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Examining Religious Excommunication on Thursday's Access Utah

GEORGE FREY/AFP/Getty Images

The recent excommunications of prominent members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints got us wondering about the practice of excommunication, and related practices like shunning and ostracizing. Does excommunication have different meanings across various religions and cultures? Why are some individuals cut off and others not? How should religious institutions respond to unorthodox opinions and beliefs among their members? 

 On Thursday's AU we'll consider these questions within the context of Catholicism, Mormonism, the FLDS experience, and Amish and Mennonite cultures. Our guests include USU Professor of Religious Studies and History, Philip Barlow; USU Lecturer of Philosophy, Harrison Kleiner; and Donald Kraybill, Distinguished College Professor and Senior Fellow, Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.