Rev. Don Beisswenger at Glendale Baptist

Rev. Don Beisswenger (formerly of Vanderbilt Divinity School will be speaking this Thursday at Glendale Baptist Church in Nashville at 7:00 p.m. (Honestly, I'll probably be home with the family, but you should go nonetheless.) From Glendale's website:

[Don] will share his experience as a prisoner of conscience, following his arrest for nonviolent protest in dissent over U.S. military policy at The School of the Americas (now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). The retired professor and director of field education at Vanderbilt University Divinity School was sentenced to six months in federal prison in Kentucky for his protest at the Fort Benning, Ga. installation that trains Latin American soldiers.

Ray Waddle, in the December 2004, Presbyterian Voice editorial, said that Beisswenger, a Presbyterian minister, went willingly to prison: “His politics and theology led him there – a commitment to make common cause with voiceless people, whether homeless people in the U.S. or citizens in Latin America who suffer, as he sees it, at the hands of U.S. foreign policy. Several SOA graduates have been implicated in killing of missionaries or torture. The Army says no courses there advocate torture or abuse.”