Banned From Church

The Wall Street Journal

Banned From Church
Reviving an ancient practice, churches are exposing sinners and shunning those who won't repent.
By ALEXANDRA ALTER
January 18, 2008; Page W1

On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. "And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P." Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs. The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey's real offense, in her pastor's view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he'd charged her with spreading "a spirit of cancer and discord" and expelled her from the congregation. "I've been shunned," she says.

Her story reflects a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders. The revival is part of a broader movement to restore churches to their traditional role as moral enforcers, Christian leaders say. Some say that contemporary churches have grown soft on sinners, citing the rise of suburban megachurches where pastors preach self-affirming messages rather than focusing on sin and redemption. Others point to a passage in the gospel of Matthew that says unrepentant sinners must be shunned.

(snip)

Scholars estimate that 10% to 15% of Protestant evangelical churches practice church discipline -- about 14,000 to 21,000 U.S. congregations in total. Increasingly, clashes within churches are spilling into communities, splitting congregations and occasionally landing church leaders in court after congregants, who believed they were confessing in private, were publicly shamed. In the past decade, more than two dozen lawsuits related to church discipline have been filed as congregants sue pastors for defamation, negligent counseling and emotional injury, according to the Religion Case Reporter, a legal-research database. Peggy Penley, a Fort Worth, Texas, woman whose pastor revealed her extramarital affair to the congregation after she confessed it in confidence, waged a six-year battle against the pastor, charging him with negligence. Last summer, the Texas Supreme Court dismissed her suit, ruling that the pastor was exercising his religious beliefs by publicizing the affair.

Courts have often refused to hear such cases on the grounds that churches are protected by the constitutional right to free religious exercise, but some have sided with alleged sinners. In 2003, a woman and her husband won a defamation suit against the Iowa Methodist conference and its superintendent after he publicly accused her of "spreading the spirit of Satan" because she gossiped about her pastor. A district court rejected the case, but the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the woman's appeal on the grounds that the letter labeling her a sinner was circulated beyond the church.

(snip)

Mrs. Caskey went back to the church about a month after her arrest, shortly after the county prosecutor threw out the trespassing charge. More than a dozen supporters gathered outside, some with signs that read "What Would Jesus Do?" She sat in the front row as Mr. Burrick preached about "infidels in the pews," according to reports from those present. Once again, Mrs. Caskey was escorted out by a state trooper and taken to jail, where she posted the $62 bail and was released. After that, the county prosecutor dismissed the charge and told county law enforcement not to arrest her again unless she was creating a disturbance. In the following weeks, Mrs. Caskey continued to worship at Allen Baptist. Some congregants no longer spoke to her or passed the offering plate, and some changed seats if she sat next to them, she says.

(snip)

"I don't intend to abandon that church," Mrs. Caskey says. "I feel like I have every right to be there."


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120061470848399079.html (subscription)

started attacking homosexuals I banned myself.

That's interesting. What sort of services did they have?

The EPISCOPAL church I attend is mostly gay. We have a gay priest and we have gay bishops. Maybe you shouldn't be so focused on the "American Church" whatever the fuck THAT is.

going to non American Christian Churches - usually nondenominational united protestant churches. All of the highly politically charged agendas that you find in the mainline protestant churches (in which alot of good people are fighting) are absent.

Now your comment makes A LOT more sense. Thanks!

and have you ever attended any church?

I was the youngest elder in the United Presbyterian Church of the United States and attended Princeton Theological Seminary between 1977 and 1979 in the Masters of Divinity program. When I worked for the United Nations I attended the ThaiMalysian Church (meaning unified protestant church)depending on where I was living and served chairing all of the main lay committees (Church Council/Worship/Education/etc) When I returned to the US I was appalled at how the church and the country had changed.

I appreciate how funny the term "American Church" sounds but when outside of the country that is how we would talk about churches back home rather than talk in terms of a particular denomination.

And for whatever reason, the church hires some pissant little twit with a literal God complex

AND YOU HAVE TO LEAVE?

That's ridiculous.

if I were a member of the congregation, I'd rally everyone together to do something about this. If I couldn't do it, then I would leave the church.

