Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To expel from a church or from church membership; excommunicate.
  • transitive verb To deprive (a congregation, sect, or building) of the status of a church.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To expel from a church; deprive of the character and rights of a church; excommunicate.
  • To refuse the name or character of a church to.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To expel, or cause to separate, from a church; to excommunicate.
  • transitive verb To deprive of the character, privileges, and authority of a church.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To expel from membership of a congregation or church; to excommunicate

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb exclude from a church or a religious community

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

un- +‎ church

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word unchurch.

Examples

  • Deron Cloud, founder and pastor of the Soul Factory, called it the "unchurch".

    CNN Transcript Oct 22, 2006 2006

  • Deron Cloud, founder and pastor of the Soul Factory, called it the "unchurch".

    CNN Transcript Oct 22, 2006 2006

  • Have had been a member of the church 25 years and the last 3 years have worship on line and now through facebook and this is great opporunity to your unchurch The Lord will work in the life of this people

    Church expands flock on Facebook 2010

  • [103] Every corruption doth not presently unchurch a people.

    Two Short Catechisms 1616-1683 1965

  • The brewers were blameless in their personal behaviour, regular in their attendance in the sanctuary, and exact in their fulfilment of the conditions of church membership; and he could not unchurch them merely because they were brewers.

    The Golden Shoemaker or 'Cobbler' Horn J. W. Keyworth

  • Boucher, who held the opinion that the refusal of Virginia to consent to a bishop was to "unchurch the church."

    History of Virginia 1924

  • Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

    XIII. English Traits. Religion 1909

  • Was ever monkish work begun in more unchurch-like surroundings?

    The Thrall of Leif the Lucky 1893

  • That the sin of slaveholding, as practiced in the American churches, is a sin of the first degree, and the greatest known in the catalogue of crimes -- the highest violation of God's law -- a shameful abuse of God's creatures, shocking to enlightened humanity, and should unchurch, and does unchristianize every man and woman who is a slaveholder.

    History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church 1891

  • And is it not fit and equal that God should unchurch us and unpeople us?

    The Covenants And The Covenanters Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation Various 1876

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.