Why I found this site? It was not intentional. I read in one place within, concerning rejoining the church, that is was easy to enter back into the church if you were not excommunicated. It appeared that someone implied that you did not have to go through rebaptism if you asked to have your name removed and not excommunicated fro the church. Is this true? Help me out with this.

Anonymous, 6/19/2009

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AllAboutMormons.com Webmaster from La Jolla, California:




In the LDS Church, excommunication is not the same as "kicking someone out of the church." With every excommunication, the hope is always that the person will repent and return to the fold. In fact, excommunicated members should continue to attend church worship services. For some serious sins, excommunication is an important step in the repentance process, because, after being excommunicated, the sinner can be rebaptized for the remission of sins, as Christ taught.

While repentance can be an arduous journey, rebaptism itself is an easy step. I wouldn't describe it as hard at all. As the webmaster of AllAboutMormons.com, I've received a number of emails from people who've been excommunicated and then rejoined the church through rebaptism. The rebaptism was a beautiful symbol of the progress they'd made as they left their sins behind them and started a new life.

Having your name removed from church records is not the same thing as being excommunicated, but, nevertheless, rebaptism is necessary. The Church respects the wishes of those who request that their names be removed; the church no longer considers them to be member of the faith. God has chosen baptism to be the symbol for a "non-member's"  decision to join the Church.

Interestingly, someone else recently asked this very question about name removal and subsequent rebaptism. The first answer was given by someone who had himself had his name removed from the Church but wished to rejoin the faith. His rebaptism is scheduled for a month from now!

Please do let me know if there's anything more I can do to help.
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