Mormon Church sues critic John Dehlin over "Mormon Stories" podcast

LDS leaders claim the podcast causes “confusion” over the brand, but the lawsuit looks more like an attempt to silence a powerful ex-Mormon voice

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The founder of a prominent podcast critical of the Mormon Church is now being sued by the Church for trademark and copyright infringement… as if there’s any way listeners might be confused between the podcast and the subject of it.

John Dehlin in a thumbnail from his podcast

John Dehlin began the Mormon Stories Podcast in 2005 when he was questioning whether or not to leave the LDS Church. It soon became a haven for other critics and former Mormons—and a landing space for listeners who harbored the same doubts but knew the Mormon Church wasn’t a safe place to get their questions answered in a meaningful way. (True story: I’ve met a lot of ex-Mormons over the years, and my first question to them is inevitably whether they’ve heard of Dehlin and his podcast. The answer is, almost without exception, yes. It’s the podcast you listen to when you’re walking away from the religion.)

In 2015, Dehlin was officially kicked out of the Church for the “crime” of apostasy—he was accused of leading people away from the Church—though Dehlin argued the real reason was because he openly and proudly supported same-sex marriage and the ordination of female priests. I also interviewed him around that time.

The podcast has become popular enough that it spurred the creation of a non-profit group—the Open Stories Foundation—in 2010 to oversee the show and go beyond it. In 2024, the group generated over $1.12 million in revenue.

That’s nothing, of course, compared to the tens of billions of dollars hoarded by the LDS Church. You would think, given all the very legitimate criticism of Mormons from all over the place, the smart move would be to simply ignore what one podcaster is doing, even if he’s popular, in order to avoid the Streisand effect.

But the Mormon Church is taking the opposite approach. Last week, after months of conversations between the two sides, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sued Dehlin for trademark and copyright infringement. They’re arguing he has no right to use the word “Mormon” or any of their materials.

As Defendants are well aware, the public associates the term MORMON with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has used the mark MORMON and other names and marks incorporating the term MORMON since its founding nearly 200 years ago. Defendants’ use of Church trademarks and copyrighted materials has caused and will continue to cause individuals to be confused and access Defendants’ content mistakenly believing it comes from or is affiliated with or endorsed by the Church. This is not by accident. Defendants adopted a blue MORMON STORIES logo with a light-rays design prominently used by the Church, showing Defendants’ intent to capitalize on and increase confusion. Defendants’ logo was calculated to imitate the Church’s logos by using confusingly similar color, font, and other design elements, as shown below.

In absolutely no sane world is anyone listening to Dehlin’s podcast and confusing it with Official Church Propaganda. The closest you would ever get is someone searching for information about Mormonism, stumbling across the podcast, and quickly realizing it’s not advertising for the LDS Church. After all, why would the banner for the show include Dehlin’s picture—an apostate!—instead of Mormon leaders?

But the Mormon Church insists there’s confusion. To make that argument, the lawsuit includes examples, cherry-picked from the podcast’s social media pages, of people who came across it because they believed it was pro-Mormon… only to realize that wasn’t the case. Here’s just a sampling:

There are more comments where those came from, but they all seem to prove the opposite point. People found Mormon Stories because they had questions about Mormonism… and then realized it wasn’t promoting the LDS Church. At no point in any of the comments included in the lawsuit do people say they genuinely confused Dehlin’s words (or his guest’s words) for Church policy. The fact that some of those commenters say they stopped listening immediately after their realization are points in Dehlin’s favor!

(Also, for a podcast this popular, it’s deeply unfair for the Church to go searching for comments suggesting confusion is afoot because you’re bound to find anything you want. That’s the nature of popular comment threads. It’s also likely people in those threads said slurs or made ad hominem attacks against Mormon leaders. Whatever the case, it’s absurd to blame the podcast host for that when he’s not baiting any of that.)

To avoid confusion, the LDS Church demanded that Dehlin include a disclaimer everywhere saying that his podcast for ex-Mormons and believers who are being persecuted for questioning LDS Church policies isn’t an official product of the religious sect. But that, too, is beyond parody. No one should have to open their show by explaining which groups they’re not affiliated with.

