Bending History: Selected Talks of Joseph W. Mathews conveys the message and methods of a radical churchman in the 20th century, who started a global movement of renewal of the church and local communities in over forty nations. CONTENTS Foreword - Bishop James K. Mathews Introduction - John Epps (General Editor) Meet Joe the Man: "The Time My Father Died" Section I: Joe's Theology Commentary - John Epps "The Christ of History" (booklet form 1969) Three RS-I Lectures (mid to late 60s) "This is the Time of Sanctification" (1972) "The Barefoot Jesus" (1977) "Endlessness" (1972) Section II: The Religious Life Commentary - John Epps "Meditation" (1970) "Prayer" (1970) "Poverty" (1970) "Transparent Being" (1970) "The Recovery of the Other World" (1972) "The Long March" (1974) "Hope" (1974) Section III: The Life of Service Commentary - George Holcombe "A Call to Sociological Love" (1972) "Human Motivity & Reformulation of Local Community" (1973) "Mission: Just Five Things" (1975) "Sophistication" (1973) "Forging Social Philosophy" (1976) "Profound Humanness: Integrity" (1976) "What Hath Been Wrought" (1977) Section IV: New Form of the Religious Commentary - John Cock "Transpadane Christianity" (1974) "Paravocation" (1975) "Those Who Care" (1975) "The New Movement" (1972) "Two Faces of the Movement" (1975) "Six Speeches" (1976) "On Taking Care of Yourself" (1975) Postlude - George Walters The Archives - Betty Pesek ENDORSEMENTS: "[I]n 1955 [I] went to the University of Texas from Yale and there I met Joseph Mathews. . . . He and I became close friends and colleagues. He brought to that campus a spiritual depth and enthusiasm. . . . There he was at a largely secular campus of 25,000 . . . students, and he created something of a religious revival. But it wasn't the "tub-thumping" revival, or one characterized by "evangelism." . . . It was rather [a] spiritual revival as he pushed students to new depths of intellectual search on spiritual issues. He had a following hard to imagine, and it took only two or three years for him to [help] develop it into the Christian Faith and Life Community. He took the germ of that idea with him through many parts of the world as he developed [a] movement. If we had had a structure in the Methodist Church or even in Protestantism that had the rigor of the [Roman] Catholic hierarchy, Joseph Mathews would probably have been treated first with hostility, as was St. Francis, and then later admitted into the fold as one who was the great