To associate with, usually on the basis of church membership. [Also to DISFELLOWSHIP, to turn out of an organized society.] The word goes back to 1410, N.E.D., but does not appear to have been introduced into America by the early Puritans.
1813. We considered him heretical,… and refused to fellowship with him.—Address to the Christian Public, Greenfield: Pickering (1816).
1831. They were disfellowshipped by the association.—Troy (N.Y.) Watchman, Sept. 3.
1844. Why should [Rigdon] say on the public stand, “Brethren, I want to live with you and to die with you,” while he wept aloud, if he did not fellowship the church?—Letter of Orson Hyde, in The Prophet (N.Y.), Oct. 15.
1845. “Notice. This is to certify that Elder Godfery (sic) of Mansfield, Connecticut, is disfellowshipped from the Church … of the Latter-Day Saints, for not obeying the Council of Twelve, and is hereby cited to appear before the Council at Nauvoo, Ill.”—Advt. in The Prophet, N.Y., April 19.
1847. If the Christian Alliance could not fellowship with the Southern slaveholders, they ought to say so outright.—Speech at a conference, May 8 (Bartlett).
1850. “Disfellowshipped. William B. Marshall of Savannah, Mo., for idleness, intemperance, and gambling.”—Notice in the Frontier Guardian (Orson Hyde, ed.), May 1.
1850. The [Wesleyan] conference gets into a “pretty considerable fix,” from which it endeavors to extricate itself by disfellowshipping the obnoxious parties.—Id., May 29.
1853. When Jacob was unpopular, and the nations hated him because of the peculiarities of his religion, Esau forsook his brother and disowned relationship, fellowshipping with his brother’s persecutors.—P. P. Pratt at the Tabernacle, Salt Lake, April 10: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 261.
1853. I would disfellowship a man who had received liberally from the Lord, and refused to put it out to usury.—Brigham Young, June 5: id., i. 255.
1857. I do not fellowship them in that [whisky-drinking]; but I disfellowship them for so doing.—H. C. Kimball, at the Tabernacle, Dec. 27: id., vi. 192.
1870. They had imbibed the spirit of apostacy to that degree that they could not any longer be fellowshipped, and they were cut off from the [Mormon] Church.—Rae, ‘Westward by Rail,’ p. 155 (Lond.).
1878. ’Taint natur that a great lazy sozzlin’ girl is one a woman will fellowship if she ain’t noway related, nor if she is, neither, for that matter!—Rose T. Cooke, ‘Happy Dodd,’ chap. xxxiii.
1881. One little irritation we have suffered [in reading Dexter’s ‘Congregationalism,’] and that is from the ugly use of fellowship and even disfellowship as verbs.—Atlantic Monthly, Feb.
1886. He never fellowshipped with any of our churches.—Christian Life, May 1. (N.E.D.)
