Book Review: Stumbling Over the Cross: Preaching the Cross and Resurrection Today

In Stumbling Over the Cross, Joni S. Sancken, an assistant professor of homiletics at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH, offers her fascinating theological perspective on how to preach the cross and resurrection of Jesus as the core belief of Christianity. Along the way she engages with the complexities of the 21st century congregational situation, such as the growing pluralistic challenge and ever-present reality of existential suffering. The author contends that our “cross-less” pulpits (which bypasses non-negotiable truth) must proclaim God’s redemptive action in the fullness of Christ with unalienable theological confidence, even in the midst of the ontological tension between God’s hope grounded in scripture and the persistent shadow of the cross