Excommunication

Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular those of being in communion with other members of the congregation, and of receiving the sacraments.

It is practiced by all of the ancient churches (such as the Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox churches and the Eastern Orthodox churches) as well as by other Christian denominations; however, it is also used more generally to refer to similar types of institutional religious exclusionary practices and shunning among other religious groups. The Amish have also been known to excommunicate members that were either seen or known for breaking rules, or questioning the church, a practice known as shunning. Jehovah's Witnesses use the term disfellowship to refer to their form of excommunication.

The word excommunication means putting a specific individual or group out of communion. In some denominations, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the member or group. Excommunication may involve banishment, shunning, and shaming, depending on the group, the offense that caused excommunication, or the rules or norms of the religious community. The grave act is often revoked in response to manifest repentance.

Excommunication among Bahá'ís is rare and generally not used for transgressions of community standards, intellectual dissent, or conversion to other religions. Instead, it is the most severe punishment, reserved for suppressing organized dissent that threatens the unity of believers. Covenant-breaker is a term used by Bahá'ís to refer to a person who has been excommunicated from the Bahá'í community for breaking the 'Covenant': actively promoting schism in the religion or otherwise opposing the legitimacy of the chain of succession of leadership.

Currently, the Universal House of Justice has the sole authority to declare a person a Covenant-breaker, and once identified, all Bahá'ís are expected to shun them, even if they are family members. According to 'Abdu'l Baha Covenant-breaking is a contagious disease. The Bahá'í writings forbid association with Covenant-breakers and Bahá'ís are urged to avoid their literature, thus providing an exception to the Bahá'í principle of independent investigation of truth. Most Bahá'ís are unaware of the small Bahá'í divisions that exist.

The purpose of excommunication is to exclude from the church those members who have behaviors or teachings contrary to the beliefs of a Christian community (heresy). It aims to protect members of the church from abuses and allow the offender to recognize their error and repent.

Within the Catholic Church, there are differences between the discipline of the majority Latin Church regarding excommunication and that of the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Excommunication can be either latae sententiae (automatic, incurred at the moment of committing the offense for which canon law imposes that penalty) or ferendae sententiae (incurred only when imposed by a legitimate superior or declared as the sentence of an ecclesiastical court).