Keep in mind that there are pro-Mormon podcasts that use the word in their titles, too, but there’s no indication the LDS Church has ever gone after any of them for trademark violations even though those podcasts are not official products of the Church either.

Whatever the case, the two sides began to discuss their positions beginning in February.

Dehlin agreed to remove any copyrighted images from his website and social media pages. (The LDS Church says he broke that agreement by later using an image of a temple to advertise an episode.) He changed the logo’s color from Mormon blue to non-Mormon orange. He even added the disclaimer to podcast descriptions on every platform.

What Dehlin refused to do was issue a disclaimer at the beginning of every show “acknowledging that Mormon Stories is not affiliated with the Church.”

That’s why the Church is now going after him. And their case is weak.

Just consider the copyright issues. The lawsuit includes examples of official photos released by the Church that were later used in the thumbnails for Dehlin’s podcast videos:

That seems like a perfectly normal case of “fair use.”

The Church is also mad that Dehlin uses the word “Mormon” at all... which is wildly ironic given that the LDS Church itself has urged people to stop using the word because they don’t want to be known that way. (Case in point: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is now officially called the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.) And yet here they are telling the court that it’s their word and not anyone else’s… and they have the paperwork from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to back it up.

This is all, they say, deeply damaging to the billion-dollar religious organization:

Unless these acts of Mormon Stories are restrained by this Court, they will continue, and they will continue to cause irreparable injury to Plaintiffs and to the public, for which there is no adequate remedy at law.

May we all strive to have this kind of influence. The Mormon Church is seriously arguing that Dehlin’s perfectly defensible use of their language and imagery might topple the entire damn religion. As if one man could destroy all of Salt Lake City through the power of… a podcast.

The lawsuit asks the court to stop Dehlin from using any logos or imagery that is “confusingly similar” to the LDS Church’s, and they want a jury trial.

Dehlin issued some informal responses to all this already, saying that he’s “been using the Mormon Stories name for my podcast for more than 20 years without any objection from the Church” and that he made plenty of changes at the request of LDS Church lawyers. But he adds that it’s “unreasonable” to demand anything beyond that:

… We didn’t feel any disclaimer was required, but in the spirit of cooperation we adopted one in our podcast description. The Church wanted us to make the disclaimer more prominent so it was essentially the primary thing anyone sees in our branding which we believe is unreasonable. We don’t want our primary message to be about what we are NOT. We have operated for a long time promoting who and what we are…

He says he was surprised by the lawsuit “given how cooperative we have been.” (There is a fund for supporters who want to contribute to the podcast’s legal defense.)

The LDS Church insists it’s not going after Dehlin for what he says, only for the way he’s marketing his show, but there’s just no jury on Earth who would buy that excuse:

People are free to express support for or criticism of the Church and its teachings. This case does not concern the content of the podcast.

There’s a far stronger case that the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” might confuse outsiders who don’t know any better, but the Church famously didn’t fight that battle in court. If anything, they used it to their advantage. Did the Church sue Hulu over “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”? Not a chance. Even though that suggests a window into, well, the secret lives of Mormon wives.

I guess that strategy of not picking fights with people who aren’t promoting the Church is out the window now, given that they’re going after one of their most prominent critics.

On Monday, Dehlin released a video summarizing and responding to the lawsuit:

It’s truly amazing this is how the LDS Church is wasting its time and money. Pope Leo is fighting fascism while the Mormon Church is fighting a podcaster.

This lawsuit also tells you everything you need to know about the modern LDS Church. They’re not really trying to protect their “brand” at all. They’re just trying to put obstacles in the path of someone who has helped countless people leave the Church. Rather than addressing the criticisms people on Dehlin’s show make, they’d rather turn off the microphone by forcing Dehlin to fight an expensive legal battle.

This is how you know the show makes a positive difference in people’s lives. It shows them their lives can be fulfilling and wonderful and guilt-free outside the bubble of Mormonism.

If this is how the LDS Church treats a former insider who asks questions and builds community, imagine what it signals to current members who are quietly doubting. If you become too effective at articulating those doubts, the institution won’t just argue with you; it’ll try to silence you.

By picking this fight, the Mormon Church is only confirming the criticisms they’re so desperate to suppress.

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