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“Speak truth to power.” The phrase resonates with the biblical prophets and the courage it takes to challenge those preoccupied with maintaining their power at the expense of truth. The phrase rings true in Robert Mugabe’s rule over Zimbabwe, or in the stonewalling silence of a church in the wake of a sexual abuse crisis.Yet in American culture, and especially in mainline Protestantism, the phrase has become hackneyed. Pastors invoke the phrase in sermons; seminary professors use it in classroom lectures; groups organize around it. One person even suggested that the phrase is the very heart of the pastoral vocation. Is it really?

De La Torre brings new light to the book of Jonah when he sets it in conversation with the lives of marginalized peoples. The United States takes the role of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire, in an argument that hopes for readers’ conversion to God’s revelation among the disenfranchised. For the sake of reconciliation among peoples, De La Torre urges a Christian praxis that extends mercy and establishes justice simultaneously.