A sexy beefcake calendar featuring masculine Mormon missionaries has provoked the church to banish its publisher.

Chad Hardy, whose Men on a Mission calendar was launched late last year to immediate controversy, was excommunicated after a two-hour meeting on Sunday.

The calendar features a dozen male missionaries, all wearing the church's familiar uniform of black slacks, but without the customary white shirt and red tie.

A sixth-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints (Mormons), Hardy told the Salt Lake Tribune it was never his intention to disgrace to church but to step “outside the stereotypes" and "outside of the image".
 
"Bottom-line, they still felt the calendar is inappropriate and not the image that the church wants to have," Hardy said after the two-hour meeting.

Though he will be able to appeal his excommunication, he said he had no intention of doing so.

"I'm done with organised religion," he told the Tribune.

Some of the twelve models, all of whom had all worked as missionaries and were still active in the church, had also been called in for disciplinary hearings. However, none have been expelled.

According to Hardy, plans are already underway for a 2009 calendar.

The 2008 calendar has sold 20,000 copies.

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