The Church denies that it tells members to shun those who have left the Church. In the famous (infamous) interview Elder Holland gave the BBC reporter John Sweeney in 2012 when Mormons were having a “moment”, Holland insisted that shunning is not one our practices, and it is not a word we use. He said he would sooner cut off his right arm than shun one of his children if they were to leave the church. This is technically true, there is no direct instruction to shun people who leave, but in practice, in culture, that is not true. If you have not watched it in a while, here is a link for a refresher. There is lots of other pretty bad stuff in the interview (denying temple penalties, Book of Abraham, etc), but for this post I’ll just stick to shunning.
Recently John Sweeny was on a Mormon themed podcast (Inside Out) where Sweeney discussed the interview. Before he met with Holland, he had met with several former members of the Church, who told him about being shunned by family and friends since they left the Church. From the podcast, he said
And so what I found in the course of research was that there was a case for the Mormon Church to answer that shunning was real and it was cruel.
And I’d met these people and they told me their stories, that they had been brought up as a Mormon. They had a long history of, through generations back, of belief and faith in the Mormon Church. They’d lost their faith.
And then they’d been treated disgracefully. And frankly, Elder Holland didn’t have a good answer. Because the charges against Mormon Church, they would shun people who would leave, would bang on [1].
Sweeney, Inside Out Podcast
Then he said something that is key to why the Church keeps making “own goals” (World cup reference!), is that they refuse to admit they were wrong, or they might be able to do better. Sweeny said
But if somebody wants to leave, the best way of handling a journalist like me, who’s asking critical things, is saying, listen, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t call it shunning. We don’t have a policy of shunning, but I think you might have a point. So, tell me about the people you’ve met, and I’ll meet with them personally, away from the cameras, and I will try and do something about it.
And if he said that, if he’d said that, then I wouldn’t have had a leg to stand
But because he got angry with me, I felt the power and I felt the dark authoritarianism and I didn’t like it.
Sweeney, Inside Out Podcast
This comment from Sweeney also stood out to the podcast hosts, who said if the Church would just admit it makes mistakes and has some problems, it would not be a bid deal.
What are your thoughts on this interview? Do you think Holland’s poor performance is the reason no Q15 member has given an interview with a real journalist since then?
Since many of the readers of this blog may have left the Church, what has been your experience with shunning? In what ways does the Church encourage shunning without explicitly calling it that?
What do you think of Sweeney’s comment that if Holland have just owned up to the informal shunning that takes place in the Church, he (Sweeney) “would not have a leg to stand on”
[1] In British slang, “bang on” generally means something is completely correct, or perfectly accurate.
Wheat & Tares 
While some instances of shunning might occur around the world, I don’t think it is either an institutional or a widespread practice.
Sweeny was rather presumptuous–IMO. Here’s someone who doesn’t know anything about the church–and who has no interest in learning anything about the church. The only “research” he’s done is talk to a small group of disaffected members–and then he arrives at church headquarters demanding to know about the Strengthening the Members committee. And now he’s on record saying (in so many words): if Elder Holland had just communicated in a certain fashion the interview would’ve gone better. Oh the irony.
My husband is devoutly LDS. I have left the church. We figured out what works for us. We remain happily married and very much in love. We are each supportive of the other and find the difference in religion to be a minor thing in our relationship.
What is weird is the huge number of devoutly LDS members who casually tell me how much respect they have for my husband “because he chose not to leave me.”
They go on to tell me that my husband is giving up his eternal salvation by staying with me.
My push back has become:
“My husband is giving up nothing. I was blessed, baptized, confirmed, endowed, married and sealed in the temple. My husband asked me to not have my name taken off the rolls of the church, so by the rules of the church, I remain a member. I am a good and honorable person.
By the rules of the church, I have done everything necessary for eternal marriage and salvation. There is nothing that states I have to believe any of it. I do not believe and the LDS church was not improving my relationship with God. My husband does believe. By the rules of the church, we are just fine. Why would you think divorce would be warranted?”
They then fumble their words and have no real answers.
And yes, shunning is alive and well in Mormonism.
