Shunning
Formal severance of social and family contact with members who leave or violate doctrine. Examples: disfellowshipping (JW), Meidung (Amish), disconnection (Scientology).
How it looks in practice
Shunning is when an adult son leaves a Jehovah's Witness congregation and his parents stop returning his calls, decline to attend his wedding, won't meet his children, and instruct other family members to do the same. It is the same family members, applying a religious policy.
BITE-model connection
Emotional control — typically the single highest-impact modifier on the CLCI score because it transforms exit from a religious change into a family loss. Groups with documented formal shunning policies (JW, Scientology, Amish, FLDS, the Watchtower-tradition shunning systems) score 8-10 on emotional control as a near-universal pattern.
Related terms
Groups in the dataset that reference Shunning
Auto-derived from body, summary, and red-flag text. Showing top 12 by CLCI score.
- AROPL / Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq)
- Jehovah's Witnesses
- Twelve Tribes
- Satmar Hasidic
- Plymouth Brethren Christian Church / Exclusive Brethren
- Philadelphia Church of God / Gerald Flurry
- Westboro Baptist Church
- Mooji / Anthony Paul Moo-Young
- The Way International
- New Kadampa Tradition (NKT, Kelsang Gyatso)
- Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Haredi)
- JW Kingdom Hall elders / judicial committee system
Blog posts that discuss this term
Auto-derived from blog post body, title, and description.