On Excommunication

Yesterday was a big day at our Church. It seems that someone had been spreading rumors that our large evangelical congregation was instituting a discipline process for wayward members that was intended to lead to exclusion from the Church of the unrepentant. Of course this is ridiculous, evangelical churches don't excommunicate parishioners, heck the Roman Catholic church doesn't excommunicate for unrepentant sin anymore, only for institutional lese majeste.

And that got me thinking: to get in trouble at Church one needs to behave (as the sociologists that my Pastor is so fond of quoting say) 'outside of the group norms'. Clearly marital infidelity, substance abuse, violence and financial profligacy fit the evangelical definition of sins with a capital S that are outside of what the Church deems appropriate.

But what about sins that fit within the evangelical church's norms? For example, I've always called our Church elders the "Good Old Boys" because to become an elder, first you must be good in the evangelical sense (no drunks, bankrupts, wife beaters, wife cheaters, etc.) you must be sort of old (hence elder) and of course you must be male. The most common besetting sin of elders that keeps them from getting drunk and catting around is pride. And Elders have pride by the bushel load. With some of them it's hard to see where an elder leaves off and the Pharisee begins.

That's not the only category that gets a pass: what about the elderly? In America, the elderly have an institutionalized, state sanctioned license to take their children and grandchildren's wealth called Social Security and Medicare. Hundreds of TV Documentaries, Radio Shows, and Newspaper articles have pointed out the incredibly cruel and cynical intergenerational taking of wealth by older, powerful parents from their weak and indeed, often unborn, children. Our Pastor says that God has special anger for those who exploit the poor and the weak. But our Church doesn't.

Our Church is an old, old southern church. Before the war between the states, it had slave owning members. You see back then, slave owning was a norm of the Church. And as a consequence a sin to God was not a "Sin" to the Church. This seems to be what is going on with the pridefulness of the "Good Old Boys" and the intergenerational looting by the elderly. These seem to be sins to God, but not "Sins" to the Church. Indeed not only are they not sins, in sociological terms they are core group norms.

I mean who would "discipline" the Elders? Other Elders? "George, you have committed the sin of arrogant pride, what do you have to say for yourself? Oh, look at that pudnum, I can't stay mad at you, you look just like me - come over here and give me a hug you wascally wabbit." And the Elderly? "Well they've got all the money, you see (taken from their kid's futures) and well, gee, it's just, like, hard" (studious gazing at the ground, kicking at non-existent dirt clods).

Oh and about Excommunication: The evangelical Church doesn't excommunicate, everyone knows that. We drag people through humiliating disciplinary processes, condemn their sin (but not the sinner - tough trick that), and otherwise make their lives uncomfortable. Then they leave. But it's not excommunication, not at all, nothing like it. No-Siree-Bob!