose.
Figure 2.3. The function of a millenarian prophecy according to Palmer & Finn (1992).
Balch et al (1997) conducts a follow-up study from -83 and thus address the validity of
Prophecy, but they now criticize it because of its lack of long-term perspective and its mistake
of centralizing the grand apocalyptic event. They are now looking at 15 years of prophetic
failure upon prophetic failure in the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant sect and
discover an emergence of a dissonance-reducing culture, meaning that the members and
eventually even the leaders increasingly started to anticipate and prepare for failure before-
hand, which prolonged the process but ultimately resulted in the group’s collapse. In between
these apocalyptic prophecies the group returned to more ordinary and achievable projects.
4
Mind the difference between millenarian and millennial groups; both expect a thousand-year golden age of
sorts, but millenarians expect this as coming after the world’s destruction while millennials expect a non-
destructive transition.
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Finally5, Tumminia (1998) argues that social scientists often make the mistake of ascribing their
own systems of reason unto prophetic groups. She writes: “What appears to be seemingly
irrefutable evidence of irreconcilable contradictions to outsiders, like Festinger, can instead
become evidence of the truth of the prophecy to insiders…” (Tumminia, p. 165). Every turn of
events is followed by adaption and reinterpretation based upon “a foundation of unfalsifiable
belief” (ibid, p. 168). This means that by utilizing certain unfalsifiable conceptions, like the
belief in powerful conspiring forces of some kind, which indeed can be framed in a way so that
they cannot be proven wrong, any event can be turned into a logically consistent confirmation
of that belief, since every setback could fit into the story of the conspiring forces trying to
sabotage and confuse the group. Unexpected events, thus, must not always cause cognitive
dissonance, if the group’s own logic has a way of categorizing unexpected events and place
them within a bigger picture.
So, returning to Newcombe & Harvey (2016), they sum the content of this shift well:
As in a good book of fiction […], the actual content of the prediction and whether or not it comes to
pass misses some of the central functions of prophecy. The social significance does not necessarily
lie in what is predicted, it can be found in the prophecy’s effect in the present – as an organizational
or motivational force – and how this creates the future. (Newcombe & Harvey 2016, pp. 11–12)
Dein, in the same anthology, underlines the lack of attention to subjective lifeworlds, the
continuous reconstruction of meaning and ways of achieving this through ritual (Dein 2016, p.
30). Both Zygmunt (1970), Melton (1985), Singelenberg (1988), Palmer & Finn (1992) and
Tumminia (1998) have, somewhat, pointed in this direction by emphasizing differentiated
world views and logics, and that prophecy creates meaning, but it is true that concrete ways of
maintaining, to create and recreate, a reciprocally attuned lifeworld by which members are able
to support themselves and each other by translating empirical events into confirming
information, are unexplored. Of all these case studies, in fact, only Palmer & Finn (1992) have
elaborated further on the role of rituals. Now, ritual is key, according to Dein (2016, p. 31), in
understanding the maintenance of belief. By performing rituals, members adjust themselves to
the themes conveyed, constructing and reinforcing a shared reality. Activities and messages are
framed in a coherent way within this reality; through formalism the use of symbols (e.g.,
language) is restricted to that which compliments the reality; traditionalism legitimates the
5
Also, once again there is an exception to the rule: Dein (1997) stand out among the post-1985 studies by
conducting a more classic failed prophecy reaction study, reaching the conclusion that a single failure can be
manageable but that many successive failed prophecies might cause members to abandon the group.
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rituals; and invariance emphasizes the timeless authority in the group’s practices. Performing
this reality creates a sense of presence and truth, affecting all kinds of mental states, and the
better the quality of the rituals, the deeper this reality establishes itself (ibid, pp. 31–33).
1.1.3 Similarities with the conspiracy milieu: “Rolling prophecy”
The third current subject of interest that I have identified is connected to new organizational
conditions owing to the internet. Robertson (2016), another contributor to Prophecy in the New
Millennium, writes that prophecy and millennialism are widespread within conspiracy circles,
but that this has not been picked up by many academics (p. 208). Understanding how people
get sucked into conspiracy theories and over time start to trust them more than governments
and scientific institutions can provide insight into why people join and remain in prophetic
movements. It is especially interesting for my own study that Robertson (2016) points to a
televangelist, Pat Robertson, as one of the first actors to bring conspiracy theories into the
mainstream back in the 90’s (with his book The New World Order). Through the internet,
independent radio stations and books, large groups of people form communities with diffuse
personal ties, but all attracted by and conforming to the same identical message.