Why not follow the example set by Gordon Hinckley to be accessible to the media? He had some very high-profile interviews (Larry King-CNN, etc.) and he presented himself very well. He seemed pleasant and not reluctant. And this was BEFORE the era of smart phones and ubiquitous podcasts. So what happened? Why do LDS leaders seem so distant and reluctant unless they are in control of the presentation? Fake interviews with LDS PR personnel do not substitute for open exchanges with the media.
I get it that LDS leaders are just old. But GBH was old too (I believe 88 during his famous exchange with Larry King) but he was exceptional. Maybe the calculation is that as good as they are in General Conference or with LDS PR, they simply can not keep up with the demands of a normal independent interview.
My suspicion is that the main factor preventing the Q15 from being more accessible is that we are now in the post-CES Letter era. The Internet has made available so much information that has lead to so many more questions. Back in 1998 we (the average LDS member) had no idea what was about to be unleashed. Since the leaders don’t have the answers, they don’t want to be asked the questions (and yes Holland’s BBC interview was a total disaster – he lies on camera and then quickly backtracks when challenged).
For the sake of argument let’s assume the COJCOLDS is “true”. Wouldn’t you think the leaders would do everything in their power to get the WORD out? Wouldn’t they talk to anyone who would listen? Wouldn’t they plead with the world to embrace their version of the Gospel? Would they really limit missionary work to a few thousand 18 and 19-year-olds? Would they be satisfied with Church membership at 2/1000 of the world’s population (do the math if you don’t believe me)? If I were a believing member of the Church I’d be frustrated.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientologists have an explicit policy of shunning. They openly tell members to shun those who have stopped believing. There is nothing explicit in Mormonism. Still, I hear stories of shaming and ostracism of those who discontinue believing. In my immediate experience, I honestly haven’t seen any shunning. My two brothers have openly left the church. They’re still accepted and loved by my parents and my family. Some of my wife’s cousins, who come from devout believing families, have left the church and are still accepted, loved, and invited to family events. The unwritten rule is just not to talk about it. The believers don’t want to have to answer to issues about the church and be put in uncomfortable situations. Similarly the former believers don’t want to be openly shamed and put down for no longer believing and participating. There is sometimes awkward tension. There has been a case of divorce over non-belief for one of my wife’s cousins, although that is only what I’ve heard, for I barely know this cousin at all.
As a Brit who saw both the original interview with Holland and watched the Inside Out podcast with John Sweeney, I will say the original Holland interview was excruciating. Every bit as excruciating as any other interview with an official church spokesperson that has appeared on British media. I don’t know what it is, but no one seems like they can just be normal people. It’s like they’ve been given a script they cannot deviate from, along with a heavy dose of persecution complex, that while not verbally expressed is very present in the tenor of their responses and body language. It compares very badly with interviews from leaders and spokespersons of all other faiths, who are apparently not so institutionally constrained and set about with guardrails. It is a seriously weird look, and extremely off putting.
I enjoyed the Inside Out discussion of the programme.
But while I am talking about guardrails and the rest, last autumn my husband and I attended the London singles ward 40th anniversary bash for all those who were there during its first decade. Patrick Kearon and his wife sent a video message, saying he’d love to be with us, but wasn’t able to be (this was the ward he’d been baptised in). I was in later discussion with Andrew Bolton (emeritus British CofChrist apostle) who was horrified that Patrick hadn’t been able to attend. Are the lives of the Q15 really so controlled, so circumscribed? Is there no forum in which they can be normal people?
They do not SAY to shun people. Holland is correct that they don’t use that word. But they warn people not to listen or associate too closely to those who leave. Part of doubting your doubts is to stay away from people who might bring up those doubts. So, no, they do not say “shun” but they strongly imply “stay away”. They do teach that you need to be married and STAY on the covenant path, and the implication is that is your spouse steps off that covenant path, then you need to get rid of them and get yourself one that will stay on the path with you. So, no, they never say the word “shun” but their teachings lead to that as a consequence. I mean, if believing members are supposed to protect their fragile testimony by not listening to us horrid apostates who might mention hard questions, then the *result* is shunning.
