Excommunication and Church Courts: A Note From the General Handbook of Instructions
April 20, 2018Among the things Mormon brought into the spotlight by the Sonia Johnson affair, perhaps the least well understood was the LDS notion of “excommunication.” To non-Mormons the process seemed, in Phil Donahue’s widely heard characterization, a “medieval”, anachronism. On the Mormon side, while the notion was hardly a surprise, a remarkable ignorance of the criteria and mechanics was generally evident whenever the faithful tried to “explain” what was going on.