Samenvatting

Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) are sometimes criticised for ‘shunning’ former congregants. This article focuses on the reproach of shunning and has a twofold purpose. Firstly: what is disfellowshipping and shunning about? For an adequate assessment, an analysis of the religious context and the policies JW applied therein is essential. Hereby sociological factors are taken into account as well. Secondly a legal study follows, in which voluntarily or involuntarily leaving the religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses is viewed in the broader constitutional legal framework in which religious communities and individual believers each have their own legal position, both in their mutual relationship to each other and in relation to the society they are in.