On the Articles: Article XXXIII

The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

XXXIII. Of excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided
That person which by open denunciation of the Church is rightly cut off from the unity of the Church, and excommunicated, ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful, as an Heathen and Publican, until he be openly reconciled by penance, and received into the Church by a judge that hath authority thereunto.

Excommunication is a process largely alien to the modern Church, and so this Article is somewhat difficult to understand in a modern context, however in the time it was written it served as an important and necessary clarification for Christians.

Excommunication was for some time in the medieval period used as a tool of political power by the Bishop of Rome over various foreign princes. In England, it was partly responsible for forcing the King to sign the Magna Carta in 1215 that, among other liberties, also guaranteed the freedom of the Church. This practice of using excommunication as a political tool was never adopted in England after the reformation, however it did have a much more common application through the judicial system.

In England, Ecclesiastical Courts would routinely apply excommunication as a penalty for those who were summoned before the court but did not appear. The Ecclesiastical Courts in England dealt with a number of matter which at the time were considered religious in nature but which today are generally viewed as secular matters. For instance, they handled most matters of family law such as inheritances and matrimonial disputes. Other matters now considered civil matters were in the past considered religious in nature and fell under the purview of the ecclesiastical courts, such as defamation which was viewed as an assault on the soul rather than on the person. The use of excommunication by the ecclesiastical court remains common until reforms in the early 19th century.

Excommunication was thus being used in an effort to encourage sinners to repent of their ways. In order to make it effective, the sanction had to carry a material component to it rather than just the spiritual component of sanction. While the first thought is often to see being cut off from the Eucharist as a punishment inherent in excommunication, rather being shut off from the Eucharist was done out of concern for the well-being of the excommunicated person who if they were to receive would do so to their condemnation for having failed to adequately examine their conscious before receiving (according to St Paul’s warnings in I Cor 11). By requiring all other Christians to avoid excommunicated persons—their social lives and even livelihoods would be impacted—it would more quickly compel them to amend their ways and seek repentance with the Church.

While the Biblical authority for the practice of excommunication has never been in question, for a number of reasons, including the fact that it was English Ecclesiastical courts that often imposed the sanction and that those courts did not always exist in the colonies outside of England where Anglicanism flourished, the practice of excommunication has largely died out in Anglicanism. It remains in various forms commonplace among other Christian traditions including to some degree Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as well as various Protestant traditions, though they often do not use the term excommunication specifically given the history of having it applied to them during the time of the Reformation.

The Article can remain instructive, however, in that it recognizes that the purpose was one of reconciliation through penitence. When we consider who and what we as Christians associate ourselves with, do we consider why we might avoid something or otherwise boycott it, and what the purpose is in doing so. Does it serve to promote reconciliation with the Church? Does it serve to preserve our own faithfulness to God? Are we excluding others for the wrong reason, such as a desire to feel superior?

In the final series of the Articles of Religion, like Article XXXIII, they find themselves rooted in English law and culture, and particularly at the time of the English Reformation, and several of the particularities of the Articles are no longer applicable, however the general principles of how they instruct Anglicans to comport themselves remain timeless and as applicable as ever.