Robertson (2016) makes a case of Alex Jones and describes his prophetic style as “rolling
prophecy”, meaning that what is prophesied is continually updated, reinterpreted and switched
out. This allows Jones to tone up whatever he has been saying that currently seems relatively
credible, and tone down whatever that seems less credible. The multitude of prophecies makes
it hard to keep track of them all, and the failed ones easily fade in memory, shouted down by
newer and hotter ones. Would, however, a faded prophecy suddenly fit into the on-going
narrative, it can be reminded of and make an even greater impact. Over time, this creates the
illusion of a consistent story and a reliable track record (Robertson 2016, pp. 215–216).
As Stone (2009) writes, not much has been written about why people join prophetic movements
in the first place, but Robertson (2016) notes something interesting in this regard when he
identifies a theodicy-element in Alex Jones. Jones offers an explanation to why the world is
unjust, thus attracting the ears of those feeling unjustly treated by society (ibid, p. 217). I will
return to this idea.
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III
PURPOSE STATEMENT
In studying a case of failed prophecy and by using the building blocks of the cognitive
dissonance theory, together with notions of the role of rituals and adaptation, I connect with the
particular field that started with Festinger et al (2011) in 1956. In order to make a contribution
to this field, which is my purpose, I will arrange these building blocks in a new way and explore
relatively uncharted aspects of prophetic groups, connect these aspects conceptually and
evaluate its validity. In so doing, I am answering the calls of current failed-prophecy
researchers.
The overarching question that originally ignited this project was: Why, given the clearly stated
prophecy of a second, consecutive term for Donald Trump, followed by the election and
inauguration of Joe Biden, do the followers of the unrepenting Hank Kunneman still
acknowledge him as a prophet? I am prone to renounce explanations simply having to do with
the followers’ intelligence or gullibility. It seems to me that I must, in order to conduct a
sociological investigation, believe it worthwhile to search for some conditions that render
persistent faith the natural, or indeed valid, outcome for the Lord of Hosts Church. I state the
following research question:
➢ How is it the case that the Lord of Hosts Church is managing to uphold its worldview
despite the disconfirmation of their prophecy?
In relation to this question, guided by previous research, I ask what interactive roles cognition,
rituals and adaptation play in this management.
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IV
THEORY
In this chapter, I will present the theoretical tools that will be used to make sense of the events
that have taken place within the Lord of Hosts Church (LOHC) between September 30th, 2020
and April 28:th, 2021. It is a successful case of what I will call “world management”, i.e., the
LOHC’s faith and practices have continued in spite of a great crisis. There are three main ideas
that constitute this notion of world management: cognition (coupled with identity theory),
rituals, and cybernetics. I will present these ideas with associated concepts and show how they
operate together in the order shown in figure 4.1. But first, for methodological clarity, I will at
this point inform the reader that this theoretical construct is neither formulated before contact
with LOHC, nor inductively generated from this contact; it is a synthesis of the previous
research presented in chapter II and the collection of (mostly) not yet analyzed materials. The
loosely knit theoretical forms provided by the research overview have been exposed to the raw
data of LOHC, thereby creating the notion of a new theoretical structure that will now be given
logical consistency and then be applied in the analytical process to see if it holds water. I
elaborate on this in chapter V.
Figure 4.1. Theory overview (set diagram).
I will also forestall some anticipated criticism before I begin, which has to do with sociologists’
business with the human mind. It is true that the exact mechanics of the psyche lies outside the
field of sociology, but this does not mean that basic principles, from any field, should be ignored
if it seems that they can be useful. Weber (1978, pp. 7–8) stated that physiological and
psychological processes can only help to enable the sociologist’s causal explanations, and the
philosopher of science Mario Bunge (1996, p. 110) criticizes parts of modern social science for
insisting on treating individuals as “black boxes”, i.e., not reflecting on inner mechanisms at
all. When I reflect on the human mind, it is not because it is the object of my study, but because
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I have found it a useful support device in explaining the social phenomenon of world
management.
