Kids of Knutby

This book tells the story of the children and youth of the charismatic new religious commune Knutby Filadelfia inSweden. 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 embracedthe role of the Bride of Christ. The congregation became widely known in 2004 when one of its members wasmurdered by another member, the latter claiming to have been acting on orders from God. In 2018, the congregationdissolved after a few years of internal crisis. Sanja Nilsson provides rich empirical analysis of archival material and interviews with thecongregation's children and youth. The young informants' personal perspectives on their own childhoodsencompass narratives from their time inside the congregation, when they identified as members of a stigmatizedminority religion, aswell as from the time after the dissolution of the group, when they identified asdefectors 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 notoriouslycharted by the media, has been hitherto unexplored by academics. It adds to the growing field of studies concerned withchildhoods within new religions and expounds the dynamics of the defection process from the rarely appliedperspective of children andyouth themselves.