{"id":68043,"date":"2018-12-06T17:39:40","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T00:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=68043"},"modified":"2018-12-06T17:39:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T00:39:40","slug":"son-of-in-praise-of-excommunication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/12\/son-of-in-praise-of-excommunication.html","title":{"rendered":"Son of “In Praise of Excommunication”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"LDS<\/a>
Christmas at the Washington DC Temple (LDS.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Back on 22 November 2018 \u2014 roughly two weeks ago \u2014 I posted a blog entry entitled \u201cIn praise of excommunication.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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Some time after that, an online article appeared under the title \u201cHigh-profile excommunications may harm Mormon retention rates in the long run.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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It summarizes a survey that I haven\u2019t yet examined directly but that seems worth a careful look. \u00a0Permit me, though, to offer two preliminary observations reacting to the summary alone.<\/p>\n

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  1. Even if excommunicating certain people were really to drive certain others out of the Church \u2014 which I hope is not true on any statistically significant scale \u2014 it would still need to be done if (a) excommunication is, in cases meriting such action, the course that the Church is divinely mandated to follow and if (b) the cases involved merit such action. \u00a0There would be absolutely no eternal point in growing the Lord\u2019s Church, or even in maintaining its membership numbers, if the course adopted in order to do so caused the Church to be unfaithful to the Lord.<\/li>\n
  2. The summary article describes active members as being \u201ctroubled\u201d by recent high-profile excommunications, and seems to take that as meaning that they oppose<\/em> those excommunications. \u00a0(Perhaps the survey justifies that equivalence, but the article doesn\u2019t appear to do so.) \u00a0But I\u2019m<\/em> troubled by those excommunications \u2014 they sadden me very much \u2014 and yet I don\u2019t oppose them and am certainly not contemplating departure from the Church over them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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    Now, Christopher D. Cunningham, a fellow Patheos Mormon blogger who is apparently also (miracle of miracles!) a believing and communicant Latter-day Saint like me, has raised the issue again:<\/p>\n

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    \u201cDoes Excommunication Make Any Sense?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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    Does Excommunication Make Any Sense?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n