MEET THE PASTOR
The Reverend Dr. Jonathan C. Augustine
Dr. Jonathan C. Augustine (a/k/a “Pastor Jay”) serves as senior pastor of Big Bethel AME Church, the oldest Black church in Atlanta, GA, and as a member of the inaugural faculty at the Hampton University School of Religion. Dr. Augustine is an accomplished author, sought-after speaker, and internationally recognized academic leader.
Prior to leading Big Bethel, for six-years, Pastor Jay led St. Joseph AME Church (Durham, NC), while serving on the faculties of North Carolina Central University Law School and Duke University Divinity School, where he was also a member of the Board of Visitors and chaplain to the Duke Football Team. For four years prior to leading St. Joseph, he served as senior minister at Historic St. James AME Church (New Orleans, LA) the oldest predominantly Black, Protestant congregation in the Deep South (1844), while also teaching at Southern University Law Center. He served eight years as the general chaplain of his beloved Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
An accomplished author, Pastor Jay’s most recent books are When Prophets Preach: Leadership and the Politics of the Pulpit (Fortress Press, 2023) and Called to Reconciliation: How the Church Can Model Justice, Diversity and Inclusion (Baker Academic, 2022). His scholarly articles appear in the University of Richmond Law Review, Howard Law Journal, Louisiana Law Review, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, and Theology Today, among others.
Pastor Jay serves as chairman of the board of the Agora Strategy Council of the Payne Center, a research-based “think tank” and affiliate of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. He also serves as a member of the board of directors of PartnersGlobal, Inc., a Washington, DC.-based non-profit organization, focused on democracy building. He has been invited to lecture in Heidelberg, Germany; Accra, Ghana; and Oxford, England, and has been featured on C-SPAN Book-TV. His leadership was also profiled in March 2024, on the front page of USA Today.
A gifted and nationally celebrated communicator, Pastor Jay was inducted into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers (2024) and elevated to serve as vice president of the Judicial Council (Supreme Cort) of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was twice awarded the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Volunteer Service (2024 & 2017), and previously named “Outstanding Alumni Brother of the Year” by Alpha Phi Alpha (2017). He also won the fraternity’s Belford V. Lawson National Oratorical Scholarship (1994). As an emerging leader, Pastor Jay received the Ten Outstanding Young Americans Award, from the U.S. Jaycees (2004) and was named to Ebony Magazine’s “30 Leaders of the Future” (2001). He is an active member of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity.
.jpeg)
After earning an economics degree from Howard University, Pastor Jay served as a decorated infantry officer in the United States Army. He subsequently earned his law degree at Tulane University and served as a law clerk to Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice (then-Associate) Bernette Joshua Johnson, before practicing law and serving in both publicly elected and gubernatorially appointed offices. He earned his Master of Divinity degree at United Theological Seminary, completed a fellowship at Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Doctor of Ministry degree at Duke University. He is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Education degree at The University of Alabama.
​
Pastor Jay is married to his partner and friend, Michelle Burks Augustine, Big Bethel’s leading lady. They are the proud parents of two college students, Mason and Jillian.