I have heard of bishops advising men, and only men, to divorce their wife who stops believing. They do seem to have a different standard for women whose husband stops believing which amounts to loving him back into the church by being supper sweet and obedient so he will see that the church is a good thing. I don’t know why the difference, except that they feel more understanding of the husband’s side and they would not like their wife to divorce them, so they advise the wife to keep loving him. And they do not identify with the wife being dumped, but want to keep the man in the church and worry he will follow his wife out, but they really don’t care about a wife following her husband out, because it is only men they need to run the church.
When I dropped out, the people who knew me did not come to me to ask why, they asked my husband. He told them that they would have to ask me why I was not coming to church, because it was my story to tell. Of course, nobody ever did. I don’t know that people from church avoided me. No one came to me to say they missed me or made any effort to befriend me and get me to come back. There were a few, that if I ran into them in the store or somewhere, they would stop to chat. They never asked or even mentioned more that they had not seen me in a while to even acknowledge I wasn’t coming to church. We just kind of caught up with each other. Others pretended not to know me, but they were not really people that I wanted to chat with.
But the way people acted is par for Mormon culture. We are friendly at church but it pretty much stays friendly acquaintances. And my husband was in front of them at church, so no effort at all to mention his missing wife. But it would have taken a bit of effort to call me or come to my house. It is like when a ward splits and your “friends” who go to the other ward and no longer your friends. They just don’t take the effort to keep in touch. I disappeared and they were only mildly curious why, so they checked with my husband to make sure I wasn’t sick or something, then forgot I existed.
After watching the video of Elder Holland and listening to the John Sweeney interview, I think I finally understand what all the religious freedom fuss is about.
The church does not want to have to answer to anybody about anything they do: not to reporters, not to civil authorities, not to the SEC, not even to the members.
The rest of us have to follow the rules while they make up their own rules.
Thanks for the post. It has been eye-opening.
I was a bishop, and a counselor before that, and a member the ward for 20 years. After I left (quietly, no IG posts etc) exactly two people have reached out and asked how I am or invited me to go to lunch or whatever. Feels a like shunning.
There’s a couple we have known about 20 years living in our ward. He studied up on church history recently and no longer believes, but was willing to continue going to church and support her with continuing to raise their kids in the church. She decided instead to divorce him over it. They went to couples counseling but she wouldn’t be budged. Husband refused to move so she did. He attends whenever his kids stay with him. He participates in Sunday School discussions. I think it’s so ridiculous to divorce over this issue. In my opinion it isn’t Christ-like. I think learning to love those who think differently than yourself is the only path to becoming like Christ. He wasn’t into the purity gospel focus. He was all about inclusion regardless of differences. People who divorce or shun former believers are lost and self absorbed
It’s a real conundrum, isn’t it? Lots of ex-mos complain about Church members continuing to reach out to them — for these people, perhaps they want to be shunned. Others wish someone would have asked why they left, but realistically, no active believing member really wants to hear why someone might have left. With time, I’ve realized I don’t want to try and explain why I left to a TBM because I’ll just get a bunch of stupid platitudes and that will make me angry and upset. No, I don’t want to talk about it.
Instead, the only workable outcome is what Brad D describes: continue to associate but never talk about Church. That’s how my friends have handled my loss of faith. We get together, text frequently, are still friends, we just don’t talk about Church. Of course I hear about milestones, like my friend’s son got home from his mission recently, and once in a while callings come up in conversation. None of my friends have asked why I left and when I tried to express some frustration with Church, things got really awkward really fast. So I don’t say anything and neither do they.
But shunned? I’ve never been shunned. Of course, it all depends on your family and friends. There may not be a specific policy, but some people will shun those who leave and some won’t. Or maybe someone was only tolerating a PIMO for the sake of Church and once they left, there was no reason to tolerate them any longer. The pre-existing relationship probably affects whether someone gets shunned. The active members that I’m still good friends with are ones that I knew outside of Church too. The people I only knew because we went the same ward are pretty much gone from my life, but the ones I had more than one connection with are still around.
We moved three years ago about 2 miles. Same city, same school district, but just far enough to be in a different ward and stake and in a different set of elementary through high schools. My older two kids stayed in the same school set but my younger two moved over to the new school set.
