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Excluded From My Nephew's Wedding

Today my nephew is getting married, but there is an empty chair at the ceremony. It is the chair that I should be sitting in, but I was not invited. Today I do not share a photo, but something very important and personal.

I agonised long and hard over whether to write these words and share them here at all - to bare my soul this way. I have never posted anything about my former religion here, that I left ten years ago, but today my heart is breaking, and I feel I must break that rule, if only this once.

This should be a day of celebration for our family. Instead, it has become a painful reminder of how deeply religious shunning can wound people. I wasn't excluded because we had a falling out. I wasn't excluded because I've lived an immoral life or because I've treated anyone badly. I wasn't excluded because I don't love my family.

I wasn't invited because I no longer believe in and share the faith of my sister and her family. You see, my nephew is one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I am no longer one. For those who aren't familiar with the religion, Jehovah's Witnesses are a high control, evangelical, apocalyptical end-times faith, one of many that arose in the great spiritual awakening of 19th century America.

They are taught to limit or avoid association with former members who reject the faith. Many people don't realise that Jehovah's Witnesses practise shunning. Once someone leaves the religion, especially if they openly disagree with its teachings, they can be excluded from normal family relationships and important family events. In my case, it has meant being shut out of one of the most significant days in my nephew's life.

Even after ten years of not being able to even speak with my nephew, it hurts more than I can adequately express.

The thing is that I haven't become a different person since I left. I haven't become a criminal, an addict, or someone who has abandoned basic decency. I live an extremely moral, ethical and compassionate life. I am still the same person of integrity that those church members trusted to teach them and provide pastoral care for in my 20 years in leadership and ministry. I still believe in and advocate for truth, honesty, and integrity. I simply no longer believe the truth claims and doctrines of the religion I once belonged to. For this I am branded a heretic - an evil and dangerous influence.

I don't share this to embarrass my nephew or to take attention away from his wedding day. I genuinely hope he and his wife have a wonderful life together. They will probably never read this anyway. My disappointment is not directed at them personally, but at a system that places religious conformity above family relationships.

It is with a religion that preaches love, yet whose love is very conditional on members compliance. A religion that fights for human rights, particularly freedom of thought, but punishes those who don't think the way they do, and fails to respect the human rights of ex-members.

One of the saddest consequences of shunning is that it punishes people, not for how they behave, but for what they believe or don't believe. It tells family members that love and acceptance are conditional upon sharing the same faith. I don't believe that's what love should look like.

Today, I guess I feel the pain even more deeply because of the extra irony that I am an award-wining wedding photographer. For over twenty years I had the privilege of documenting one of the happiest days in countless families' lives. Under normal circumstances, I would probably have been the person photographing my own nephew's wedding, preserving memories that would be treasured for generations. Instead, I won't even be there, and I won't be in their photos.

Today, while everyone else is celebrating, I'll be thinking about the memories we might have shared, the photographs that will never be taken, and the family that still exists, but from which I have become invisible. All because I stopped believing.

If you've never understood why so many former Jehovah's Witnesses speak out about shunning, this is what it looks like.

It isn't an abstract doctrine. It isn't a theological debate. It's an empty chair at a wedding. And today, that empty chair is mine.

Written July 2026

   Paul Grundy  2005 - 2026