(posted here minus the astrological info in my OP)

Came across this article which is a very articulate and surprisingly informed discussion about how the movement toward 'spiritualism' is undermining the church and the 'pure faith'. However try as they might to grasp the situation, I can only speculate that this author and those he/she is speaking to haven't walked in the same shoes as those they attempt to define. Sort of a flat earth theory to discourage those who might be contemplating a great adventure to a new land.

http://tinyurl.com/2avowg

I don't think much about churches. I 'gave them up' in my youth though always felt deeply connected with the Divine. When institutions no longer serve the collective they naturally adapt or die.

These things will change not through an act of rebellion focused against laws or institutions so much as a natural result of our stronger alignment and allegiance to the Divine within and without which simply IS what it is, leading us in new directions. It is the resistance to this shift rather than the change itself which generates the friction, and no attempts of greater control, or punishment, deception or fear-based propaganda can ultimately turn the tide. It's simply too powerful.

I think we get caught up in our own struggles and sometimes forget or don't even realize how powerful our part is in this collective shift, as we travel along our path, bumping into walls & dead ends and scraping our knees, feeling like failures or so alone in those dark places, experiencing the full gravity of the deaths we suffer as a result of these large and small steps and equally alone with our personal triumphs. It is, as the author of one article I posted expressed, the butterfly effect. Perhaps as these changes begin to manifest more and more we will not feel so alone as the work brings us together in myriad ways to build anew.

I don't feel we need to focus on the results we wish to obtain as a measure of our distance or turn and walk backwards enamored with the wake left by these changes so much as continue earnestly and humbly along our path, trusting that we have arrived with each step in each moment.

but then again I'm an atheist and really enjoy this sort of spectacle amongst the pious believers.

a similar sort of militancy!

since there isn't any atheist church or dogma. We are united only in lack of belief in a deity of any sort. Not much for us to be militant about except for trying to keep government from pushing religion in violation of the first amendment. I just find the antics of the christians to be quite amusing. I am similarly entertained by other religious groups. I have no personal desire to interfere with any individuals right to exercise their first amendment rights.

which is an atheist church has a consensus that agnostics can't be "freethinkers." They don't kick people out for that, though

Meanwhile, American Atheists returned a donation from them because they refused to associate with atheists who would dare form something they called a "church."

Lesson: atheists are human too.

agnosticism really isn't a belief - at least not in a strict sense.

According to philosophy of mind, everything you know is a belief.

You have a stricter sense than that?

there is a difference between knowledge and belief. Asserting that there can be no knowledge, only belief, sounds to me like solipsism.

What is the difference between knowledge and belief, in epistemological terms? I mean, without relying on a dualistic model of the mind, that is.

At a basic level it comes down to a level of certainty and whether or not we can rely on our perceptions. Knowledge entails truth, and so it is impossible to "know" something that is incorrect and, as a consequence, statements of knowledge that do not square with reality are false statments. There are also certain things that would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to know, such as the number of cars on the road in a given city at a given time, whether or not there is currently a space monster living on the dark side of the moon, the existence of god, etc. We can make reasonable estimations of these things, but it does not follow that we know the truth of the situation and therefore can not rightly claim that we "know" what the answer is.

Agnosticism is simply the state of being without knowledge. My thought is that we are all agnostics, or else the god issue would of been settled long ago. Being an agnostic, though, doesn't take care of belief. One can be an agnostic theist, or an agnostic atheist. For my part, I do not know whether or not there is a god just as I do not know whether or not there is a space monster living on the dark side of the moon - but I don't believe it just the same.

I hope that helps.

That is my position, and was the position of the poor schmuck who brought up the issue. Since the existence of an omnipotent being is neither provable nor falsifiable, then the only honest position is agnosticism. The counterpoint was that if you were what they considered to be a "Freethinker," you would be forced to come to the certain conclusion that there is no god. This seemed like a pretty odd stricture for self-identified "Freethinkers" to impose, but there you go.

Also, people lose sight of the fact that "I don't know" and "I don't believe" are expressions of beliefs.

If I ask you if you know what the "strictfp" directive in the Java programming language does, and you say, "No, that's the first I've ever heard of it" (it's pretty esoteric), then we can say that prior to my question, you had no beliefs about the "strictfp" keyword. Now, however, you do: you believe that you don't know what it does. If you then say, "I don't think there is any such keyword," you now have a different belief: you believe that there is no "scriptfp" keyword of which you can form other beliefs. Unlike the god belief, this belief is testable — and not one you'd hold after a quick Google search — but nevertheless, it is a belief.