We decided this move was our chance to finally just stop attending church. That first year, we attended the ward Christmas party and Pi(e) night activities. People came and introduced themselves, seemed to know who we were, and invited us to sit with them. We attended the Christmas party again this last year. No one said hi, no one sat with us, and it was unbelievably horrid. We ate and left before the programme. When I got home, I re-read the invitation which clearly stated this activity was open to friends and neighbors, so even if they no longer view us as one of them, we WERE invited. If they want it to be a members only event, then don’t say it’s open to anyone to attend. Super easy fix.
Perhaps in year 1 the ward thought our attendance meant maybe we were coming back. By year 2 it was obvious that wasn’t the case, and they lost interest. Feels like shunning. And, I’m actually happy for the shunning. If they were nice, it might make me miss the local Mormon agenda, notwithstanding my loathing of the institutional agenda, and then I’d be dealing with the never ending cognitive dissonance of nice people/crappy institution. But by locally ignoring us, they’ve made it easy to move on.
Still, it’s shunning, call it what you will.
Re Jack’s comment. I suppose peoples is peoples, but I know when I’m shopping for something that will have a big impact on my life, I tend to read the negative reviews more than the positive ones. Perhaps this journalist is a kindred spirit to me, but not to you. Eyes wide open and all that. YMMV.
Also, curious how you come to the conclusion he knows nothing about the church.
I realise I omitted the shunning part from my previous comment, which was that I wondered whether one reason Patrick hadn’t been able to attend was that it would mean socialising with apostates as well as active members. One of the great things about the event was that folks turned up whether or not they were still active members, and it was lovely to see them regardless of their level of activity. Some had flown over from the US especially to be there. Speaking assignments in the service that was held were given to both the active and no longer participating former ward leaders, and it was really lovely to have it be so inclusive like that. Because regardless of their current relationship with the church, it was acknowledged that their participation in the ward as YSAs in London had been important in their lives.
I think it depends on both your own family and where you live. If you live in the Mormon Corridor, things could be considerably worse than if you live in a large city or a state with few Mormons. How you feel it also depends on who your close friends are. I only have one Mormon regular friend and he did not shun me. I try not to talk about the Church with him, and I absolutely cannot talk about Trump with him, or perhaps he would shun me. I do have Sunstone Mormon friends, but no problem with them.
I can maybe count on one hand the number of cases I’ve seen or heard about (more so just the latter) in the Church that would constitute actual shunning. They’re horrible stories.
Honestly though, as an active, believing, mostly orthodox member of the church, whose faith has had some small struggles in the past, I have almost as much sympathy for the “shunners” as I do those who have been “shunned.”
Some of us have made the Gospel the very fabric of our lives and a fundamental essence of who we are. When a friend has removed that fabric from his or here life entirely, do you continue to impose your true nature on someone who may or may not despise all that that lifestyle stood for, or do you allow them room to be themselves? How keen is this friend on still hanging out with someone who holds to faulty beliefs and a corrupt church? If this friend or neighbor had no desire to talk to me or share their out of faith experience on their way out, would it not be unreasonable of me to expect them to want to talk about it now? If I failed to notice the faith transition, how good of a friend or neighbor did that make me in the first place? Do I try to bring up a Gospel discussion? Does that seem too forceful, or does not bringing it up at all make it look like I don’t even care that much about you or Truth, as I see it, in the first place? How do I balance the care and truth I want for you vs. the care you want for yourself, and do I become less of a friend if I fail to get that right?
Those may not all be rational thoughts and questions, but I think some or all of them go through the minds of active members who have friends and family leave, so that “shunning” essentially becomes an awkward avoidance of someone we care about in order to avoid a dozen other potential awkward situations we’ve created in our own mind.
I’ve also had family leave and cut themselves off from the rest of us, more or less claiming shunning to third parties, when the evidence–trying to look at it as objectively as possible–actually points to the opposite. I guess there can be plenty of irrational thoughts on both sides.
