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<\/a>Well, the click-bait headline worked, as they typically do. \u00a0Gotcha.<\/p>\n
First of all, let me make it plain that I\u2019m saddened by excommunications. \u00a0I don\u2019t, as one very small pod of my somewhat unhinged personal critics pretend to believe, rejoice when people are excommunicated. \u00a0More precisely, though, I\u2019m saddened by the acts of immorality, the abandonment of once-treasured covenants, the loss of spiritual confidence and trust, the angry rejection of Church leadership, the repudiation of central teachings of the Restoration, or whatever else it may be that has led to excommunication. \u00a0What saddens me isn\u2019t so much the excommunication itself, which, in important ways, merely acknowledges a defection from the Kingdom, as it is the original straying from \u00a0fellowship.<\/p>\n
Rumors of my glee over excommunications have not only been greatly exaggerated, they\u2019ve been invented out of whole cloth.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll supply an unusually clear example, not entirely unrelated, of how such things are manufactured entirely ex nihilo<\/em>. \u00a0I apologize for its somewhat gross character: \u00a0A couple of years ago, at the principal place where my most obsessive critics spin their fantasies about me, it was revealed that I believe that those who fail to gain the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom in the hereafter \u2014 the males, anyway \u2014 will be mutilated, that they will literally be anatomically emasculated, in the resurrection. \u00a0And I\u2019m supposed to relish this, and to find it enormously funny. \u00a0As it happens, I had never even heard <\/em>the idea before. \u00a0I\u2019ve never thought any such thing, never imagined any such thing, never written about such a thing \u2014 not so much as a line, at least until I felt that I needed to deny holding such an opinion \u2014 and I absolutely don\u2019t believe it. \u00a0Period. \u00a0It is thoroughly unscriptural:<\/p>\n The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time . . .<\/p>\n Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not so much as a hair of their heads be lost; but every thing shall be restored to its perfect frame, as it is now, or in the body. \u00a0(Alma 11:43-44)<\/p>\n The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame. \u00a0(Alma 40:23)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Then, more recently, several in that exceedingly weird place took to using the \u201cfact\u201d of my gleeful anticipation of the neutering of unbelieving men, including several specific, prominent, agnostic scientists of the past generation or so, as a revealing window into my allegedly cruel and vengeful soul.<\/p>\n Anyway, back to the idea of excommunication:<\/p>\n Some time back, I read a denunciation of the practice of excommunication from a person who, I think, may still be at least a nominal member of the Church. \u00a0I\u2019ll respond, very briefly, to some of the points raised by this person:<\/p>\n Truthfully, I don\u2019t even know what that claim means<\/em>. \u00a0How does the mere passage of time, in and of itself, render a truth or a (divinely-commanded) practice obsolete? \u00a0Granted, conditions change. \u00a0But when did excommunication pass its sell-by date? \u00a0Was it on 12 May 2009, by any chance? \u00a0At 1:17 PM? \u00a0Or perhaps earlier, sometime in, say, the Fall of 1997?<\/p>\n In the Latter-day Saint understanding, the Church as a whole, in its doctrines and its organizations and its practices, represents the restoration (indeed, the<\/em> Restoration) of very old things. \u00a0We believe temples, apostles, priesthood, baptism, prophets, and other such matters to be exceedingly old, but faithful members of the Church certainly don\u2019t regard them as \u201coutdated.\u201d \u00a0Age isn\u2019t a very potent argument against orthodox Latter-day Saint doctrine.<\/p>\n Well, I suppose it could be. \u00a0And perhaps, in a few cases, it has been. \u00a0Church leaders are, after all, human, and subject to all of the limitations to which mortal flesh is heir. \u00a0(Although I would imagine that there are more excommunicants who feel that they\u2019ve been abused than there are actual cases of ecclesiastical abuse. \u00a0Just as there are more criminal defendants who claim to be innocent than there are actually-innocent defendants.) \u00a0But I\u2019ve been involved in enough ecclesiastical disciplinary councils to be quite confident that many and probably the vast majority of them, even when they involve quite grave offenses, are conducted with utmost seriousness, prayerful sensitivity, a profound desire to get things \u201cright,\u201d and a genuine concern for the wellbeing not only of the Church but of the individual whose fellowship is in question.<\/p>\n Well, yes. \u00a0In several senses. \u00a0That\u2019s rather the point of the\u00a0term\u00a0\u00a0\u05db\u05e8\u05ea<\/span>\u200e (karath<\/i>, to \u201ccut off\u201d), which occurs in various forms throughout the Hebrew Bible. \u00a0It\u2019s also certainly the point of such New Testament passages as<\/p>\n Moreover if thy brother shall trespass\u00a0against thee, go and tell him\u00a0his fault\u00a0between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. \u00a0But if he will not hear\u00a0thee, then<\/span>\u00a0take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses\u00a0every word may be established. \u00a0And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell\u00a0it<\/span>\u00a0unto the church: but if he neglect\u00a0to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. (Matthew 18:15-17)<\/p>\n It is reported commonly\u00a0that there is fornication<\/span>\u00a0among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father\u2019s wife. \u00a0And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. \u00a0For I verily, as\u00a0absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present,\u00a0concerning<\/span>\u00a0him that hath so done this deed . . . \u00a0to deliver\u00a0such an one unto Satan for the destruction\u00a0of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day\u00a0of the Lord Jesus. \u00a0Your glorying\u00a0is<\/span>\u00a0not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? \u00a0Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even\u00a0Christ our passover\u00a0is sacrificed for us: \u00a0Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened\u00a0bread<\/span>\u00a0of sincerity\u00a0and truth. \u00a0I wrote unto you in an epistle\u00a0not to company\u00a0with fornicators. . . . \u00a0But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. \u00a0(1 Corinthians 5:1-4, 6-9, 11)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But, according to the New Testament, such \u201costracism\u201d isn\u2019t reserved only for cases of gross immorality:<\/p>\n Now I beseech you, brethren, mark\u00a0them which cause divisions\u00a0and offences\u00a0contrary to the doctrine\u00a0which ye have learned; and avoid them. \u00a0(Romans 16:17)<\/p>\n\n
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