EXCOMMUNICATION. To excommunicate means "to cut off from communion" or "to exclude from fellowship in a community." In a Christian setting, the term excommunication also applies to exclusion from Holy Communion, or the Eucharist.

Historically, religious practice admitted some form of putting a person outside the community. Any community claims the right to protect itself against nonconforming members who may threaten the common welfare. In a religious setting this right has often been reinforced by the belief that the sanction affects one's standing before God, inasmuch as it entails being cut off from the community of the saved. In religious traditions in which nonconformity was punishable by death, excommunication was introduced as a mitigation of the death penalty. In medieval Christendom and during the early years of the Reformation, excommunicated persons were turned over to civil authorities, who could inflict the death penalty upon them.

With the shift...