Lecture: Children…Empowered, Excluded or Tolerated? Towards a Typology of Parent-Child Relations in New Religious Movements

Riverside Church | 490 Riverside Dr. New York, NY 10027. Morningside Heights

Speaker: Dr. Susan J. Palmer (McGill University)

Abstract: In this lecture, I will present an investigation of different notions of the “child” found in alternative spiritual communities, and of children’s status and roles in the hierarchies of these congregations. To this end, I have created a tentative typology of child-parent relations in new religious movements (NRMs) based on two variables: equality/inequality and sameness/difference. I argue that ideal parental relations in these groups can further be classified in three types: Child-centered Groups, Adult-centered Groups, and Age-Unity Groups. Within this framework, I will present an overview of children’s roles in twelve different NRMs (Children of God, Church Universal and Triumphant, Love Israel Family, Order of the Solar Temple, Rajneeshpuram, Ogyen Kunzang Choling, Knutby Filadelfia, Twelve Tribes, MOVE, ISKCON, the International Raelian Movement, and Ecoovie)

While in some of these NRMs children are regarded as superior to/more valued than their parents, as well as to other adult members in the group, in other NRMs children are perceived as inferior to/less important than their own parents and their parents’ peers. Finally, some NRMs see adults and children as equal and ontologically speaking, the same.

About the speaker: Susan J. Palmer is a sociologist of religion and a leading scholar of new religious movements. Dr Palmer received her Ph.D. from Concordia University in 1992. She was Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Dawson College from 1974 to 2013. She has taught courses as a Part-time Lecturer in the Department of Religion and Cultures at Concordia University since 1992 as Adjunct Professor, and in 2011 became an Affiliate Professor. She has also been an Affiliate Member of the Religious Studies Faculty at McGill University since 2013.