I don't believe—and don't see Biblical evidence for—"contumacy" being an excommunicable sin when not attached to some other serious sin that's not being repented of. It's how you get charges like "hardheartedness", "walking in darkness", and "not respecting authority"—real charges I've seen and that are possible neither to prove by two or three witnesses nor disprove. It's a really dangerous practice that amounts to "we, the elders, don't like/can't get along with you". So unless the nature of the sin is 1 Corinthians 5 level serious, I am always skeptical. Likewise, the overriding instinc! to tell the member to "go make things right" assumes good faith oo the part of the elders of the other church—ideally what we should assume, but sometimes it's a session who refuses to budge and make things right, and not the memeaer. I will say that, from what I've seen so far, the PCA is pretty exemplary at this—a CREC excommunication that took about a month was reviewed over an eighth month period by a PCA church in a far more comprehensive fashion than the original excommunication. But words like "contumacy" immediately make me suspicious of the process.
One of the things I really like about the PCA, and that ended up drawing us back to it after trying various evangelical churches in early adulthood, is the local church has, however imperfectly-implemented in practice, an expectation of orderliness and a structure to implement a Biblical order of governance.
Maybe it seems harsh to excommunicate someone, but the alternatives are far worse — and crazier.
Cancel culture is just the secular version of this.
I don't believe—and don't see Biblical evidence for—"contumacy" being an excommunicable sin when not attached to some other serious sin that's not being repented of. It's how you get charges like "hardheartedness", "walking in darkness", and "not respecting authority"—real charges I've seen and that are possible neither to prove by two or three witnesses nor disprove. It's a really dangerous practice that amounts to "we, the elders, don't like/can't get along with you". So unless the nature of the sin is 1 Corinthians 5 level serious, I am always skeptical. Likewise, the overriding instinc! to tell the member to "go make things right" assumes good faith oo the part of the elders of the other church—ideally what we should assume, but sometimes it's a session who refuses to budge and make things right, and not the memeaer. I will say that, from what I've seen so far, the PCA is pretty exemplary at this—a CREC excommunication that took about a month was reviewed over an eighth month period by a PCA church in a far more comprehensive fashion than the original excommunication. But words like "contumacy" immediately make me suspicious of the process.
One of the things I really like about the PCA, and that ended up drawing us back to it after trying various evangelical churches in early adulthood, is the local church has, however imperfectly-implemented in practice, an expectation of orderliness and a structure to implement a Biblical order of governance.
Maybe it seems harsh to excommunicate someone, but the alternatives are far worse — and crazier.