Children in New Religious Movements

In the complex and sometimes fraught relationship between New Religious Movements and the wider culture and state, why is it that children are so often a focus? Children are seen as needing special protection and therefore legitimising dramatic state intervention, but are also seen as of particular importance to the future of these movements, and in some more millennial groups, of the world itself. To discuss this, we are once again joined by Susan Palmer, who draws on her vast ethnographic work with such groups to give real-world examples, showing the complexity of the issue. children, it seems, become the central focus of the ideological struggle between the state and the alternative offered by these groups. Who will imprint their ideology onto the children most successfully – and will they resort to violence to do so?