Inclusion and Exclusion, Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and excommunication

boundaries and belonging

So, this post was occasioned by a really helpful question that arose with a friend after last week's book review, about the somewhat progressive-left idea that inclusion is always good, and all forms of exclusion are bad and harmful. That sent my brain off thinking about a host of related thoughts that have percolated into this post.

First, I want to clarify something about the ostracism book. Williams has a taxonomy of different types of ostracism, which is helpful and I've added a footnote to that post explaining that. Most of his research and my comments are about social ostracism, i.e. where an individual or group is physically present and acts as if the target is not there/does not matter, by refusing to speak to them, acknowledge their existence, make eye contact, etc.. I think after that book I have concluded that what is most wrong about social ostracism of that kind, is that it denies the dignity of the other as a human being.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

That's not really what I'm going to be talking about today. Instead I want to discuss much broader questions about inclusion and exclusion, before getting specific about Christian communities and practices.

Human beings are social creatures, and the only group that is all inclusive is the entire human race. Short of that, we always include and exclude. We make distinctions and differentiations based on various factors. We can't help that, and to some extent it's meaningless to try to live a life where "I make no distinctions, I exclude nobody". That is, as Volf would describe it, undifferentiated chaos.

The question is, what kind of distinctions are relevant to any group. I'm going to use an example that I dreamt up a long time ago for a sermon. Imagine a sporting club. Let's use cricket, just to alienate American readers. It's the Wollongong Cricket Club for Men aged 18-25.

Now, you say, that's very exclusive! Not very fair and inclusive at all.

• Person 1 campaigns that it should include people from West Wollongong. Now it's the Wollongong and West Wollongong Cricket Club for Men aged 18-25.

• Person 2 campaigns that it should include people from all ages. Now it's the Wollongong and West Wollongong Cricket Club for Men.

• Person 3 campaigns that it should include people of any gender. Now it's the Wollongong and West Wollongong Cricket Club.

• Person 4 says that it's discriminatory to only play Cricket on the pitch. What if a player wants to play Hockey?

Let's be clear, I'm not saying a hockey player can't join the club. What I am saying is that if this club goes onto the pitch/field and some members just start playing hockey, the core relevant identity of the club is destroyed. And the league will kick them out.

Inclusivity has its appropriate limits at the point of relevant criteria.

What's relevant here is what defines the group. And when you discriminate on the grounds of something that is irrelevant, this is when we ought rightly to be upset about it, perceive as injustice, fight against.

So, the Green party rightfully cannot discriminate against people joining it from any racial background, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc etc.. But what happens when a pro-polluting industrialist joins? “They're allowed to join,” says your local friendly Greens member, “of course. But we are an environmentalist party.” What happens when they try to get elected to leadership? “Well,” says your local friendly Greens member, “we'll vote against them.” What happens when a concerted lobby group of pro-polluters all join your local Greens party and take over by voting themselves in? The identity of that Greens party has been destroyed. It's no longer the same thing.¹

So when we come to the church and the Christian faith, there is a right and appropriate inclusive welcome - all are invited, all can come, which is why public services are absolutely open to all. But what makes Christianity ‘Christianity’? A distinct body of belief and practices. And so you can come to Christianity and be a Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or Atheist. But you can't become a Christian and still be an adherent of another religious faith. Because this contradicts and destroys the integrity of what being a Christian means. Similarly, it's incoherent to say "Well, I want to be a Christian but I also want to keep doing X, Y, Z behaviours that are inconsistent with the historic bulk of Christian ethics and practice."

That's why (at least in part) there is and ought to be a distinction between being a member of the church, and someone who attends services. Historically and biblically that distinction is represented by baptism. Baptism is the public declaration of faith, the outward sign of an inward reality. Sociologically it functions to mark someone as becoming a Christian and a member of the Christian community.

I think it's a big weakness that a right theological truth (salvation by faith alone) has led in the circles around me to a theology that says that if you believe the gospel, you will be saved, and so there’s no need to get baptised. Can you be saved without getting baptised? Yes. Can you get saved by faith and then refuse to get baptised? No, you cannot. The clear pattern of the New Testament is that people who come to faith in Christ, get baptised (almost immediately). It's why Peter says in Acts 2:38 "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins". All through Acts, when people believe, they get baptized.

It's time for a musical interlude. I wouldn't have posted this song a few weeks' ago, because I am not interested in being passive-aggressive to friends who have yet to be baptized. Also, the artist FLAME, kind of went all in, in going from Reformed to Lutheran, and I'm not sold on Lutheranism. But I do love this song:

If you haven't got baptised, then you haven't publicly confessed faith in Christ, and taken the initiatory step of becoming a member of the Christian community, the church. Which is why the post-New-Testament early church would send out the unbaptised before celebrating the Lord's Supper. Because the Lord's Supper is for members of the church. I don't believe in policing who takes communion or not, but I would straight-up tell you to your face that if you haven't been baptised, you shouldn't take communion. Because you haven't expressed your faith publicly through Jesus' commanded means of grace. Why wait? Get baptised today.

