Disfellowshipping among Jehovah’s Witnesses

Recognizable questions What happens to family and friends when someone is disfellowshipped? Is having no contact a personal choice or a religious directive? Why is keeping your distance seen as loving? Can the possibility of shunning affect the freedom to doubt? And how do active JWs experience it when someone they love is disfellowshipped? For some former Jehovah’s Witnesses, shunning is not just a religious measure. It can also be the moment when a large part of their social world changes. Family members, friends, and fellow believers may pull away more or sharply limit contact. That does not automatically mean they no longer feel love. An active Jehovah’s Witness may sincerely love someone and at the same time believe that keeping their distance is in line with what Jehovah asks of him or her. It is precisely that combination that makes disfellowshipping complicated for both sides. From ‘disfellowshipped’ to ‘removed from the congregation’ Many Jehovah’s Witnesses and former JWs know the term disfellowshipping . Since 2024, the organization has more often used the wording removed from the congregation . According to the current official explanation, someone may be removed from the congregation when that person has committed a serious sin and, in the elders’ judgment, is unwilling to change their conduct. The congregation is then informed that the person is no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The reason is not disclosed. The terminology has changed, and certain guidelines about contact have also been adjusted. A removed person may attend meetings. According to the current explanation, individual Witnesses can, based on their conscience, decide to invite someone who has been removed to a meeting or briefly greet them there. At the same time, the official direction remains that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not socialize with someone who has been removed from the congregation and do not eat socially with that person. For those whom the organization considers to be actively promoting apostate teaching or wrongdoing, stricter contact guidelines apply. So removal is not only a change in religious status. Depending on a person’s situation, it can also have consequences for friendships and family contact. The pain can also lie in the loss Someone who is removed from the congregation may lose more than just their place in a religious community. When a large part of your social life took place inside the congregation, your friendships, daily structure, and sense of belonging can all change at once. For outsiders, that can be hard to understand. ‘Then why not just make new friends?’ sounds simple. But when people have been part of your daily life for decades, relationships are not easily replaced. For someone raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, faith, family, friends, weekly routine, future outlook, and identity may also have been deeply intertwined. When one part changes, several areas of life can be affected at the same time. Research into ostracism — being socially excluded or ignored — shows that such experiences can affect basic human needs, including belonging, self-esteem, control, and the feeling of mattering. That does not mean every removed Jehovah’s Witness develops psychological problems. But it does help explain why the loss of social contact can be so profound for some people. Why is keeping your distance seen as loving? To understand the arrangement properly, it is important to also look at Jehovah’s Witnesses’ own explanation. In that explanation, keeping your distance is not presented as revenge or as proof that someone is no longer loved. The measure is seen as Biblical discipline that protects the congregation and can help the person come to their senses and return to Jehovah. An active JW may therefore think: ‘Precisely because I love you, I have to follow this Biblical direction.’ The person who is removed may experience the exact same behavior very differently: ‘If you love me, why can’t our relationship just continue as it is?’ Both experiences can be sincere. That raises an important question: When contact is limited with the aim of moving someone to return, how free does that person then feel in deciding whether or not to come back? ExJW.World does not need to answer that question for the reader. What happens to family contact? Nuance is important here too. Not every family relationship is handled the same way according to the official JW guidelines. When someone who has been removed lives in the same household as their spouse and minor children, the organization says that normal family bonds and affection continue. So the religious situation does not automatically change ordinary family life. For family members outside the household, contact can become much more limited. Exactly what that looks like also varies from family to family and situation to situation. As a result, one disfellowshipped person may still have contact with close family almost every day, while someone else may barely speak to a large part of their family anymore. It is therefore too simplistic to say that every disfellowshipped JW loses all of his family . But it is just as simplistic to describe disfellowshipping only as an internal religious status change. For some people, the social consequences are very significant. Can disfellowshipping also have an impact before someone is removed? This may be one of the most interesting questions. An active Jehovah’s Witness usually knows that certain choices can eventually lead to removal from the congregation and that social interaction changes afterward. That does not have to mean someone stays a Jehovah’s Witness solely out of fear. Many JWs sincerely believe and want to remain within the community based on their own conviction. But for someone who is doubting, another question can arise as well: What happens to my family and friends if I eventually come to a different conclusion? Then two different questions may become intertwined: What do I believe? and What might I lose if my answer changes? That is exactly why, when researching faith, it is valuable to look not only at the formal freedom to choose, but also at the social consequences different choices can have. Can you freely choose when the consequences are huge? Jehovah’s Witnesses emphasize the importance of free will. No one should be forced to serve Jehovah. But free will does not automatically mean that every choice comes without consequences. That applies outside religion as well. People can end a marriage, quit a job, or leave a community and thereby lose relationships or security. The interesting question is therefore not simply: ‘May someone leave?’ Formally, someone can. A deeper question is: ‘How free does a choice feel when someone knows that a different belief may have major consequences for the most important relationships in their life?’ That is not a question only about Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is a broader question about faith, group belonging, loyalty, and human relationships. For family members, it can be painful too It is easy to look only at the person who is removed. But active family members can also experience grief. A mother may believe she is obeying Jehovah while at the same time missing her child terribly. A brother may believe the biblical guideline is right and still feel sorrow over the lost contact. A friend may hope someone will return and meanwhile mourn the friendship as it used to be. That does not mean the consequences for the person who is removed are any less painful. It does show that it is too simplistic to describe all active JWs as lacking empathy. Sometimes two people who love each other stand opposite one another, while both view the same relationship through a very different belief framework. Mourning someone who is still alive When contact is greatly reduced while the other person is still alive, a particular form of loss can arise. You know where someone lives. Maybe you even see them from time to time. The person has not died, but the relationship as you knew it is largely gone. Research among former Jehovah’s Witnesses has described such experiences as ‘grieving the living’ — mourning living people . In that study, former JWs talk among other things about the loss of relationships, social identity, and belonging after leaving or being disfellowshipped. That research was carried out among relatively small groups and therefore should not be read as if every former Jehovah’s Witness experiences the same thing. It does, however, show that this form of loss can be very impactful for some people. Your religious status is not your whole identity When a congregation announces that someone is no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that announcement says little about the full story of that person. The congregation does not hear why someone was removed. Nor does an outsider usually know what conversations came before, what someone thinks, how much regret they feel, what they still believe, or what happened in private. Someone may have done something they sincerely regret. Someone may still fully believe in Jehovah. Someone may have doubts. Someone may later return. Someone may eventually come to a different religious conviction. That is why ‘removed from the congregation’ is a religious status. It does not describe the whole person. What if you were removed yourself? Maybe you are reading this article not out of curiosity, but because your name was recently announced in the Kingdom Hall. Then you do not have to decide today what this event means for the rest of your life. You can take responsibility for things you regret without seeing yourself as worthless. You can miss your family terribly without that automatically meaning that you want to go back. And you can eventually want to return without having to defend yourself to ex-JWs. First, try to distinguish between different questions: What do I truly regret? What do I still believe? Who do I miss? Do I miss my faith, or mainly my people? Do I want to go back because I believe, because I want contact back, or both? What do I need right now to stay steady? Those answers do not all have to be the same. What can help? When shunning has changed much of your social world, it can help not to try to rebuild your entire life immediately. Start small: keep a daily routine, look for one or two safe people, build new connections slowly, and give yourself room to grieve. Fellow sufferers can help because they recognize certain experiences right away. At the same time, your new world does not have to consist only of former Jehovah’s Witnesses. A coworker, a family member outside the organization, a neighbor, a sports club, volunteer work, or another recurring setting can also be a starting point. Professional help can be wise when anxiety, depression, panic, sleep problems, loneliness, or loss severely affect your daily functioning. A good counselor does not need to decide for you whether Jehovah’s Witnesses are good or bad. He or she can help you understand what this situation does to you . No pressure to go back. No pressure to stay away. ExJW.World is not intended to persuade someone who has been disfellowshipped never to return. Maybe you will look into everything and eventually decide to become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses again. Maybe you will reach a different conclusion. Maybe you simply do not know yet. That outcome is up to you. The most important thing is that you have the space to distinguish between different things: faith, guilt, love, family, loss, social pressure, and your own conviction. Not so that someone else decides for you what you should choose, but so that you can eventually say for yourself: This is what I believe. This is what I want. And this is why. Sources JW.org - How do Jehovah’s Witnesses treat former members? Watchtower - August 2024 - changes regarding those who have been removed from the congregation Williams - Ostracism: A Temporal Need-Threat Model Ransom, Monk & Heim - Grieving the Living: The Social Death of Former Jehovah’s Witnesses Luther - What Happens to Those Who Exit Jehovah’s Witnesses: An Investigation of the Impact of Shunning Also read on ExJW.World I am disfellowshipped - Practical help for the first period after you have been removed from the congregation. Grieving a faith - About the loss of people, identity, and future outlook. I miss my community - Do you miss the faith itself, the people, or the sense of belonging? Religious upbringing and free will - How free is a religious choice when faith, family, and social environment are strongly intertwined?