Dr. Heather Oson Beal will provide a brief history and an overview of an exciting new activist organization in the U.S. religious landscape —Ordain Women— a group that was founded in March 2013 by a small group of Mormon women whose primary objective is to petition Mormon church leaders to ordain women to the lay priesthood in Mormonism. She will be speaking in the Doyne Health Sciences Center Auditorium Monday, October 27, 2014 at 5:30 p.m.
Heather served on the Planning Committee and then on the Executive Board of Ordain Women before recently stepping down.
She will discuss some of the unique challenges the women (and male allies) of Ordain Women have faced in their first 18 months as they have begun agitating publicly, both in sacred Mormon spaces and in virtual spaces, for gender equality in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (more familiarly, the LDS or Mormon Church), a highly patriarchal, conservative religious tradition. Ordain Women is committed to using thoughtful, faith-affirming, in-person strategic actions to raise attention to their cause.