Controversial Methodist Rev. Greg Dell will speak today on campus about sexual orientation and the church.

NIU will honor Dell this afternoon at a ceremony celebrating the NIU Gender Studies Collection, which is the Founders Memorial Library’s new set of resources on gender and sexual orientation.

Dell is a minister at Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago. In 1998, he presided over a same-sex union ceremony at his church.

“He’s an important figure because what he did was challenge mainstream thinking about the relationship between homosexuality and religion and, specifically, Christianity,” said Margie Cook, program coordinator for University Programming and Activities.

For his actions, Dell was placed on trial by the Methodist church and found guilty of violating Methodist doctrine and teachings. As a result, the church suspended him from the ministry for a year.

The trial became a national controversy and received coverage in major newspapers and on television.

Academics who study gender and society find Dell’s trial to be an important piece of history, so Dell has made available his personal documents from the experience, as well as numerous other church documents.

NIU was selected to receive Dell’s donated material. The library seized the opportunity and ran with it.

“When he did that,” Cook said, “it prompted the library to create the gender studies collection as a special collection in the library that would include his papers and would collect other things.”

Dell’s collection includes documents from the official trial and an array of information from In All Things Charity, a not-for-profit group set up to help Dell during his trial and suspension.

“There’s e-mail that was coming in from all over the country,” said Glen Gildemeister, director of NIU’s Regional History Center. “And, there are photographs, videos, oral tapes, correspondence, petitions, church documents and that sort of thing.”

The list is extensive, and many people haven’t waited to start using the resources.

“The stuff is available already,” Gildemeister said. “We’ve already had requests from as far away as New York for materials for a doctoral student who is doing research.”

Dell will conclude his evening at NIU with a lecture titled “Same Tune, Different Words: The Church and Sexual Oppression.”

All of the events are open to the public, and visitors will get a chance to see some of the collection.