Kids of Knutby (eBook)

Living in and Leaving the Swedish Filadelfia Congregation

Sanja Nilsson (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2023
XVII, 238 Seiten
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-031-36981-0 (ISBN)

Infos

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, as well 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.

Sanja Nilsson is Associate Professor, School of Culture and Society, Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.9.2023
• Reihe/Serie: Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities
• Reihe/Serie: Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities
• Zusatzinfo: XVII, 238 p.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Alexandra Fossmo • Kim Wincent • Knutby Filadelfia • Ulf Ekman • Word of Life Church
• ISBN-10: 3-031-36981-5 / 3031369815
• ISBN-13: 978-3-031-36981-0 / 9783031369810