Shunning along with other activities strikes me as acts of revenge which to me sounds very fifth grade with two kids fighting in the school yard. Hardly an activity that is handed down by people who claim to live Christ like principles.

Not to mention the hate mongering that has plagued the church for years. I remember when it was blacks, the Catholic Church,
People who broke the word of wisdom, women who were divorced, women who worked outside their home, people with dark skin. It's always about who we should exclude rather than who we should include

Enough already. it is vengeful and destructive and for anyone with Even half a brain is absolutely counter productive to the so called original tenets of the church that no longer mean anything believable

Also, you can't go to church, after a while,you'll start feeling relief, see the church from non members eyes, motivate you to start reading the Internet more, then they will be embarrassed for even falling for it, and won't want to come back when probation is over , so I don't know why they still excommunicate people anymore, their loss

that's a good question. Maybe its related to fear.

you know how they have huge lists of circumstances regarding behavior and checklists referred to as commandments, that are an on off/ in - out automatic culling sure as turkeys get tossed out of the big fenced fields into the cull pen.

Surely all social desirous l d s have an innate horror of being tossed into the cull pen like a torn up turkey and leaving the big field with its exotic automatic water grain feeders with the rest of the turkeys. Sort of like an Alfred Hitchcock horror allegory for Mormonism. Live in the wrong circumstance have the wrong answer to the behavior thought check list Mormons call commandments (ie temple interview check lists.)

So what do Mormons do? maybe they lie to their bishop. Maybe they lie to themselves. its so terrifying to risk being tossed in to the cull pen via church disapline and thrown out of the turkey herd in the big pen.

so its fear. fear ishuge a motivator because of these lists behavior thinking lists, every time at the automatic water trough the grain feed, the hiding from rain water with the herd, the stampedes in the storm- all the things that turkeys do, even sqwacking at ground squirrels gobbling at each other until their grain fed girth is too great leaving their hybridized over sized fully grain fed body near tumbling to the ground unable to stand. Leaving the herd is a great fear.

its those rules which entangle the most basic human needs, the most essential social comforts, with complex confounding confusing easy almost impossible to keep ruptures to lifes's safety- break a rule, thrown out of the auto water feeder grain fed pen.

So they lie in fear. And that fear of their own honesty, to the point they might lie to themselves, not just to others about the rules or which rules they may themselves want to break, or hestitate about the one time err life of quiet desperation in a half broke dedication to rules which encompass them like the wire encircling a turkey pen.

its a fear built into Mormon commandment system, fearful examples story tales as old as lots wife turned to salt, as old as the walls come tumbling down at Jericho, as old as the wrecked towns in Alma when Christ conveniently ran earthquakes and destroyed stuff before he came to visit. That's a pretty big fear factor to hang over you.
and those exmaples of story tales can come to life for you if you drink the wrong tea on a cold winter night in your nearest bishop's interview )scary; so must Mormons learn to lie to survive.
just so scary for them. Don't know if its scarier for the most sincere t b m or or scarier for the social Mormon just know they live in cultured anxiety like pencilin mold cultured in a petri dish.
Religiosity with a hit of fear like a smidgeon of salt (salt of the earth that is, burns in every cut or scrape every fall) Salt hurts. salt burns. Mormon life's inbuilt anxiety builds in fearful misery for every joy in its society.

Mormons come to fear how comfortable they are with you, how very much you might makes sense, how much better your even inexpensive your simple comforts come cause they realize they may come to an awareness some of their behavioral thinking commandments are not the best, not the most common sense, not in congruence with supporting their higher awareness or highest self. shunning = fear of their own common sense, fear of their own awareness, fear of their own fantastic lies trying to synthesize a Mormon encultured encapsulated commandment lie filled life.

what if the bishop finds the one time in 30 year the one time in 50 years they )gasp( broke a commandment. what if what if their lying mechanism breaks down and in some masochistic moment they (gasp) confess - to it- and and everything breaks down. disfellowshipped. socially spandexed stretched outside the the engineered endangered edges of their carefully groomed oh so carefully groomed turkey pen out past the feeders.
woodless Kohinoor color sticks

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien. As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
-- Alexander Party Pope(r)


See, they aren't shunning, they are simply protecting themselves, and we, the shunned, fail to understand. They love us, but...

There is one big difference between the Mormon church and other religions who practice shunning. When the Amish shuns someone they are at least open and honest about it. They will say she is being shunned. In the Mormon church it is pure crazy making because of the fact that they do it but no one owns up to it and the individual doesn't know if it is the ward, or the stake or a bunch of gossip mongers on a mission of Meanness

Shunning (in most religions that practice it) serves two purposes. One is to keep the "bad" people from infecting the "good" people, particularly when the "bad" person no longer believes what the "good" people do. The other purpose is to separate the "bad" person from his social network, making him feel as if he has been tossed out into the cold, cruel world. That's supposed to make the "bad" person willing to crawl back, beg forgiveness and not make any trouble. And it makes the "good" people feel like they're on the right side. "See, he came back."

It's a death knell for the cult.

It isn't the shunning that is wrong, it's about how and why the shunning is applied. A friend of mine got excommunicated and kicked out of Ricks college in the 80's. His Bishop told him that he was a sexual preditor. He forged his bishop's signature and was back at Ricks the next year. One of the women he had used turned him in again and he got kicked out again, already excommunicated still from the previous year. His credits weren't good anywhere else and he ended up with student loans and no degree to show for it. So who's fault was that? His own. He told me that he would line up dates with several women in a day and see how many he could have sex with in one day. Mormon women tend to be more trusting of mormon guys, and are easier targets most of the time than non-members. By kicking him out, the rest of the group was safer. He even laughed once and told me "by the time we got down to it, I wasn't really nice about it". Ironically, if he had cared for any of these women at all, he probably wouldn't have been kicked out. A lot of people in the church have sex with other church members and feel no need to tell the church leaders. So there is no church court and no shunning in those cases. When people target others with the goal of getting them to go against their own beliefs, just as an obstacle to conquer (no real friendship, no concern for the other person's feelings), then they should be kicked out and shunned. But the whole system gets perverted and people end up being shunned at the whim of some un-trained clergy, asshole Bishop who truely doesn't know right from from wrong.

They are avoiding contamination.

Waunder and Dave nailed it without the fluff.
That one thing you say may resonate with someone else, or even themselves. You speak and carry the tools to get out of m.
You are not wanted around.

Exing the "rotten apples" so they don't ruin the pie certainly ignores the fact that Mormonism SUPPOSEDLY can stand up, and stand up tall, to all scrutiny.

Seems to me Mormonism is not so sure of itself after all.