4.1 Cognition: cognitive chords, tension and activity
With Festinger et al (2011) as a starting point, cognition will refer to a movement inside the
brain, i.e., it includes both thoughts, mental images, inputs of sense data, hunger, memories,
ideas, etc., which all add up to a total, constantly fluctuating state of mind. The important thing
here is that these characteristically different cognitions, being movements within the same
system, can and must affect each other. The state of mind is therefore always a cognitive
“chord” consisting of rational as well as a-rational cognitions in tension with each other; these
movements and their tensions are what is experienced6. Now, any cognition, being a movement,
will have a temporal form, and may therefore create friction against other cognitive forms, i.e.,
create cognitive dissonance. A key premise is that cognitive dissonance is essentially
undesirable. For analytical purposes I will say that any cognitive chord, which is the sum of all
cognitive activity, has a proportion of dissonance and a correlated proportion of consonance
which always add up to 100 percent. In addition to this, I will state that any cognitive chord
uses a portion of the mind’s total processing power, i.e., the chord is a subset of the mind’s
potential activity. The desirability of mental states is made commensurable by subtracting the
sum (not proportion, mind) of dissonant activity from the sum of consonant activity.
We have learned that Festinger et al (2011), at least originally, emphasized the minimizing of
dissonance as the driving force of action, but in line with Stone (2009) I believe this is incorrect.
Rather, it seems that it is the maximizing of consonance
(more specifically desirability, in my terms) that is the
driving factor. This might sound like the same thing,
but it is not. Take, for instance, plain boredom; a state
in which we do not experience dissonance and yet
desire to change. How do we change it for the better if
there is no dissonance to eliminate? Increasing
desirability oftentimes means reducing dissonance, but
sometimes, according to my model, an increase in total
dissonance can in fact implicate higher desirability. Figure 4.2. Cognition model.
6
This is similar to what in the philosophy of mind is known as identity theory, which states that sensations are
identical with brain processes (see Ravenscroft 2005, chapter 3).
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Imagine that the cognitive chord in figure 4.2 would expand so that it would engage an extra
row of potential activity; the dissonance field would increase by six blocks, but the consonance
field would increase by eight blocks. In other words, the desirability of the mental state would
grow from 16 to 18, even though the dissonance-consonance proportion stayed the same and
the absolute sum of activity engaged in dissonance increased. The purpose of this exercise is
only to show that this, perhaps counterintuitive, process is possible and logically consistent with
my reasoning (I promise that this is a qualitative study, mostly). An important implication of
this turn from dissonance management to consonance management, I believe, is that humans
get to be creative instead of, only, irritable organisms reacting to dissonance-causing stimuli. It
may be desirable for us to initiate situations that stress our minds if it engages us in meaningful
activity.
4.2 Cybernetics: feedback loops in interacting systems
Cybernetics is the idea of systems self-adapting to home in on some specific parameter value
(Wiener 2016). There is no necessary association with computers, the internet, robotics or A.I.;
“cyber” in these contexts refers to this self-adapting process that is present in all living systems.
Stable body temperature is for instance the outcome of a biological cybernetic system that reacts
to increases as well as decreases of temperature to uphold a certain state. Democracy might be
a social cybernetic system that, ideally, regulates forms of leadership to best match voters’
fluctuant trust and approval. The self-adaption is done by continuously making measurements
that are compared to some ideal state and based on this feedback adapt action so as to steer the
stream of feedback towards a match with the ideal state. Machines might operate under a single
cybernetic system, like a radiator adapting itself to keep the room temperature at a set level, but
biological and social systems operate under hundreds
and hundreds of interconnected cybernetic systems
simultaneously, making them near impossible to fully
map out. Especially social systems are tricky to study
systematically because their “atoms” are very much
diffusely connected compared to, say, cells in a body,
and social institutions have far less inertia than
biological ones (like the structure of hearts).
