The church congregation functioned as a recognized unit of society. It clearly had rules of membership since violation of those rules could result in being disfellowshipped. Entering into the baptismal covenant included enduring to the end in keeping God’s commandments, a covenant explicitly renewed in the sacrament prayers. Thus, the community had expectations about acceptable conduct.
The only punishment for violations was excluding the violator from the community. The church did not constitute the city’s temporal government, for the penalty was not death, fines, imprisonment, or exile from the city. The Nephite church functioned in its social setting as it had from Alma’s day—as a subset of the larger community. At times the political leaders would almost certainly be church members (or even church leaders), but the opposite was also probably true, particularly in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Moroni’s instructions are so explicit that this issue must have been concrete and present, not abstract. The process of removing someone from the church needed this level of clarity only if it was actually used. In this case, the procedure was that three witnesses “of the church” were to present the person and the violation “before the elders.” This instruction suggests that the church handled such actions internally, without recourse to legal procedures from the larger society.
People who were “of the church” would be church members, and the unstated presumption was that witnesses would themselves be in good standing. (At least, this is the implication of being “of the church.”) Having three witnesses fulfilled the maximum requirement of the Deuteronomic law of witnesses, which also allowed only two (Deut. 19:15). The accusation was presented “before the elders,” which could simply mean the congregation’s respected priesthood-holding men; but Moroni 3:1 suggests that “elders” are the twelve. Certainly, the twelve would be the ultimate governing body and the final authority on who could be called Christian.
During the presentation of the case, the accused could repent. Judgment was rendered only “if they repented not, and confessed not.” Although there may have been intermediate stages between full reacceptance and the extreme penalty that “their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ,” Moroni does not mention other options. Blotting out cancels the covenant. When the offender’s name is blotted out of church records, Christ’s name is also blotted out of them. During baptism, they took the name of Christ, and Christ took their names to keep in remembrance. After blotting out, they were no longer his sons and daughters. They were no longer his kin. They were no longer members of the kin-community of the church.
Vocabulary: That a name would be “blotted out” implies paper and ink. While there were certainly both paper and ink in Mesoamerica, the phrase also occurs with sufficient frequency in the Bible as to be the more likely source of that particular phrase in this context.