Though, I would submit that the North Texas Church of Freethought does not speak for everyone. I've attended freethinker meetings in the past that's included deists as well as atheists (although no traditional theists that I can recall). Also, I think it's odd that there is a church of freethought. After all, we're a bit like herding kittens. However, stating that you're agnostic doesn't really tell anyone much - so perhaps they were looking for more.

I'm not sure if I agree with you that "I don't know" and "I don't believe" are expressions of belief. Atheism, in it's simple form, is just a lack of belief. There's nothing positive about it. To ressurect an old canard, atheism is a belief like not collecting stamps is a hobby. "I don't know" strikes me as just a statement of fact, not of belief. One does not believe whether or not they know or don't know - they either do know or they don't know.

In order to express "I don't know about..." or "I don't believe in..." you have to have mental representations of the subject and mental representations concerning your own state of knowledge about the subject. Colloquially, we call such associations of mental representations "beliefs."

In order for you not to have a belief about something, you can't have any mental representation of that thing. Thus, you have a lack of belief of things that you've never heard of. If you know of a subject, then you have mental representations of it. If you say that you think that the subject is fictional, then that is a belief. When you say "I don't believe Harry Potter is real," you are expressing the lack of a belief (that Harry Potter is a real person), but you are also expressing the existence of a belief (that Harry Potter is a fictional person).

Every atheist I've ever met has the positive belief that transcendental reality is fictional and illusory. That's a belief. It may be "true" in that it corresponds to objective reality, but we don't have any way of verifying that.

I get the feeling that some atheists are allergic to the word belief, because in their minds, saying that you "believe" something is tantamount to saying that it may be completely imaginary — things that are "real" are things that one "knows." It is amazingly successful to describe everything we do in terms of "belief/desire psychology." For example: "I desire food. I believe that there is food in the kitchen. Therefore, I go to the kitchen." How it is that I formed the mental representations for "kitchen" and "food" and how it is that they apply to real things is a really complicated problem I won't get into here. The point is that "belief" is not a codeword for "bullshit."

As for NTCOF, no, they don't speak for everybody, and, to be fair, the leaders of the group are pretty careful not to impose their beliefs institutionally; the whole flame war about agnosticism was a difference of opinion and not any kind of official orthodoxy. The point about Deism and Freethought is also pretty key — a lot of 17th and 18th century Deist Freethinkers are claimed as atheists when they aren't really. Anyway, NTCOF can be a fun group — it's a "Fellowship for unbelievers."

I like the term Freethinker, because it allows you to be divorced from dogma without needed to make any claims, positive or negative, about the nature of the numinous (which, as we see in R/T is not going to be settled any time ever).

You'll have to forgive me - I'm not entirely awake yet (I work nights) but I'll try to make my response as intelligent as I can (which isn't saying much).

In order to express "I don't know about..." or "I don't believe in..." you have to have mental representations of the subject and mental representations concerning your own state of knowledge about the subject. Colloquially, we call such associations of mental representations "beliefs."

Sure, I agree with you. In terms of folk psychology, we might indeed call both of those things beliefs. But I do think that there is a substantive difference between not being swayed by an argument and actively believing in something.

In order for you not to have a belief about something, you can't have any mental representation of that thing. Thus, you have a lack of belief of things that you've never heard of. If you know of a subject, then you have mental representations of it. If you say that you think that the subject is fictional, then that is a belief. When you say "I don't believe Harry Potter is real," you are expressing the lack of a belief (that Harry Potter is a real person), but you are also expressing the existence of a belief (that Harry Potter is a fictional person).

I think that having a mental representation of a subject is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for calling a thing a belief (depending upon which definition - epistemological or colloquial - we are using).

Every atheist I've ever met has the positive belief that transcendental reality is fictional and illusory. That's a belief. It may be "true" in that it corresponds to objective reality, but we don't have any way of verifying that.

