Kate Kelly
Kate Kelly, foreground. Photo via Scott Sommerdorf / The Salt Lake Tribune / RNS
When Stephanie Engle was a teenager, she struggled with what she termed as the racism and sexism within the LDS Church.
Engle said she researched Mormon history after moving away from home for college, learning about polygamy, and other “really questionable practices” of church founder Joseph Smith.
“I just thought this is so obviously not true,” she said.
“I can’t keep claiming that I believe it.”
On July 25, six years after ending her participation in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Engle took a final step to sever her ties with the Salt Lake City-based faith.
With a signed letter in hand, Engle joined roughly 100 current and former Mormons — including Ordain Women co-founder Kate Kelly — at a mass-resignation event a block from the church’s downtown headquarters.
Kate Kelly. Photo via Creative Commons / Maralise Petersen / RNS
Nearly a year removed from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ordain Women founder Kate Kelly says she has found happiness living a more authentic life while continuing to push for equality in the Mormon faith.
Kelly, who was excommunicated in June 2014, now lives in Nairobi, Kenya, where she works on human rights efforts. She was back in the United States briefly on April 23 as part of an offshoot project of the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City to explain how she was punished for speaking out for women’s rights in the LDS faith.
“The men who (excommunicated me) literally think they kicked me out of heaven,” Kelly said.
“Luckily, I do not think that. … Out of this experience, I’ve realized that men don’t get to control my happiness. I’ve come out on the other end, (where) I think I’m much happier, much more authentic, a much more invigorated person.”
Still, on stage at the Gotham Comedy Club, a space usually filled by raucous laughter, Kelly broke down in tears talking about her ouster from the LDS faith and the repercussions for herself and her family.
“It’s like an execution, a spiritual death,” Kelly said of Mormon excommunication.
“It’s very, very extreme.”
For their part, Kelly’s Mormon leaders have said the door always is open to her return.
Kate Kelly, a founder of Ordain Women, was excommunicated by the Mormon Church. Creative Commons image: Katrina Barker Anderson
Women’s ordination advocate Kate Kelly said it’s unlikely she will seek rebaptism anytime soon into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which excommunicated her Monday.
The decision by a Mormon bishop’s council in Virginia to excommunicate her for “conduct contrary to the laws and order of the church” stunned Kelly, she said.
The word “apostasy” does not appear in the letter her Vienna Ward bishop, Mark Harrison, emailed to her, although it was the charge lodged against Kelly when he called for Sunday’s disciplinary council.
“I honestly thought until the very last minute that they would do the right thing,” the Ordain Women founder said Monday evening.
Doug Peterson refuses to let Kate Kelly (right) into the LDS General Conference. Photo: Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune
Mormon women seeking tickets to the faith’s general priesthood session next month will not only be denied access to that all-male meeting, but also may be shut out of Salt Lake City’s historic Temple Square altogether.
LDS officials also are barring news media cameras from the square during their two-day General Conference, which the church says is “consistent with long-standing policy.”