The Mormon Church will hold a hearing this month on whether to excommunicate the founder of a popular website challenging Mormon traditions for supporting gay marriage and ordaining women.
John Dehlin
told The New York Times on Thursday that his disciplinary hearing was set for Jan. 25. He founded the Utah-based Mormon Stories website and podcast in September 2005 and faces a charge of apostasy.
Should Dehlin refuse to take down podcasts criticizing the church or reject his support of same-sex marriage or of ordaining women, he said he could be excommunicated.
His site explores historical and social issues within the church, formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Regional church leaders warned Dehlin last June of the charges against him, according to the Tribune.
"I would prefer for them to leave me alone, but if given the choice between denying my conscience and facing excommunication, I’d much rather be excommunicated," he told the Times.
Kate Kelly, a human rights lawyer and Mormon from Washington who founded the Ordain Women movement within the church, was excommunicated in June.
The effort, founded in March 2013, calls for women joining the Mormon Church's all-male priesthood, the Tribune reports.
The disciplinary actions had created a chilling effect within the Mormon community, the Tribune reports.
"Over the past decade, a whole generation of Mormons has held out the hope that the religion we love can become more diverse and welcoming and meet its 21st-century challenges with openness and confidence," Joanna Brooks, a Mormon writer and literature professor at San Diego State University, told the newspaper in response to news of Kelly's hearing last June. "Convening a disciplinary court because a believing Mormon woman asked hard questions out loud will only compound those challenges."
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