Were their names blotted out on request or not, en masse? Alma 6:3

Were their names blotted out on request or not, en masse? Alma 6:3

After Alma ended preaching to the church, all the people who were not yet members who repented were baptized and became members of the church. Everybody who did not repent had their names blotted out from the church.

Basically, this concluded a long struggle that Alma and his followers had been having about how to deal with, "What do you do with dissenters within the church?" We do the same today. You can remove your name from the records of the church. In order to be added to the records again, you need to be rebaptized.

ANSWER:

I think that this verse implies that probably some people had their names blotted out simply by a failure to repent of their wickedness and humble themselves before God. However, we don't really know if their wickedness extended to personally requesting for their names to be removed, or if Alma was just trying his best to deal with the management of the church. I guess that potentially it could have been a mixture of both of these cases.

Today you have to actually ask for your name to be removed. It is really sad when people do that. It's one thing to drift off into inactivity (which a lot of people do). It's a wholly separate thing to leave the church actively.

Excommunication is another way you can be removed from the church today. I suppose that this verse is implying that there may have been a bit of a mass excommunication thing going on. If so, that sounds very sad indeed.

The only thing that is not sad about people leaving the church is that it is not the end for them. In fact, excommunication is always done with the person's own best interests in mind. It isn't about protecting the church. It's about removing a layer of agency for the individual. It's essentially removing one's baptismal covenants. Without those covenants, you are no longer under an obligation to God to live up to them. You also willfully deprive yourself of the blessings that accompany so doing, which is the sad part. But when you have less agency, you're also less accountable. It is better sometimes for some people to become less accountable for a short time before they can come back. It is always better for people to come back, though.

Apparently, the majority of God's children did not need to be part of his church during their lives. Most people die without ever joining the church. They will get the chance to do so later. But apparently, the common plan for mankind is to have less accountability in this life. That's a little bit odd to think about, but it makes it easier for me to deal with the idea of people I love leaving the church.