The Endtime Family: Children of God

William Sims Bainbridge

feb 2012 · State University of New York Press

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This groundbreaking analysis of the controversial religious group, The Family, or The Children of God, uses interviews, observational techniques, and a comprehensive questionnaire completed by more than a thousand Family members. William Sims Bainbridge explores how Family members infuse spirituality with sexuality, channel messages that they believe emanate from beyond life, and await the final Endtime. He also examines attempts by anti-cultists and the state to "deprogram" members of the group, including children, by forcibly seizing them. The book's blending of theoretical analysis with vivid accounts of this remarkable counterculture poses a fascinating question for social scientists and society—how is it that The Children of God both differ from the general public and, in other ways, are so surprisingly similar to it?

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William Sims Bainbridge is Staff Associate for the Management and Planning Division of Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. He is the author of many books, including The Sociology of Religious Movements.