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In When Prophets Preach: Leadership and the Politics of the Pulpit, Jay Augustine urges twenty-first-century preachers to speak openly against social injustice, establishing such preaching as a key component of prophetic leadership.Beginning with the premise that the church was birthed to address salvation in the'kingdom-to-come'and social justice in the'kingdom-at-hand,'Augustine presents prophetic preaching as part of the ministry of reconciliation Jesus left to the church. Addressing topics such as abusive immigration policies and racial injustices, he urges the church to return to its foundation of prophetic leadership as exemplified not only by Jesus but by the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles.When Prophets Preach demonstrates that faithfulness to this ministry requires preachers to break the pulpit silence. Then the church can lead in bridging social and ethnic gaps among its members. It can show society at large how to heal many of the social, economic, and political divisions in our world, the very rifts that underscore the need for social justice ministries and that necessitate prophetic preaching.

A fresh vision of the common good through pnumatological lensesDaniela C. Augustine, a brilliant emerging scholar, offers a theological ethic for the common good. Augustine develops a public theology from a theological vision of creation as the household of the Triune God, bearing the image of God in a mutual sharing of divine love and justice, and as a sacrament of the divine presence. The Spirit and the Common Good expounds upon the application of this vision not only within the life of the church but also to the realm of politics, economics, and care for creation. The church serves a priestly and prophetic function for society, indeed for all of creation. This renewed vision becomes the foundation for constructing a theological ethic of planetary flourishing in and through commitment to a sustainable communal praxis of a shared future with the other and the different.While emphatically theological in its approach, The Spirit and the Common Good engages readers with insights from political philosophy, sociology of religion, economics, and ecology, as well as forgiveness/reconciliation and peacebuilding studies.