The Lord's Supper is for Christians. It's a Christian practice for members of the church. And again, by nature that is inclusive and exclusive. It ought to welcome us all in, Jesus invites us to the table, whoever we are, whatever we've done. But in my view there are two situations where you shouldn't take communion. Really they are the same though.

What happens when someone is living in a way that is a fundamental denial of what it means to be a Christian? They are the pro-polluter who is a Greens member and refuses to uphold the core commitments of environmentalism. They are the hockey player who is on the cricket pitch playing hockey. So the issue here is not sin per se. All Christians sin. Sin doesn't keep you from the table, it doesn't stop you being a Christian. Both the OT and the NT have very clear provisions for what to do - you repent and seek the Lord's forgiveness, on the basis of atoning sacrifice. A Christian who sins but regularly and appropriately repents, is in fact a saint.²

But consistent and persistent refusal to repent, in doctrine or practice, is equivalent to saying, "I'm not willing to uphold what it means to be a Christian". If that were you, I would tell you that while that continues to be the case you shouldn't come to the Lord's Table.

What I'm not saying is that the person presiding at the Lord's Supper has a job of policing people's behaviour and fencing the table. That's not my position. I think the onus is on individuals to abstain.

However, I do think there's a case to be made for withholding communion from unrepentant public sinners when the Eucharist has been turned into political theatre. So, when Ambrose denied communion to Theodosius after the Massacre of Thessalonica in 390, prompting his repentance, I think that was right. When someone turns up to receive communion at a church as a political statement trying to provoke a crisis, I think it's also incumbent to deny them communion. Let me give an example that I think makes this clear.

If the KKK turns up at your city cathedral, in full regalia, and lines up for communion, and has invited the media along to boot, I think the presider should refuse them. Because, in my view (and despite the history of the KKK and Protestantism), being a member of the KKK is incompatible with true orthodox Christianity. And turning up in full regalia is trying to provoke a statement, and that statement should be "we utterly reject evil in all its forms, including the racism of the KKK".

So, now I want to turn to the question of excommunication and what do you do with a person who consistently and persistently over an extended period of time, by word or deed, is living a life antithetical to the Christian faith, refuses to repent, when they have been previously a member of the church?

I've been in a church where we effectively excommunicated someone [many years ago; I was on the leadership team]. Looking back, I think it was indeed the right thing to do, but I think we could have done some things better. This person had been a member of our church, but was then living a life utterly antithetical to Christian practice. Our understanding of church discipline, especially from Matt 18 and 1 Cor, led us to publicly raise this in a church meeting, and tell people to cut off contact from this person, in the hopes that severed relationships might prompt repentance. This was after repeated, continued pastoral efforts to engage them, and in the context of some individuals continuing afterwards to seek to engage them in relationship directly.

I now think that excommunication that involves social shunning is itself wrong. And so, if we look over at the Amish for a second, the Anabaptist practice of Meidung (shunning, or 'the ban') involves an almost total social isolation of the individual. They are treated as worse than an outsider. They practically don't exist. They can't do business, can't trade, can't engage in community. In some cases this is a literal death sentence. I think that misreads what the New Testament speaks to.

When Matt 18 says "treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector", we ought to ask, "how does Jesus treat pagans and tax collectors?" And the invariable answer of the gospel is that he extends patient, compassionate love to them. He treats them as human beings of infinite worth. He also treats them as people in need of repenting and believing the good news, to enter the kingdom.

Excommunication is a public declaration that mirrors baptism and the Lord's Supper, though I don't at all think it's a sacrament, but it's a statement "this person is no longer living as a Christian and so we aren't going to treat them like a Christian". That cannot and ought not ever mean to stop treating that person as a member of the human community, of the local community, as a person of inherent dignity, worth, and beauty. It can and should mean treating that person as a loved person who needs to hear and believe the good news of God's love for them in Christ.

I’m not arguing for a frequent or common use of explicit excommunication. I think formal excommunication is a last resort, a final desperate word after a long process of compassionate rebuke. Excommunication's hope is always re-communication.

Inclusion always involves exclusion, but exclusion isn't in and of itself bad. It's just how a world with structure and differentiation works. We freely welcome in Christ just as we have been welcomed (15:7), but that is a welcome into something, into Christ. Those who depart Christ, we lovingly hold out arms of embrace, in the hope of welcoming them (back) into Christ.

Photo by Marcel Ardivan on Unsplash

1. This analogy courtesy of my wife.

2. Thanks to Glenn Davies for powerfully bringing this idea home earlier this year].