Important People

This is a collection of discipline related articles by big names:

Historical

• John Edwards (America: 1703-1758) THE NATURE AND END (purpose) OF EXCOMMUNICATION
• John Calvin ,Institutes , bk4ch12 (discipline)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica IIIs 21-24 Definition Who Communication Absolution
  

Current

• Albert Mohler (head of the SBC) Disappearence of Church Discipline, Part 1 Part2 Part3 Part4

Waynesville Baptist

This was an excommunication of 9 members of a baptist church (small southern town) for being members of the democratic party. The pastor in this case argued that supporting Kerry, meant support for abortion and support for abortion was an excommunicative offense. He has quite open in indicating he believed that the church should be "political".

This piece is interesting. Outside of tradition I'm hard pressed to see much difference between these excommunications and excommunications for a wide range of opinions expressed. Either people should have freedom of conscience of they bring their stated opinions into line with the church. Of course, I'm hard pressed to see Kerry as a major facilitator of abortion but that's a disagreement on the facts of the case so isn't really relevant.

Another interesting point about the case was that the pastor in this case violated his church rules creating an impromptu business meeting to force the 9 erasures. However instead of going after the weak and the defenseless (a more typical situation norm for church discipline) he went after successful people who had access to outside resources and the pastor lost the power struggle. Lots to discuss in this one.

• ashvegas summary of a variety of sources
• Rocky Mountain News: Fact oriented News Story, A warning about the future Outline of the different opinions and Both parties denounce the pastor's actions
• Liberal Baptist arguing (essentially) the pastor's action were unbaptist:
  
• The pastor's defense was he wasn't excommunicating people just removing them from positions of leadership. Which while probably false makes for another interesting question about whether this would be acceptable to do too leaders?
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Discipline Procedures

These are a series of pastoral walk through of the process:

• Tell it to the church, Ray C. Stedman This one is mainstream protestant.
  
• David Merck This book length work tries to address some of the areas of disagreement. For example if/when immediate excommunications should be used for heinous sins.
• Xenos a very non traditional church actually has a fairly mainstream disciplinary procedure, (see also, and ) though it is particularly well written which is why I've linked to it.
• A collection of issues by Paul Mizza: members with relatives that defend them, old people, members quitting, members feeling the discipline is unloving
• Presbyterian Discipline (a several hundred page text book by Stuart Jones)
• Bill Zimmer of Grace Church (John MacArthur's church) gives a Q&A on this policy
• Challenge and Beauty 1990 book written by a conservative Presbyterian directed at the member rather than the pastor.
  
• An unusual walk through in that it looks at passages like Rom 7:15-20 and Gal 6:1-5 as well as the more typical ones. In 6 parts: part1 part2 part3 part4 part5 part6
• Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church, at acts29 presents a pretty good list of acts which are disciplinary and associated verses. 2 hour lecture and notes
• Ken Sande of Peacemaker does a Q&A part1 part2
• La Vista put together a nice outline
  
• Mark Dever's Polity has historical and current documents
• Sola Dei Gloria (PJ Miller) has an excellent article breaking out classes of sins, reminiscent of Mell but modern.
  
• A brief description of Mormon procedures by Elder Ballard

Historical:

• P H Mell (1860) Reformed Baptist full textbook
• ELEAZER SAVAGE (1863) Reformed Baptist text, this is most notable because it sees Matthew 18 as a series of levels not a series of steps and thus classifies sins by seriousness (which deserve immediate excommunication...)
• The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter (1656) has quite a bit on the subject, in particular rationale.
  
• A Q&A from McLeod (1806)
• John Owen, The True Nature of a Gospel Church and its Government (1689)
  
• John Knox The Order of Excommunication and of Public Repentance (1569) (Very different from modern practice, worth reading)
• Cambridge Platform (Congregational 1648)
  
• John Calvin Institutes Book IV chapter 12 (1536)

Secret disfellowshipping

There are consistent reports of people being disfellowshipped or excommunicated out of process.
Catholic 14 year old homosexual
JW rock star
UCG intellectual over calendar dispute they kept private. The real reason may have been his sense of humor

Excommunication and shunning

Churches and books have a wide range of doctrines about what to do with the excommunicated.

• The catholic church separates between anathema (which implies some shunning) and simple excommunication
• PCG declares excommunicated family members (except spouses) should be shunned.
• Liberal Baptist on why baptists can't excommunicate or withhold sacraments at all.

• Jonathan Edwards (important American theologian of the 18th century) establishes that excommunicates are to be treated substantially worse than heathens (impolite, and entitled only to minimal human rights) in the Nature and Purpose...

Jehovah's witnesses

The JWs have a long history of church discipline. For them its absolutely core. So there are a lot of resources about their discipline..

• Letter indicating the legal status of disfellowshipping
• Watchtower information's page of disfellowshipping news (another blog)
• Disfellowshipped.org a website dedicated to people's stories
• Wikipedia article
• Watchtower article / apologetic
  

One thing that is key is that because the law on disciplining non members is questionable they have created a class called "disassociation" (someone who has severed ties) and they distinguish this from "disfellowship" which is disciplinary. Shunning occurs regardless but the idea of disciplining a non member is thus avoided.

Minister trials

By minister trials we mean trials for preaching. Not trials for stuff like stealing that happen to involve a minister. Minister trials are the easiest to find notes of on the web. The ministers being tried are frequently very public spokesmen for unpopular positions and the organization is generally very happy to have the beheading be public. They are unfortunately not representative of general disciplinary issues. Everybody involved knows there are larger issues at stake and they may be quoted a 100 years from now. The minister is willing to lose the battle to win the war.


Lee Irons:
This is the trial of a minister in the OPC (hardest right organization in NAPARC) that took a slightly liberal position on moral law. The debate is very technical but you got to love his final note:

I am not prepared to say that the OPC has fallen into irreparable apostasy, but something is terribly amiss with a denomination that is willing to indefinitely suspend me from the ministry for holding a position that is part of "a significant and vital stream of Reformed, Presbyterian, and confessional thought," and then turns right around the very next day and fails to censure a man who teaches a doctrine of justification that has never been part of any stream within the orthodox Reformed tradition, indeed, that denies the very reason for the Reformation itself. The implication is staggering: Murray's recasting of covenant theology is now an essential test of orthodoxy in the OPC, but the historic Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is not.

Wikipedia articles

Wikipedia is loaded with good stuff.

• Shunning
• Religious Disaffiliation
  
• Apostacy
• Excommunication
• Spiritual Abuse
• Exit Counseling
• Mind Control
  
• JW's and discipline
  

Other reference

Here's a bunch of

references article from a sites like wikipedia. Theopedia is a presbyterian site. with tons of good links and some summary information about membership.

This one covers getting in and out of various presbyterian churches:
Theopedia Church Membership

This one covers the debates about who is subject to discipline
Theopedia Church Discipline

Gameo (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encycllopedia Online): Church Discipline Excommunication Pastoral Counseling

David Huckabee (independent baptist) Church discipline and Church membership

Watermark Community Church

Here is an interesting case. We have a guy who decides to have an affair. The "other woman" is not part of the church, yet the discipline process is applied to her. They have a very well written 6 page document regarding discipline

Religion News Blog

Moreover the news stories the church actually wanted to go the wider world even after the person tried to quit. I decided to debate this one. Its also being debated at worldmagblog.

The policy as written
1) doesn't give them the ability to go after 3rd parties
2) It doesn't give the ability to disclose counseling details to the broader community
3) And the policy is vague about people who "run away from this community to avoid care and correction" (fugitives from discipline)

The church deserves to lose this lawsuit.