Excommunication

Excommunication is a religious act used to take off or suspend membership in a religious community.

The word literally means out of communion, or no longer in communion. In some churches, excommunication includes the belief that the person who was exocommunicated is going to Hell. Sometimes punishment follow excommunication; these include being banned, shunning, and shaming, depending on the group's religion or religious community.

Excommunication Media

• 

  Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí, son of Bahá'u'lláh was excommunicated by 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

• 

  Martin Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in 1521.

• 

  Threat of excommunication for stealing books from the Salamanca University library

• 

  Isabelo de los Reyes, founder of the Aglipayan Church, was excommunicated by Pope Leo XIII in 1903 as a schismatic apostate.

Related pages

• Takfiri

References

• Encyclopedia of American Religions, by J. Gordon Melton ISBN 0-8103-6904-4
• Ludlow, Daniel H. ed, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Macmillan Publishing, 1992.

Other websites

• De Fide, a non-profit association, uses Canon Law to defend the Roman Catholic Church from Heresy by filing lawsuits in Ecclesiastical Court, seeking the excommunication of impenitent offenders.
• Excommunication, the Ban, Church Discipline and Avoidance (from Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online)
• Catholic Encyclopaedia on excommunication
• The two sides of excommunication Archived 2008-02-15 at the Wayback Machine
• Episcopal Church of America excommunication