The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (752 page)

Exarch
.

In some E. churches a
metropolitan
whose office is of high status, though not as high as that of
patriarch
.

 
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(Lat., ‘from the seat/throne’). Authoritative statements in Roman Catholicism.
Such definitions are ‘irreformable’, because they do not rely on the consent of the Church. The phrase colloquially has therefore come to refer to statements made with the kind of authority that brooks no argument.

 
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Exclusive Brethren
(Christian sect)
:

see
PLYMOUTH BRETHREN
.

 
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Excommunication
.

A censure imposed by the
Christian
Church which deprives a person of the right to administer or receive the
sacraments
or to hold office in the church.
The term is then applied to the process of expelling members from the, or a, community in other religions—e.g. the expulsion of a member of the Buddhist
sa
gha
(monastic community) if he has committed one of the four offences which are known as
p
r
jika
(involving defeat): sexual misconduct, theft, murder, boasting of supernatural powers. See also (in Judaism)
EREM
.

 
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(Gk., ‘bring out’).
1
The task of ‘bringing out’ the meaning of a text. Exegesis raises immediately the central question of
hermeneutics
, whose meaning is the meaning of the meaning? The task of exegesis is to seek out legitimate meaning in the light of continuing and developing understanding. However, if the text does not exercise some control over proposed meanings, interpretation easily becomes eisegesis (reading meaning into a text).
2
A seminar-based organization devoted to ‘the business of transformation’. Running from 1976 until 1984, Robert D'Aubigny's Exegesis Standard Seminar has attracted c.5,000 people. This est-like manifestation of the human potential movement, the first of its kind to be developed in Britain, has also attracted considerable controversy. Psycho-spiritual growth combines with mysticism in action in the modern world—shades of Gurdjieffian, ‘the work’, and an attempt to fulfil socially as well as individualistically envisaged human potential.