Father Michael Lapsley Will Be the Honored Speaker at Washington Adventist University’s Convocation on March 4
Takoma Park, MD (March 3, 2015) South African Anglican priest and social justice activist Father Alan Michael Lapsley, best known as “Father Michael,” will be the honored speaker at Washington Adventist University’s weekly convocation on Wednesday, March 4 at 11 a.m. Open to the public, the convocation will take place at Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, located at 7700 Carroll Avenue in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Father Michael will also be honored on Saturday, March 7 at 6 p.m. at the Living Legends Awards, hosted by the Human Symphony Foundation at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
Born in New Zealand, Lapsley was ordained into the priesthood in Australia, where he joined the religious order of the Society of the Sacred Mission. In 1973, Lapsley travelled to Durban, South Africa where as an undergraduate student, he became chaplain to students at both black and white universities during the height of the apartheid repression.
When Lapsley began to speak out on behalf of schoolchildren who were shot, detained and tortured, he was expelled from the country. He went to live in Lesotho and continued his studies there, while supporting the liberation struggle.
Lapsley is a graduate of the Australian College of Theology, the National University of Lesotho and the University of Zimbabwe. He was the subject of Priest and Partisan: a South African Journey, written by fellow South African priest and theologian Michael Worsnip, with a foreword by Nelson Mandela.
In September 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attack on America, Lapsley joined more than 30 terror victims from around the world — including families of those killed in the September 11 attacks — to create the International Network for Peace to promote effective and nonviolent solutions to terrorism.
Lapsley is the author of Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer with Stephen Karakashian, which includes a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu. The book details Lapsley’s struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and how a letter bomb nearly killed him, taking both hands and one of his eyes. With an entire nation in need of healing, Lapsley discovered that his own experience with trauma could help promote the healing of others.
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Washington Adventist University is Montgomery County’s only four-year private college. Part of the Seventh-day Adventist system of higher education, Washington Adventist University has been educating college students since 1904 on a 19-acre campus in suburban Takoma Park, close to the nation’s capital. Approximately 1,100 students of all faiths participate in the university’s eight graduate and 32 undergraduate programs. The 2014 edition of U.S. News & World Report ranked Washington Adventist University among the best regional colleges in the north.
Media Contacts:
Angie Crews, 301-891-4134, acrews@wau.edu
Donna Bigler, 240-286-1169, dbigler@wu.edu