However, although social systems cannot be studied
in the same way as others, Wiener (who founded the
Figure 4.3. Example of some significant science of cybernetics) had no doubt that they
interacting systems.
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nevertheless are organizations with communicating parts (i.e., self-adapting systems), sharing
what is common to all self-adapting systems (ibid, p. 23). So, knowing that operating social
systems are acting so as to achieve some ideal states, and that other systems provide the
feedback required to confirm these states, we might fruitfully ask which significant systems are
in play, what their ideal states seem to be, how the feedback between them confirm or
disconfirm these respective states, and which actions are taken to manage these feedback loops.
4.3 Consonance management: steering towards desirable mental states
I will now suggest that the ideal state that individual human systems steer towards is a perfectly
desirable mental state as defined in section 4.1, i.e., one that is fully engaged in consonant
cognitive activity. Whenever the sum of consonant activity is larger than the sum of dissonant
activity, engaging more potential activity is beneficial for the desirability of the mental state (as
demonstrated above). In a prophetic movement, this might mean introducing some new
information to keep things interesting (as Singelenberg 1988 proposed as a possibility).
Contrarywise, whenever the sum of dissonance is dominant, decreasing activity is beneficial
for the desirability of the mental state. This can mean isolating oneself from the feedback
causing dissonance, by turning off social media for example. The more cognitive inactivity, the
more activity can potentially be summoned to combat dissonance. When overpowered, a viable
strategy would therefore be to first withdraw from the situation, cool off, and then, still in
isolation, engage the newly gained potential activity in dissonance reduction, before reemerging
restored and ready for another round.
Figure 4.4. Strategy: isolation + recreation..
In this example (figure 4.4), had the mind not retreated and instead struggled against the
confrontation, a stalemate would be achievable as long as there remained more potential
cognitive activity to summon, but after that point, the stream of dissonance-causing feedback
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would overwhelm the mind – maybe forcing the acceptance of new truths to make sense of the
information, or in serious cases causing mental damage.
Every empirical example of prophetic movements that disintegrated, among the case studies I
have read, did so because of a lack of decisive leadership after the failed prophecy event (see
BUPC in Balch et al 1983 and MES in Palmer & Finn 1992). Prophetic movements that do
survive in spite of disconfirming information, do so because they are disposed to effectively
manage the dynamic interconnected feedback loops that constitute their experience. The
prophet of LOHC is, by the results of it, successful when he guides his followers away from
dissonance-causing sources, like the media and online “trolls”, and equips them with
dissonance-negating tools such as transforming disconfirmations of the prophecy into
confirmations of an ongoing “test of faith” or “spiritual war” (the process explored by
Tumminia 1998). But the prophet is not alone in this management; the followers must also per
definition be active managers, controlling each other and the prophet to uphold a desirable state.
4.4 Rituals: practice and performance
A ritual will be understood as a scripted expression of subjective reality; an action that performs
a constellation of mental categories (stable cognitive patterns), thereby maintaining them as
well as utilizing them to organize action. Douglas (1997, pp. 92–94) writes that rituals link the
present with relevant events in the past (and I would add expectations of the future) and frame
the attention as to alter the mind’s selection of information and therefore total experience.
Rituals are usually thought of as being performed by groups (and so is the case for every ritual
studied here), but a ritual is first and foremost, by this definition, any reoccurring practice that
consistently links together certain categories, maintaining their place and association in a
mental structure. Even the everyday act of making coffee in the morning can be a ritual, if it,
for instance, brings together the facts that it is the beginning of the day, that there is a need for
energy because productivity awaits, which will achieve work towards personal goals, etc. In
this way, coffee making becomes more than maintaining biological functions – it becomes a
symbolic act that reconfirms an identity and sets out a congruent trajectory of practice.
Collective rituals, such as singing together in worship, is in the same way a performance of a
constellation of mental categories, but also, in addition, a social calibration of that constellation
– not only maintaining it but constructing it in participants, attuning them to something common
which allows meaningful communication and functioning cooperation.
