Like the two traveling companions walking on the road to Emmaus, leading them from a well-known path to an unfamiliar realm in which they encounter the Risen Christ in a communal breaking and sharing of bread, Anthony Baker invites theologians and communities of faith to 'leave home' and undergo a process of metanoia in order to realize together who God is. By becoming attentive to the diversity of testimonies that reveal the challenging, nourishing, transforming, and liberating Good News about God within us--even in our corporeal world embroiled in crisis--we can attain this urgent theological discernment and practice.
~Ángel F. Méndez-Montoya, Full-Time Professor and Researcher, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City
The humane breadth of Christian belief has rarely been displayed better than in Leaving Emmaus. Deeply grounded in the historical tradition, the concerns of human life are never far away, both encountered in literature and the arts and seen in compassionate attention to some of the most pressing social challenges of our day. The range of scriptural discussion is fascinatingly wide. I do not know of a more creative teacher of theology than Anthony Baker.
~Andrew Davison, Starbridge Senior Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge, and Fellow and Dean of Chapel, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Mirroring a superb, tenacious, rugged tour guide for the iconic Grand Canyon National Park, Dr. Anthony Baker uses the lucid, passionate language of 'disrupted contemplation,' to engage theology as faithful transcendence and testimony. He superimposes constructive over classical systematic theological categories framed in everyday language. Leaving Emmaus--grounded in autobiographical, experiential questions and reflections of a faithful life of family, colleagues, world events, scripture, history, novels, and plays--names large-scale, systemic failures, as it focuses on faithful transcendence. Luke 24 forms the biblical background for the volume. By mapping ancient and contemporary theologies, the text focuses on helping students learn to think theologically while exploring personal and communal contextual testimonies. Engaging categories of theology, spirit, Trinity, creation, human beings, the God-human, sin, sacrifice, church, prayer, and last things, Leaving Emmaus challenges readers to an inspiring encounter from an interdisciplinary perspective. Such an encounter involves retelling testimonies that move one toward freedom, hope, and transcendent love. This text is a must-read for those interested in thinking in new ways about theology as prophetic praxis and pragmatic pedagogy.
~The Rev. Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Ph.D., Scholar, Consultant, Poet, and Performer
In this compelling book, Baker advocates, as an apologist for theology, for readers to 'leave home'; in other words, to not rely solely on their lived experience of God, but to engage with the many other witnesses who have testified in God's language -- theology. Leaving Emmaus is a book meant for the real world, for daily lived experience as human beings in a created world.
~Christine Havens, The Living Church
