From Jesus to Christianity: The economics of sacrifice

Mario Ferrero

Rationality and Society, 2014, vol. 26, issue 4, 397-424

Abstract: This article models the birth of a new religion from the ashes of apocalyptic prophecy. Christianity started around the imminent expectation of God’s Kingdom. Followers forsook worldly opportunities to prepare for the event. As the Kingdom’s arrival tarried, they found themselves “trapped†because those sacrifices—like transaction-specific investments—were wasted if they dropped out. This provided incentives to stay and transform the faith. Such effort, enhanced by reaction to the cognitive dissonance caused by prophecy failure, turned an apocalyptic movement into an established church. A survey of other apocalyptic groups confirms that dropout costs are critical to explaining outcomes.

Keywords: Apocalyptic movements; birth of religion; Christianity; cognitive dissonance; sacrifice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463114546314 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:26:y:2014:i:4:p:397-424

DOI: 10.1177/1043463114546314

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().