Just before her unexpected passing, Katie Geneva Cannon began her contribution to this Festschrift by stating that M. Shawn Copeland “is one of the most important systematic theologians in the twenty-first century” (35). Each of the other sixteen essays substantiate this claim by engaging and extending Copeland's work. The text begins, however, with Saracino and Rivera interviewing Copeland and foregrounding her theological commitments as they developed from her childhood in Detroit until her position as Professor Emerita at Boston College. During this interview, Copeland specifically notes how:

This key theological commitment is developed in several fruitful directions through the edited volume's three major sections on embodiment, discipleship, and politics.

The first section, “Engaging Embodiment,” consists of six essays that elaborate on Copeland's insistence on a new anthropological subject. Roberto S. Goizueta begins by highlighting the rationale for Copeland's subversion of the Enlightenment's subject, which is identified with the white, bourgeois, autonomous man. By building its theological anthropology from this subject, the full scope of the Gospel message has been compromised. Copeland argues that remembering the exploited, despised, poor, women of color allows Christ to be present in history in a manner that disrupts the logics of domination inherent to the Enlightenment project. Stephen Ray Jr. develops this insight further by focusing on the theological significance of flesh in the context of modern-day objectification and desacralization. In particular, he focuses on the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement “because the very essence of it is anchored in a defense of the sacrality of flesh: Black flesh” (86). Eboni Marshal Turman likewise explores Copeland's use of anamnesis by intentionally remembering the neo-crucifixion of Sandra Bland's 2015 death in a Texas jail cell. For Susan Abraham, this anamnesis inspires solidarity with those dehumanized by the evil of racism, contributing to authentic worship in what she calls the Black Eucharist. It is precisely this invitation to solidarity that reveals the universality of Christian love that disrupts the false universality of nation and race.

This vision of universal love that seriously attends to the particularities of embodied reality contributes to the second section, “Engaging Discipleship,” which, in a series of five essays, focuses on the challenges of following Jesus today. Mary Ann Hinsdale highlights how both Johann Baptist Metz and Bernard Lonergan influence Copeland's vision of discipleship in a time of impasse. Such following cannot be mere imitation but must be a dynamic mystical/political following that gives authority to those who suffer, as Metz would argue. Such following also involves the different levels of Lonergan's intellectual, moral, and religious conversion, all leading toward the self-transcendence of compassion.

The final section, “Engaging the Political,” consists of six essays that concentrate on the political implications of Copeland's theology. Although Susan L. Gray focuses on the value of Copeland's use of Lonergan for liberation theology, Karen Teel reflects on the moral imperative to understand how white supremacy functions in Christian theology during the post-9/11 era. Finally, Christine Firer Hinze's closing essay reveals how Copeland's “theological pedagogy aimed at deep conversion” is particularly meant to awaken consciousness, solidarity, and discipleship in the context of the “majority white US Catholic community's participation in the soul sickness that is American racism and white supremacy” (249–50).

It is precisely because of her capacity to inspire the church toward greater fidelity to the Gospel that Copeland is a “theologian of the Word, the Word enfleshed, and the Word enfleshing freedom” (xi). This volume provides a remarkable reflection on her work and should be used in upper-division and graduate-level theology courses that encourage reflection at the intersection of embodiment, discipleship, and politics.