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4.5 World construction: the holy and the profane
A world will here refer to the common patterns of mental categories in a group. Not exactly a
statistical aggregate of lifeworlds, but a shared structure of third-person conceptions of reality
(for instance: “the word of a prophet is to be respected”, which then has different implications
depending on whether you are the prophet or if you are a follower). Categories are connected
to and support each other in a certain structure; some categories will be more central, supporting
many categories that in turn support many more, while others are more peripheral or even
meaningless. A cognition that creates dissonance with a central category will quickly trigger
dissonance in many others and is thus very painful, while peripheral categories are expendable
(efficiently eliminated or adapted to shift dissonance into consonance). Adapting a central
category is not efficient, since it would become untuned from other central categories which
would have to be adapted as well. I will suggest that the most central categories are the most
holy, the threat of which would threaten the identity of the group, while the profane refers to
categories that to no discernable degree affects the holy.
Now, I emphasized in section 4.1 that all cognitions contribute to the same cognitive chord,
regardless of them being rational (logical) or a-rational (wordless notions). This is very
important to keep in mind because it would be irrational to expect rational arguments to negate
a-rational structures, which is precisely what the LOHC has constructed7. When they perform
their rituals, the categories expressed are not mainly rationally motivated; they are felt. They
say: “We are the Kingdom of God” and recognize this as the truth – reinforcing the centrality
of this holy category by aligning even their bodies, voices and their whole environment with it
(through dancing, singing, music, light shows and prophetic prayers). A-rational categories
have the same physical ability to form structures as rational ones, both types can be embedded
in each other, and they are in the same way disposed to either harmonize or disharmonize with
any given cognition. A consonant world can be so dominant in a group’s life that logical
inconsistencies are tolerable compared to that world’s total demolition. “It doesn’t matter if
there are logical inconsistencies”, they might say (in good faith), “if there are, then we’ve
chosen the wrong words and they don’t represent what we truly mean”.
7
The rationalist’s dream is to create a logical structure that is perfectly analogous to reality, and s/he therefore
takes logical contradictions very seriously and expect others to do as well. But there is something that is more
than analogous to reality, namely reality itself, which prophetic movements are a part of. They are functionally
operating somehow, and we cannot blame them for not depending on or using logic to achieve this – we can only
blame ourselves for not having developed the logic to describe them.
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4.6 World management: coordination of collective action and beliefs
Finally, this will all be put together in the concept of world management. There are many
moving parts here. To prepare the imagination, world management can be understood as either
consonance management + rituals, or world construction + cybernetics; a group acts within the
utilities and limitations of the world it has constructed to cultivate and protect that same world
which to its inhabitants is a device for creating cognitive consonance.
Taking a step back, consonance management is the cybernetic process of homing in on
maximized desirability, which means balancing cognitive activity depending on the dissonance-
consonance proportion in the cognitive chord. Now, however, the strategies that ideally could
be utilized to achieve this are limited when we consider stable cognitive patterns (categories)
that already exist in a certain structure in the mind (maintained and created through rituals).
Because of these, reducing the dissonance from an exogenous feedback loop can trigger even
greater dissonance from an endogenous feedback loop. Consider retracting one’s hand from a
hot stove compared to retracting oneself from a hot debate one is losing; the first action reduces
dissonance created by the nervous system without further implications, but the second action
might disharmonize with the present categories “I am right”, “I am brave” and “S/he who runs
from a debate is wrong and a coward”. While categories are used to make sense of information,
therefore tools for creating consonance, they at the same time limit courses of action. The
cybernetic process of desirability is one of navigating both the internal network of categories
and the stream of sense data simultaneously; depending on what world one lives in, different
options become available (which might look strange to someone not sharing that world).
Say now that a group has access to a world that, by participation, creates trajectories of practice
that successfully recreates mental desirability (possibly in different ways depending on what
role one plays in it). That world would have to be managed to remain useful, facing three
fundamental threats: 1) dissonance-causing feedback from outside systems, for instance
mockery or disconfirming events; 2) lack of basic maintenance, causing the world to
differentiate among its inhabitants until it is no longer shared; and 3) routinization, causing less
cognitive activity to be necessary to handle the world, making it boring. A successful group
would deploy three moments to play against these threats: dissonance regulation, basic
maintenance and inactivity regulation. It becomes clear that prophecy is a powerful tool in the
hands of a competent leader like Hank Kunneman, who is recognized to have the authority to
declare hidden plans playing out behind the scenes, explaining away contradictions. He has the
ability to frame basic maintenance as active spiritual warfare and by continuously releasing new
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information from Heaven turn everyday participation into an epic story intertwined with current
events. I will not get ahead of myself, but just end with the notion of prophecy as a great means
for the management of worlds.
