My Family Was Excommunicated After Alleging Church Abuse
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(OPINION) June 26, 2023, was my grandmother’s 86th birthday party at our family’s house. It also was the day I was excommunicated from my church.
I remember vividly the incongruity of the happy voices and laughter at the party — and the dread I felt as I saw my phone light up with notifications of missed calls and text messages.
No! I screamed inside. Not another precious moment stolen away from me due to crisis and harm from the church.
I hid the phone from my view so I wouldn’t be distracted for the last hour I was playing hostess. We took family pictures. We ate birthday cake and laughed at the combination of my grandma’s sweet and candid comments.
Just two days earlier, we had received the results of the church investigation. It was an internal investigation performed by hand-selected church employees into our allegations of misconduct and harm done to several congregants.
The investigation had dragged on month after month. The wait was agonizing.
Our emotions rode a roller coaster up to periods of optimism and hope only to plummet down to discouragement and despair
Finally, the results came, after we begged to make the roller coaster stop. With my husband Miguel’s anticipated travel for work, he asked that we receive the results together before he left me at home, 35 weeks pregnant and needing to care for our other four children.
The results were sent in a letter via email. The church leaders announced they had come to a different conclusion than ours. But there was no explanation of their interpretation — no answers to our robust spreadsheet where we outlined each concern, using as many specifics as possible. We had spent weeks on that document, attempting to convey the harm that was caused.
Now days after receiving those results, I grabbed my phone with my heart racing and insides shaking. While my sons got ready for bed, I read a text from a friend who had been harmed by the church.
“Our membership was paused,” the text read.
Paused? Paused for what?
I raced to my inbox. Surely, we had a letter too.
And that we did. Except our membership had not been paused. Instead, it was a formal excommunication letter, signed by our church elders. Our membership had been revoked, with explicit instructions that we and our children were no longer welcome on church premises or at church-sponsored events.
“Can we call Daddy now?” my boys asked. Miguel had flown out to Texas the night before.
I looked up from my phone to see their little faces.
The shock was paralyzing.
“Yes. Let’s — call — Daddy,” I slowly answered, while trying to process what I was reading.
After Miguel finished answering 62 questions about where he was and what he could see out his hotel window, I told the boys it was time for bed. They started shuffling up to the attic and I quietly closed our bedroom door.
“So, we were excommunicated, huh?” I stated soberly.
”Excommunicated? I haven’t read it yet,” Miguel replied.
I don’t remember at what moment the tears started flowing, but I know that once they did there was no sense in muffling. The call with Miguel had to end and I needed to finish the bedtime routine with the boys, but the tears wouldn’t stop, and they couldn’t be hidden.
One by one the younger boys gathered in my door frame, looking at their very pregnant mother sobbing on her bed. I cringe that this has become a core memory for some of them.
“Did someone die, mom?” my eldest asked.
I couldn’t answer so I shook my head, “no.” No one had physically died, but it felt like it. I couldn’t bear to tell them what they had just lost or . . . who.
Perceiving the need for some privacy, my firstborn ushered his siblings back to their beds. He was aware of the stress we were under. He offered me a hug and lingered. I wasn’t strong enough to tell him and I wasn’t sure I ever would be.
Less than 24 hours after we received the excommunication letter, church leaders held an emergency meeting where they explained to the congregation the need to cut our young family off from the fold. It was just as much of a surprise to the congregation as it was to us—extreme punishment soiled in confusion.
In the days following, I received very little correspondence from anyone at church. And as fate would have it, my baby shower with many longtime church friends had been scheduled for that same week.
However, after the congregational meeting, the majority of the RSVPs quietly turned from yes to no, without so much as a comment.
Illustration: “Where the Wounded Wander” (Courtesy of Amanda Diaz)
I remember thinking it was as if, in a moment, the church burned down. The church, which tragically also included some of our closest family members, vanished from our lives in one, big, catastrophic moment.
This brought about a new reality where I no longer had access to a church family and could not commit to another faith community.
For the first time in my life, I stopped visiting a church building every Sunday. The emotional, spiritual, and mental challenges were just too great. There was no brushing this under the rug or powering through.
Seven souls were impacted in seven different ways.
We needed to slow down.
Could God wait for us? Was He rolling His eyes at our inability to pick ourselves up off the floor? Was He even there?
Perhaps even more pressing was the response of the few Christians who remained in our lives. Would they be patient? Would they blame us? Would they accept us when our faith had fractured into something unrecognizable?
In one fell swoop, we were no longer like them.
Where did we belong?
Prior to this experience, I had self-righteously labeled non-churchgoers as unbelievers or undisciplined Christians.
However, after being thrust into the outskirts of the churchgoing tribe, I can more accurately see the people on the outside, especially those who wandered away hurting and filled with distrust.
Sexual, spiritual, physical or emotional abuse from the leaders who preach holiness is devastating to one’s spirit. Extreme moral failures are happening daily in church leadership across the country, and yet we still judge anyone who sits at home on a Sunday morning.
Do you know why some of them choose to do that?
Because it’s safe.
Staying away from church feels safer than going for many people.
And guess what?
They wish that was not the case.
In this season of not belonging, I’ve experienced a conversion of sorts, a new perspective. Though it has been grueling, my eyes have been opened to a world of pain that I previously refused to take seriously. I know now that writing these wounded hearts off as bitter or claiming to have the greatest church in town doesn’t erase what happened to them. These responses don’t provide genuine care. And I’m very sorry to anyone I previously judged.
I’m on a new journey.
A journey to find healing for a wounded soul.
And I hope you’ll walk with me, and the many others like me.
This piece is republished from The Roys Report.
Amanda Diaz is a stay-at-home mom with five rambunctious sons. In addition to homeschooling for the past 10 years, she has worked in the church as an assistant and volunteer. This included co-hosting her previous church’s Q&A YouTube channel alongside her former pastor.