What about the reverse? How many people shun or persecute a family member for joining the church? I have heard and seen this happen more than I can count. And western society (at least American society) more or less shuns or at least dislikes members more so than any other religious faith.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-feel-more-positive-than-negative-about-jews-mainline-protestants-catholics/
I recently moved to Utah and experienced shunning like I’ve never experienced in the workplace with a boss and co-workers effectively giving me the cold-shoulder starting my first day because of my membership! I eventually earned their good graces when they actually got to know me as a person.
Yes, I know shunning does happen to those who do leave the church sometimes, but I think in effect, it is WAY more common in reverse.
That Sweeney interview. Happened about 14 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. Sweeney asked good questions and Holland flailed around like a hapless fish. It was embarrassing, but not because Sweeney was going out of his way to embarrass. It was the beginning of the end of church leaders taking interviews from non-believing and non-sycophantic interviews.
Perhaps it’a because I’ve never lived in the Mormon Corridor and just don’t have the same experiences, but color me a bit sceptical that you can call the lack of contact with those who have left the Church true shunning. The Church is, to oversimplify, a social club. If you made friends as part of joining that social club, it’s the proximity that is doing a lot of the heavy lifting to make that friendship viable. When the proximity ends, unless you go to great efforts to keep it going, so do a lot of the friendships that that proximity facilitated (the ward boundary change example above is a great example). Think about work friends you’ve had. At certain points in your life, you have likely spent more waking hours around those work friends than you have your own family. You’ve struggled through tough projects together, broken bread together, commiserated during hard times and likely shared parts of your personal life. Yet when you or they move on, how many of those relationships endure? Likely only a small percentage.
Don’t get me wrong, members of the Church absolutely can be unfriendly and unforgiving to those who leave and I do agree that those attitudes receive tacit sanction from leaders (President Nelson’s talk some years ago about not sharing your doubts with doubters comes to mind), but I don’t think that accounts for nearly as much of the lack of contact after people leave the Church as some might suggest.
When I got divorced in 2006, I sat alone on “my” row in my ward. You know the row on the side that’s shorter. Most Sundays, I sat alone in the row, and many Sundays there wasn’t anyone in the row in front of me or behind me. I brought up my observation to a colleague of mine at work who happened to be in my ward, and she said she never saw it, but would look to see if it happened. The next week, she apologized because she saw it and then made a point to sit in the row in front of or behind me. I kept going for a few more years, but I started to get anxiety attacks on Saturday night, usually because of being greeted at the door by “here comes the democrat,” or something negative about liberals. I think that came because I asked questions in Sunday School or Priesthood about how something they were teaching might apply to today. I finally got remarried, and while my new wife was a member, she didn’t feel comfortable with our Ward. COVID happened, and I didn’t go back. It has been a few years, and no one from the ward has reached out. We’ll see members out and about in our community, but only the really old friends, who I’ve known for over 40 years, ask how things are going. The newer members, including leaders, just say hi if I catch their eye.
The church does not teach shunning, but some members likely shun former members. The church does not teach adultery; some members commit adultery, but that does not mean that the church supports adultery. I think the teaching of the church for some time, from general conference on down, is to be kind and civil. Part of being civil is to respect another’s decisions. So when one leaves, why does one get angry when other members respect their decision? That isn’t shunning. The father in the parable of the prodigal son didn’t pursue his son into the far away city. I acknowledge that some individuals might shun former members, but that reflects on those individuals, and not on the institution as a whole.
Yes, I think it is shunning that the church is so exclusive that it leaves no room for nonbelievers to participate, particularly in family things.
I have left the church and moved to another faith community. I had good reasons. I’m still a good person. One of my children came with me.
My husband and two of my children are still active LDS. I am happy to support them and my community. I still sign up to take in meals/bring food to funerals. I still enjoy talking to people from my neighborhood/ward. I go help clean the church once a month when it’s my husband’s turn. I actually still minister to the sisters on my LDS ministering list.
However, they make it so hard to participate. The buildings say All are Welcome, but there is very real subtext that CONDITIONS APPLY.
My oldest daughter took out her endowments last week. My mother was her escort, my husband went with her.
I waited with my 2 other children in the waiting room. I want to support them, but the church makes it really hard to do that.
My dad wasn’t able to come to my temple wedding years ago. I regret that he wasn’t there.