You're going to have to put that in other terms for me, as I'm not sure what you mean by transcendental reality.

get the feeling that some atheists are allergic to the word belief, because in their minds, saying that you "believe" something is tantamount to saying that it may be completely imaginary — things that are "real" are things that one "knows." It is amazingly successful to describe everything we do in terms of "belief/desire psychology." For example: "I desire food. I believe that there is food in the kitchen. Therefore, I go to the kitchen." How it is that I formed the mental representations for "kitchen" and "food" and how it is that they apply to real things is a really complicated problem I won't get into here. The point is that "belief" is not a codeword for "bullshit."

I agree with you completely. I don't think that belief is at all code for bullshit. I have many beliefs, and some of them are positively asinine (like the belief that if I don't open the phone bill on the table, then it will just magically disappear :rofl:). I think you are mistaken, though, in the reason why so many atheists are "allergic", as you put it, to the word belief and to that word being ascribed to them. I don't think it is necessarily belief in and of itself that we would have huge problems accepting as traits we possess, but some theists use that to open the door to the statement that since we have belief, we must also have faith and so we are hypocrites in that we have faith but at the same deride it in others (a charge, by the way, with which I vehemently disagree - as do most atheists).

As for NTCOF, no, they don't speak for everybody, and, to be fair, the leaders of the group are pretty careful not to impose their beliefs institutionally; the whole flame war about agnosticism was a difference of opinion and not any kind of official orthodoxy. The point about Deism and Freethought is also pretty key — a lot of 17th and 18th century Deist Freethinkers are claimed as atheists when they aren't really. Anyway, NTCOF can be a fun group — it's a "Fellowship for unbelievers."

As far as I understand, a lot of 17th and 18th century deists were attacked as atheists by their peers. Jefferson's political opponents, IIRC, charged that he was a heretic and an atheist despite his professed deism.

I do find it unfortunate that the NTCOF decided to declare agnosticism as incompatible with a "freethinking position", especially since I think we're all agnostics whether or not we want to admit it (that and agnosticism doesn't really address the issue of what one believes).

I like the term Freethinker, because it allows you to be divorced from dogma without needed to make any claims, positive or negative, about the nature of the numinous (which, as we see in R/T is not going to be settled any time ever).

People have been fighting, killing, dying, and arguing over the unknown since the beginning of time and I have my doubts as to whether or not it will ever end.

I like the term freethinker, too, though I think it is somewhat pejorative towards theists. The traditional association of "freethinker" is atheist, and the implication is there that theists are not freethinkers. It's only a couple of steps away from charges of brainwashing, sheeple, etc. Sort of like the term "Bright" (a term which I really don't care for - it strikes me as entirely too pompous), which implies that everyone else is dull.

Stupid STUPID reporter.
My immediate question is, why/how where the charges dismissed? Is it something to do with the church being 'member owned' or something? It did sound like a blatant case of belligerent trespass.
I suppose it could be up to the prosecutor but even then... wouldn't the arrest still have to be made every time?

Any lawyers who can clear this up?

that churches may be considered public places, like restaurants, or hotels which would mean that the individual in question could not be kicked out unless she were causing a disruption or some such transgression.

IIRC here (Mass) a restaurant etc. could chose not to do business with someone and just ask them to leave (with trespass being the result if they do not). It's still private property.

The board hadn't voted her out yet, and the county prosecutor said she wasn't being disruptive just by sitting there. He considered it a waste of county time and money for what he decided was an internal squabble in the church.

and totally un-Christian, even though Christian leaders are practicing it. It's horrible, hypocritical, and unequivocally wrong.

It seems the passage of Matthew quoted about in the article quotes Jesus himself:

Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.

But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. --Matthew 18:15-17KJV

And from the blog of one of the pastors this WSJ reporter spoke to for research
http://hershaelyork.blogspot.com/2008/01/wall-street-journal-hatchet-job.html

...Jesus spoke more about hell than any prophet. He layed out the procedure for discipline, even to the point of excommunication, which Paul echoed in 1 Corinthians 5. Discipline and preaching on hell were obviously priorities to Jesus.

So when the WSJ reporter called me, I explained its biblical basis, its practical application, and its obvious benefits. I reasoned that, if sin is indeed harmful, the cruelest thing we can do is leave someone in it. Confrontation must always be motivated by a sense of compassion and a desire for reconciliation...

