Left of Black S3:E16 | Dr. Luke Powery Discusses His New Book—‘Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death and Hope’

In a year marked by no less than sixteen mass shootings in the United States, including shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado  and a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, the murder of twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was perhaps the most tragic of exclamation points.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook murders, women and men of faith were challenged to make sense of what was so obviously senseless. 

Throughout his career, preacher and scholar Dr. Luke A Powery, has attempted to strike the right chord with regards to the reality of death and the responsibility of those in the pulpit.  In his new book Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death and Hope (Fortress Press), Dr. Powery writes, “In order to experience life, resurrection, or hope, one must go through death…yet in many contemporary churches, some preachers avoid dealing with death because they do not realize its vital connection the substance of Christian hope.  Because of this denial of death, we are left with sermons that possess a weak pnuematology and are fundamentally hopeless.”

Dr. Powery, the first Black Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, sits down with host Mark Anthony Neal in the Left of Black Studios to discuss death, preaching, and hope in times of despair.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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