The Prelude to Pentecost

The power to witness effectively in these troubled times is the basis for this book in which Speaks challenges today's church to offer more than pep pills of personal piety, laxatives of racial tolerance, and the surgery of social revolution. Speaks dares the church to build temples of love on the dung hills of hate, to build a new community of brotherhood upon the shifting sands of racism, and to build a new society of peace upon the wastelands of human strife. The Right Reverend Ruben L. Speaks received his AB degree from Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa; MDiv from Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey; and STM from Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1972, Bishop Speaks was elected the seventy-sixth bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and for eight years served as presiding bishop in West Africa. He also authored 'Higher Catechism for Ministers and Lay Leaders', 'The Minister and His Task', 'The Church and Black Liberation', and 'God in an Age of Scarcity'.