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V
METHODS AND MATERIALS
In this chapter, I describe my methodological approach and practical procedures, present
collected materials and discuss ethical matters.
5.1 A non-participant netnographic case study
The study has been conducted completely online and with zero interactions with the Lord of
Hosts Church members. The LOHC (which is located in Omaha, Nebraska) has room for
several hundred people, but most of Hank Kunneman’s tens of thousands of followers watch
his sermons and conferences online, either via the LOHC’s own website (lohchurch.org) or via
its social media accounts. Me physically visiting the church has been impossible due to the
distance, but because the vast majority of followers experience Kunneman through a computer
screen in their own homes, a netnographic approach has provided me with an even more
naturalistic experience of what the typical Kunneman follower comes into contact with, than
had I actually made my observations in the church (on netnography, see for instance Berg 2015;
Davies 2008, chapter 7). The videos that make up my material are also of very high quality; it
is clear that the LOHC has put much effort into this aspect – and as far as documenting the
various events goes, I could not have captured them better myself.
While interacting with followers is possible in online forums such as Facebook, I chose a
completely non-participant approach. Interacting with followers would certainly have benefited
the study, but I did not have the time resources to pursue this line in a proper way in addition
to watching and analyzing the video content. Here, I invested the time I had in following the
LOHC’s prophetic journey from the seat of an online follower, but interacting with actual
followers, especially if informed by the results of this study, could potentially be a next step (as
I will discuss further in chapter VII).
As a case, the journey of the LOHC has been examined as a historical episode that in relation
to previous cases has shaped new conceptual understandings; previous ideas have been tested
and new ideas have been generated, coming together as a field-integrated explanation of the
case, whose conceptualizations in turn can help direct new research trajectories (Flyvbjerg
2011; George & Bennet 2005).
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5.2 An overview of the process
A sociological project can begin with the recognized fascination of a social phenomenon
(Swedberg 2014), at which point it is not important why it is fascinating or if it fulfills technical
requirements to truly be called fascinating, only that it is. The fascination, in this case the
persistence of the Trump prophecy in the Lord of Hosts Church, becomes the driving force of
the project, that in interplay with research on the subject8 begins to form a research question
that is of more value to the sociological community. The research question is the matured
curiosity that emerges after having tried to quell it by surveying accessible knowledge. In the
process, one becomes as much of an expert on the subject that is possible, equipped with
relevant conceptions, now disposed to generate new and sociologically integrated ideas when
exposing oneself to the phenomenon in question. In other words, one has prepared a promising
context of discovery (ibid, p. 17).
Having first completed the research overview, the close study of the particular case of the
LOHC began. Over 100 hours of Facebook streams, ranging from September 30, 2020, to April
28, 2021, have been watched while producing field notes (see details below). During this phase,
the preconceptions from earlier failed-prophecy studies were confronted by a new case,
producing a new set of loosely connected ideas in a diffuse theoretical structure. In the
following phase, this collection of ideas was given logical consistency by first being defined
separately and then systematically combined into the theory of world management, standing
with one foot in previous research, and one foot in the experience of the actual case. Using this
theory, the collected data could be analyzed and explained, providing answers to the research
question.
5.3 Stream selection and data collection
The LOHC’s Facebook page “One Voice Ministries: Hank and Brenda Kunneman” was created
in 2009. Since April 1, 2020, sermons have been streamed in full length here in addition to their
website. On Facebook, streams remain available indefinitely, whereas on the website, they only
remain available for a few months. This made it possible for me, although starting off in March
2021, to follow their journey from the election back in November, through the inauguration in
January, and catching up with the present. I listed all streams ranging from about a month before
the election (September 30, 2020) up to the present, which in the end, counting to April 28,
8
From the basic phenomenon is extracted some general and searchable terms; here “failed prophecy”, “prophetic
movements”, etc.
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