1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910746967303321

Autore

Nilsson Sanja

Titolo

Kids of Knutby : Living in and Leaving the Swedish Filadelfia Congregation / / by Sanja Nilsson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

9783031369810

3031369815

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xvii, 238 pages)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, , 2946-2665

Disciplina

284.09485

Soggetti

Cults

Religion and sociology

Psychology and religion

New Religious Movements

Sociology of Religion

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Part I: The Congregation -- Chapter 1: The Early History of the Congregation -- Chapter 2: The Pastors 1985–2003 -- Chapter 3: The 2004 Murder -- Chapter 4: After the Murder: Isolation, Withdrawal, and Persecution -- Part II: The Children -- Chapter 5: Norms Concerning Children and Child Rearing in the Congregation -- Chapter 6: The Children and The Charismatic Leaders -- Chapter 7: Relations to Parents and Other Caregivers -- Chapter 8: Peer-to-Peer: The Construction of Friendships within the Youth Group -- Chapter 9: Outsiders: Friends and Enemies -- Chapter 10: Studying Children in New Religions -- Chapter 11: Epilogue: Leaving Knutby.

Sommario/riassunto

This book tells the story of the children and youth of the charismatic new religious commune Knutby Filadelfia in Sweden. It recounts the history of the congregation, which started out as a part of the Swedish Pentecostal movement in 1921. In the 1990s, it developed into a new religion, when the congregation’s female pastor embraced the role of



the Bride of Christ. The congregation became widely known in 2004 when one of its members was murdered by another member, the latter claiming to have been acting on orders from God. In 2018, the congregation dissolved after a few years of internal crisis. Sanja Nilsson provides rich empirical analysis of archival material and interviews with the congregation’s children and youth. The young informants’ personal perspectives on their own childhoods encompass narratives from their time inside the congregation, when they identified as members of a stigmatized minority religion, aswell as from the time after the dissolution of the group, when they identified as defectors from what they came to view as a sectarian milieu. This work offers a comprehensive insight into the Knutby Filadelfia congregation, a group, that although notoriously charted by the media, has been hitherto unexplored by academics. It adds to the growing field of studies concerned with childhoods within new religions and expounds the dynamics of the defection process from the rarely applied perspective of children and youth themselves.