A friend – and pastor – has a niece that is getting baptized and wants her aunt to be able to do something as part of the baptism. But there is no place for a faithful, believing woman who is a pastor to participate in her niece’s lds baptism service. She can attend. But she can’t be a witness, give a talk or anything else.
The LDS church’s theology is so exclusive, they may not call it shunning, but it is.
I think we have to be careful that we don’t confuse the natural boundaries that pertain to known categories with shunning within a given category. It would be like taking a flight on a B777 and then feeling left out because we don’t have access to the flightdeck or the galley–not to mention the various classes: first class, business class, premium economy, and economy. We should remind ourselves that we’ve entered into this array of categories with its complex interplay between them as a known quantity.
With the understanding that analogies have their limitations–let me clarify: that’s not to say that shunning never happens–of course it does. But continuing with my analogy I think it’s important that we recognized that being denied access to certain zones of the aircraft and being shunned by the person seated next you can be two very different things.
Not so sure about institutionally-encouraged shunning. Some people might do it. Some people are jerks.
Instead of seeing institutional “shunning” as the framework for understanding awkwardness with PIMOs and exmos, to me it’s more of a reflection of a broader feature of church culture: an endemic and stereotypical discomfort with … curiosity. Most people in second hour don’t seem to want to ask interesting questions, or explore contradictions, or even do much reflecting on differences between ancient contexts and our own. Which, I suppose, is fine. To each their own. (What is church for? What is faith for? What is the gospel for?)
But if one is willing to candidly acknowledge that members often don’t respond with engagement to even *slightly* nuanced questions or observations in church that deviate from trite, virtue-signalling comments…. Well why on earth would anyone expect those same people to want an even MORE difficult convo with someone whose concerns led them out of church activity? When they couldn’t engage even the slightest challenging question WITHIN the church context, even when posed by an active-though-nuanced member?
Most people in the faith aren’t/weren’t that deeply engaged or equipped to have that kind of convo. Which isn’t shunning, it’s just a lack of depth or interest in the faith as anything more than a meme-level, proof-texted veneer.
Jack, your analogy is that leaving the church means you are a coach passenger and so not allowed to access the exclusive and better business or first class areas that Mormons have access to?
In my experience, members don’t intentionally shun you, but only have time for people that are projects. Many of my former ward members are quite kind and friendly when we intersect at school or community events but they really are too busy with Mormon activities and responsibilities yo maintain friendship with people outside that circle. It was a bit of a blow to my ego to realize we were acquaintances and not really friends. I have seen how they pull out all the stops to spend time with you when you are the project for reactivation.
Shorter version of my comment that got stuck somewhere-
Being laid off from work brings a different form of shunning from co-workers at a large company.
PIMO and testing the depths of current ward friendships. Relationships from prior wards were built on outside interests (same favorite sports teams, same favorite movies etc) or maybe they feel called by God to still be nice to me.
Shunning is not a church policy, but clearly some feel shunned. We should not deny their experience, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame those experiences on the organization. Some families and social circles in the church handle it better than others. Bad reactions to someone in a family or faith community leaving the faith aren’t excusable, but we should acknowledge they are a common story throughout human history that is not necessarily unique to any particular faith. It’s humans being human badly.
I appreciate Janey’s comment that some former members are bothered by too much contact from the church and others by too little. I have noticed this myself. To me this is a reflection that the church contains a big spectrum of personality types and of expectations from the organization. Everyone who leaves would do well to be mindful of that.
I do think the church ought to be a leader in discouraging shunning, and have generally failed to do so. The Holland interview is one of many missed opportunities. Sweeney was right that if Holland had acknowledged the disaffected members and offered to talk to them, it would have been a very different interview. I know Holland only from his public speaking and from secondhand accounts of people who knew him personally. From that I would say he seemed to have been a complex character, on the one hand sincere in his desire to be a pastoral leader, on the other overtaken by a short temper at times. The latter won out in the Sweeney interview, unfortunately. As Gordon Hinckley once said of his media appearances (if I’m remembering it right), he thought it better to lean into the stiff headwind of opportunity than hunker down and do nothing. It does look a lot like the current generation of leadership have reacted to the Holland debacle with the hunkering down approach, and I don’t believe it has served them well. The church would benefit from having another Hinckley like character.
