Excommunication in Judaism and Christianity
By Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin

The Lord told Abraham that uncircumcised males should be excluded from the people (Gen 17:14).  Similarly, Moses was commanded that those who committed serious sin were to be “cut off from among their people” (Lev 18:29). Jesus taught that a person who rejected admonition should be excluded from the Christian community (Mt 18:15-17).  The apostle Paul wrote that members of the church should not so much as eat with a person guilty of immorality (1 Cor 5:1-13).  The apostle John advised his audience “receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 Jn 10-11).  Out of these and a large multitude of similar scriptural passages emerged the practice of excommunication, in both Judaism and Christianity.

Since antiquity, Jewish excommunication has typically been decreed by a local rabbinical court, and—not surprisingly, since Judaism lacks a unified organization or central authority—it now applies only within the community from which the court was drawn.  Anciently, Israelite excommunication—being “cut off”—meant, at least in part, being excluded from participation in Israelite temple sacrifice and worship.  Later, the Talmud and medieval rabbinic literature suggest various reasons for excommunication, including incorrect business practices, breaking a vow, sexual immorality, public profaning of the divine name, ignoring or interfering with public religious observances, and—our personal favorite—insulting a scholar.  With the passage of time, however, excommunication came to be used so frequently, for such minor offenses, that a reaction set in and it has become much less common than it once was.

There are two basic types of Jewish excommunication.  (Similar practices are documented in the Dead Sea Scrolls.)  The lesser form, called nidduy in Hebrew, can be decreed for limited periods (e.g., for thirty days).  It requires the excommunicated person to dress like a mourner (except for the requirement of ritually tearing his clothes), and to live only with family.  The excommunicant is shunned by other members of the community, and, even when present, does not count toward the quorum required for Jewish worship.

The more severe form of Jewish excommunication is called herem.  That term, related to the Arabic-derived word “harem,” signifies a “devoted thing,” something that is forbidden for common use.  In the Hebrew Bible, the herem—generally translated as “utter destruction” in the King James translation—is the ultimate curse pronounced by the Lord upon the intransigently wicked, resulting in both physical and spiritual destruction. In rabbinic times, a decree of herem is announced by a rabbi standing in front of the open Torah ark, the most sacred place in the synagogue, perhaps even holding the Torah scroll in his hand.  The shofar, or ram’s horn, is sounded, candles are snuffed out, biblical curses are recited against the excommunicant, and warnings are issued against associating with him.  The excommunicated person is required to study alone and is permitted to receive only the barest necessities of life from other Jews. Dramatically, his coffin is stoned at burial.  In the medieval period, not only was the excommunicant himself treated as a non-Jew, but his spouse and children were often also ostracized. 

In the Christian tradition, excommunication refers to the exclusion of a person, by church authorities, from participation in the worship of the congregation as either a minister or lay member and, specifically, from receiving or administering the sacraments (often called “communion”—hence ex-communi-cation).  An essential function of early Christian excommunication was to prevent the unrepentant or unbeliever from profaning the sacraments—paralleling Hebrew exclusion of those “cut off” from temple sacrifice and worship.

Anciently, excommunication was imposed both for moral failures and for doctrinal errors that were determined to deny the accepted, central teachings of the church.  In the earliest Christian communities, only the baptized were permitted to partake of the bread and the wine of the eucharist, and some ancient Christian documents understand Jesus’ command “Give not that which is holy to the dogs” (Mt 7:6) to mean that church members who do not live as required by the gospel should be excluded from communion.  The Latin church father Tertullian (ca. 200 AD), for instance, wrote of “one who has sinned so grievously as to be excluded from the fellowship of prayer, assembly, and all observance of holy things” (Apology 39:4).  Faithful Christians were not to pray with an excommunicant.

With the passage of centuries, Christian practice diverged in various ways, with respect to excommunication just as in other regards.  As befitted the West’s focus on law, the western Christian tradition (predominantly Latin) tended to see excommunication in terms of punishment, whereas the eastern tradition (predominantly Greek) emphasized its therapeutic character.  An important element of traditional Christian excommunication is that, ideally, excommunication is only a temporary state.  The door must always be left open for the repentant to be received again into full communion with the community. 

In some communities and denominations still today, excommunication involves formal ostracizing from social life, often called “shunning.”  On the whole, though, excommunication is less frequent in many denominations than it once was; as in Judaism, its too-frequent use, often for trivial misdemeanors, brought the practice into disrepute.  And, after all, amidst the good news of the gospel, it strikes a somber and thus discordant note.  But it is an ancient practice, deeply rooted in both the Old and New Testaments and in the disciplinary rules of the earliest Christian disciples, that attempts to maintain at least minimal purity among the saints.