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Palgrave Macmillan

Kids of Knutby

Living in and Leaving the Swedish Filadelfia Congregation

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Sanja Nilsson

    1. School of Culture and Society, Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden

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  • Provides the first academic study of Knutby Filadelfia
  • Offers a rich empirical analysis of archival material and interviews with the congregation’s children and youth
  • Advances the field of childhood studies in new religious movements

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 1-22

  3. Knutby Filadelfia

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 23-53

  4. The Charismatic Leader

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 55-88

  5. Parents

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 89-126

  6. The Youth Group

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 127-171

  7. Outsiders

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 173-196

  8. Conclusions

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 197-221

  9. Reflections on Studying Children in New Religions

    • Sanja Nilsson
    Pages 223-228

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 229-238
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Keywords

About this book

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 Pentecostalmovement 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.


Reviews

Sanja Nilsson’s (2023) Kids of Knutby: Growing up in and leaving a High-Demand New Religious Commune is a compelling and compassionate exploration of growing up in the controversial Swedish Pentecostal group, Knutby Filadelfia. Offering a balanced and even-handed perspective on the challenging topic of childhood experiences in fringe religions, Nilsson combines rigorous scholarship with an insightful eye for how children and youth experience the complex dynamics at play between agency and charismatic authority. Drawing on Goffman’s theory of social interactionism, Nilsson carefully examines how childhood is presented and performed within the high-demand religious group. Nilsson's work is a comprehensive portrayal of growing up within the Knutby community and a thought-provoking contribution to a much-understudied topic of children in minority religious groups. More broadly, the volume dispels myths and misconceptions surrounding the study of children in new religious movements, a topic on which there has been a great deal of heat and very little light. With its insightful analysis and highly readable prose, Kids of Knutby is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the complexities of childhood in high-demand religious contexts.

-Jessica Pratezina, University of Victoria, British Columbia

 

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Culture and Society, Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden

    Sanja Nilsson

About the author

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

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