David Batstone

Batstone wrote the book Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade - and How We Can Fight It, in which he wrote about human trafficking and how social inequality and poverty make it easy for traffickers to find girls to traffick.[7] Julie Clawson wrote positively of this book, writing that she appreciated Batstone's "audacity in telling story after story of modern-day slavery."[8] While still a student, Batstone studied under William R. Herzog, who taught Batstone about the parables of Jesus.[9] Batstone is an advocate of workplace spirituality, about which he wrote in his 2003 book Saving the Corporate Soul.[10] He is also a liberation theologian who considers postmodernity an era in which "we wallow in private affluence while squatting in public squalor."[11] An anti-slavery activist,[12] at the 2012 Freedom and Honor Conference in Korea, a conference about slavery and human trafficking, Batstone was one of the two keynote speakers.[13]

Born in Illinois,[2] Batstone graduated from Chillicothe Township High School in 1976.[14] He then earned a B.A. degree in psychology from Westmont College in 1980. Batstone received an M.Div. degree from the International Baptist Seminary in Switzerland in 1982 and a second M.Div. degree from the Pacific School of Religion in 1984. He completed his Ph.D. degree in systematic theology at the Graduate Theological Union in 1989.[15] His doctoral thesis in liberation theology was entitled From Conquest to Struggle: Jesus of Nazareth in the Liberation Christology of Latin America.[1]