After reading other’s comments, and doing some thinking, there are two types of social disconnection/leaving out going on here and nobody yet has pointed out the difference. So, here goes.
Under the category of official church doctrine shunning is leaving family members out of weddings. That IS official church sanctioned and it IS shunning. My hubby and I were both life time members when we got married. But the ONLY family members at our wedding were our mothers and grandmothers. Zero of my friends were there and only one of my hubby’s. That is on heck of a lot of people we loved who were shunned at our wedding. My dad was inactive and hubby’s dad smoked and all our siblings were too young, except my brother who was off on his mission. Our close friends were too young, nonmembers, or something was “wrong” with the that they could not attend. Any church that does not allow fathers and brothers and sisters to a wedding is SHUNNING. Sorry all you church defenders, but that IS a form of shunning and it is church policy. The church does officially shun people.
And how often here in the discussion do we get a father lamenting that he cannot do the normal functions of father and baptize his child or give a father’s blessing. OK, now this does kind of fall under jacks horrid example of paying for first class on the airplane, but it still hurts people and is a form of shunning. And it is official and church policy because according to church doctrine, a man who has been given priesthood never loses that priesthood except for unrighteousness. Only it is not God who judges righteousness and even if some sinner did a baptism and then is found to be unworthy, we do not redo it because his priesthood was invalid. We just shake our heads sadly and ignore the problem. Apparently only those openly not obeying church rules are not priesthood worthy. But the more I look at this issue, the more I see it as shunning those the community sees as unworthy, whether they are or not.
The second kind of shunning we have been talking about is the social kind of social distance because a person is no longer right there in class, and then monster parents who disown kids. That happens and is not church sanctioned and is horrible and those parents are worse sinners than their apostate kids. But just the normal kind of left the church and lost all my friends hurts, but it really is not done maliciously. That just happens because of discomfort and too busy and lack of effort. Like I had a visiting teacher move away and I did really like her, and we promised to call each other. But we haven’t. I am just as guilty as she is. Not taking the effort to keep in touch is not shunning. It is just failure to keep in touch and we who leave the church are probably just as guilty. Now family who cut each other off, that is shunning and is wrong.
The church’s official forms of shunning by not allowing family and friends at weddings or fathers to do the father rituals of baptizing, blessing, and such is also shunning. The wedding thing is wrong, sinful, and shunning and God will hold the leaders accountable for the hurt that has caused. The “unworthy father” thing, well I will let you guys discuss if you think that is a form of shunning because an adulterous but not caught father can do it but an inactive one cannot and officially you never lose your priesthood even if you are excommunicated.
I will probably get some flak for this, but –
Does the Church teach shunning? Yes and no. I agree that there are areas where you are not welcome if you are either disaffiliated or a non-member and there are ordinance you can’t perform. In most cases, I have seen those that leave have no interest in performing ordinances they don’t believe in out of their own sense of integrity, so I don’t know if that is really shunning. I have also sat in disciplinary councils where, immediately after membership has been removed, the Stake President invites the excommunicated member to attend church the following week. That is the exact opposite of shunning, in my opinion.
I have friends who have left the church, family members who have left the church and I still remain friends with them. We still talk, text, hang out when we are able. I still love my friends and family members and enjoy being with them. The area I struggle with is when our relationship is based on church, our shared commitments, faith and goals, and then they leave. When all we really had in common is church, it is harder to maintain a relationship outside of church. I can see how those individuals could feel abandoned when their supposed friends did not care that they left. It is more akin to being friends because your spouses are friends. It’s just that our spouse was the church.
I have also had family members declare that if anybody mentions church in any way, they will not attend a family function. If those are rules for their own home, it is understanable, but when they dicate how others need to be outside of their home, it just makes it harder to stay in relationship. When church is such a big part of life, it makes it easy to not invite those family members to baptisms, blessings, sealings, or any other church related events, or even family gatherings if church might come up. Is that shunning? Maybe. But it is also choosing to honor a request to leave an important part of your identity at home.