You really shouldn't rely on out-of-context quotes, especially when a lot of people (perhaps, including you) don't understand the context.

This quote from Matthew occurs within a pericope about "The greatest of the Kingdom of Heaven." The disciples approach Christ and ask, "Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven," and a discussion ensues about the political and social reality of what could be considered "the Kingdom of Heaven." During this discussion, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep; it is about how if sheep wander from the flock, God will find them and call them back.

He then expands on this, talking about what sort of things might separate someone from the community. At this point the discussion is best understood within the bounds of Jewish tradition. Most Baptists know nothing of Jewish tradition beyond, "They don't eat ham or something," so there's little surprise that they don't understand what Jesus is saying here.

First of all, Jesus is speaking about public offenses — say, breaking shabbot — and not anything discussed privately with clergy. If you have private pastoral counseling, then you are considered to be speaking to God, and the priest or rabbi is merely providing interpretation or mediation; it is a violation of the ethics of the office to disclose the content of such conversations.

Secondly, the issue here is not the commission of a sin, but the refusal to acknowledge it. To conceal ones transgressions is great hubris — it is an attempt to pretend that you do not have a fault that you do.

As far as the pastor's blog goes, he's a Calvinist asshole. Jesus spoke about "Gehenna," which was a trash dump (and still is, so you can imagine the centuries of filth that are piled up there). This was an analogy for the degradation one would suffer if separated from God. Jews were focused on cleanliness and purity so saying that you would be virtually going to Gehenna was the contemporary equivalent of saying that you'd be wallowing in shit up to your neck.

And quoting Paul? The misogynist, self-hating closeted gay man? Please.

that disagreeing with a preacher is in no way a sin, and he's shown himself to be a very uncompassionate person. Maybe this woman was truly raising hell in the church, spreading malicious gossip. I suppose it's possible. But, the article reads as though it was a power grab, and it doesn't insinuate that she's been wronging the preacher in any way other than disagreeing with his leadership. How is that a sin that deserves confrontation and excommunication? Even biblically?

the nature of a church being what it is, it seems odd that state troopers would buy the trespassing story concerning a woman who had been a member for 50 years.

As long as she behaves herself in a truly Christian manner, she is shaming that preacher and his intolerant supporters. My guess is that she will outlast him.

They are destroying their selves from the inside out, EXCELLENT!

That's got to be an abuse of the 911 system. Even if you think it was justifiable to remove this person on some basis like trespassing (bs imho but just for the sake of discussion) how is this an emergency warranting the use of the 911 system??

When you need the police to escort someone off your property you use the 911 system.

many other (dozens?) people with you?

been the woman, but the person abusing the emergency system.

is sinning.

I have never really been a religious person but the two churches I did attend when I was a kid (Methodist and Apostolic Faith) basically both kicked me out for telling them I didn't 'have to' believe what they told me. Well actually in the Methodist church I was only about 4 or 5 and I told them the only people I had to believe were my parents ;-) For some reason the preachers really didn't like to have their authority questioned.

god being the tyrant and the religious leaders being his servants.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity or God.

This has everything to do with power hungry people (I'd venture to guess men, since women aren't allowed in positions of authority in many of these churches) stretching their arms and cracking their knuckles.

Disgusting. And sad.

It was in our local paper, as the church isn't that far away, and the only press there for the protest was a reporter from our local paper.

Her pastor went to a very conservative Baptist college, and he's younger than she is. She's a founding member and a solid member in good standing. She got upset when he tried to institute some very sexist practices (women had to raise their hands and be called on when men could speak out, dress codes, and more), and when she spoke up, this is what happened.

Here's a decent version of it, since our local paper charges for a copy of an archived article, apparently:
http://cultrad.blogspot.com/2008/01/expulsion-from-church-expression-of.html (it leaves out the sexist stuff, interestingly enough).

Edited to add another local news link, too. Interesting about the 1857 Michigan law.
http://www.hillsdale.net/stories/071607/news_20070716003.shtml

Oh, heck, here's another link, this time about the school the pastor attended:
http://www.bornagainblogger.com/?p=75

Don't women play an important role in church life? Send the message that women are second-class citizens, and - quite apart from the fact that it's just plain wrong to do so - you drive away the very people you need to survive.