“We have grown used to a world that measures everything by what it produces, and to a church that too often measures itself the same way. This book asks a better question. Where, in a culture of speed and disposability, do we learn to be creatures again? Its answer: at the table, in the water, among the poor, on a particular piece of ground. These ideas feel familiar, but they have rarely been argued with this much theological seriousness or this much passion. What moved me most was the insistence that place is not scenery but vocation: that faithfulness means staying somewhere, with someone, long enough for grace to do its slow work. A wise and timely book.”

“Gutiérrez challenged the church not to let its sacraments become an ‘empty action’ in the face of social injustice. Sobrino noted that in a violent world, a Christian theology of liberation inevitably becomes a theology of martyrdom. Henry Spaulding draws upon the rich resources of liberation theology, alongside the Eastern theologies of Maximus Confessor and Sergei Bulgakov, and the phenomenological perspective of philosopher Edward Casey to present an embodied sacramentology that offers an alternative to neoliberalism’s crass commodification of human life. The result is a bold and beautiful theological anthropology in which the human and the divine encounter one another in our collective struggles for basic human dignity.”

“In a culture in which everything and everybody are treated as a commodity to be exploited, Sacraments of Liberation is a wide-ranging work that—by paying careful attention to the sacraments as embodied practices of divine grace—helps us find concrete, material ways to resist exploitation, heal creation, proclaim justice, experience freedom, and inhabit the world otherwise. I felt newly informed, at times surprised, and often inspired as I read it. Highly recommended!”