Then there are the a**holes. While most who leave the church do not make a show of it, there are those who like to rub it in the face of those who stay that they have discovered the truth. It is hard to be in relationship with someone who thinks you are stupid, naive, a sheep, a cultist, or just plain blind to truth and reason, just because you still believe in the teachings of the church. Who would want to be with someone who hates what you believe (on both sides of this issue)?
Anna makes a distinction worth discussion. I agree that the church creates a particular category of experience by excluding outsiders from what amount to important rites of passage for members. I’m a little more reluctant to call it shunning, but it’s clearly something that causes a lot of distress. I tend to think of shunning as something that happens to those who have left, but excluding non-members from weddings also excludes those who have never joined.
I don’t personally have a problem with the temple endowment being a rite of passage restricted to members. I do think it might be best for the church to end entirely the practice of temple weddings and instead hold only sealings for those previously married. It has been standard practice all along in most countries and is now an option in the US. I would be curious whether any non-American readers feel like Mormon weddings outside the US ever feel exclusionary at all.
The church makes this so much more complicated and painful than it needs to be.
The 11th article of faith: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.”
Do we? Do we really? No. We don’t.
Instead we say other religions are “playing church.” We tell members not to associate with those who doubt the church’s truth claims. We teach people to defer to priesthood authority and shut up about their own conscience if it doesn’t conform. We grill people in temple recommend interviews about whether they “support or promote any teachings, practices, or doctrine contrary to those of the Church.”
It’s disgraceful. Jesus was never the thought police. He was critical of hypocrites but unfailingly merciful to gentiles and “the unclean.” If you can’t stay friends with people who leave the church, if you have nothing in common with anyone outside the church, then your religion needs to expand outside of your insular bubble. If the church can’t tolerate pluralism, then why should it expect to be protected in a pluralistic society?
Living up to the 11th article of faith—truly living up to it—would heal an enormous amount of pain across the entire church.
gebanks: I am not sure it’s worse in the Mormon corridor because where there are a lot of members, there are also a lot of ex-members, so the social opportunities are greater in a sense, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t individuals who shun others. I just imagine that there’s less social cost to leaving when there are many alternatives nearby, including people you knew who also left.
I am wary, though, of conflating actual theologically mandated shunning with people getting the cold shoulder. Growing up in Amish country, I was familiar with the concept of actual shunning–being cut off from any and all contact for life. And the JWs also have a theologically mandated full shunning–they only relented and allowed them to “greet” the estranged person with a simple hello and moving on due to a fairly recent lawsuit. Now THAT’s shunning. Not to engage in Oppression Olympics, but still.
People who divorce a spouse over religious differences just indicate immaturity and an attempt to control their spouse–they obviously didn’t love them. These are indictments of character, for sure, but that doesn’t seem like a great marriage to stay in if so. Divorce seems like the best alternative.
I am not in any way defending the poor treatment of those who leave, which is the norm to varying degrees. I’m just noting that it’s something the church doesn’t mandate, but certainly provides plenty of ability for the believing person to defend on the grounds of what is said.
Just an add-on to Gilgamesh’s excellent comment. I think the most important thing to evaluate to determine if someone is shunning is what the basis of the relationship was in the first place–if it was just because they were part of the “ward family” vs. a neighbor with whom you have a relationship, or someone whose kids are friends with your kids, or someone you share political views with or someone you personally had lunches with and long talks–these are all varying levels of relationship.
And honestly, that’s true even within families. I’ve sometimes wondered how likely it is that relationships with siblings will continue after parents die–what if that was really the only thing you had in common, and there will no longer be any reunions or shared meals, and you don’t live near each other or share opinions and life experiences? On what basis do you go out of your way to continue the relationship? You really have to make a point of it for the relationship to continue, and there isn’t always enough there to do so, especially once the place you used to encounter each other vanishes.
It’s similar to colleagues you really considered friends, people you aligned with on work projects–did business trips with, ate meals with, gossiped with, even socialized with outside of work. Job ends, friendship kind of fades away. You still wish them well, but when you see them it’s almost like starting from scratch to catch up. Your current friendships are mostly tied to your current situation, not the past.