Tying up some loose ends all over the web

Just want to get a few links in here before my calendar says 2005.

The Center for Church Advancement at Cincinnati Christian University included a synopsis of Scott Calhoun's review of our book in its Nov 2004 issue (PDF), commending "the effort of 26 ministers to utilize pop culture (in this case the songs of U2) to communicate the Gospel from the pulpit."

Little did I know that Get Up Off Your Knees was also featured in a USA Today blog a couple weeks back (the writer thought it was new because of Scott's review, and also thought it was a pretty strange idea). Check it out at USATODAY.com (scroll down to Wednesday, Dec. 8.)

Way late on this one too, but thanks to Catherina Hurlburt of Prison Fellowship's BreakPoint for naming Get Up Off Your Knees on her list of 2004 Christmas book suggestions, along with several other worthy U2 titles.

And finally, our book shows up in the 2004 publications list of the Academy of Homiletics: Homiletix E-Journal.

Xanax and Wine lyrics

Anybody heard the "Xanax and Wine" outtake, which is obviously an early version of "Fast Cars" (it has exactly the same verses, but a different sound and a real chorus)? I like "Fast Cars" much better, but had to smile at these lyrics from the beginning of the "Xanax and Wine" chorus:
Save me, save me from myself
I know that you've been good to me
But now I need you not to be...

And it's not even Saturday night

So, what did I tell you? Someone came by this site recently looking for "sermons on Vertigo by U2." I've also gotten some "Yahweh sermon" searches, but that could be anything....

We're fishing for more interesting trout.

It's a great article, "Meet the Bomb Squad." You should read it so you can hear what Larry and Bono think about other bands, about whether U2 will play Croke Park, and so on. You should read it so you can enjoy Bono tweaking The Streets about "uh... what parable would that be, exactly?" You should read it so you can arm yourself for the next person who gives you a hard time about how, if U2 care about social justice, why don't they give their own money away to charity, with this line and bonus Bible quote: if you "tell people you're giving it away then, by our definition, it is no longer charity, in the sense that the right hand shouldn't know what the left hand is doing."

But finally, you should read it so you can help me make sense of Bono's description of "the Edge who is Methodist blood, Presbyterian heart." The reverse makes all the sense in the world to me - I was about half educated by Methodists (the other half by Anglicans) and learned much of what I know about preaching from a Presbyterian, so I have great sympathy for both the Wesley charism and the Calvin charism. So OK: Prebyterian blood would mean from a Presbyterian family. Methodist heart would mean a "strangely warmed" faith plus social justice commitment. But "Methodist blood, Presbyterian heart"? Help me out here. Did he just say it backwards?

Hodie salvator apparuit

Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new-born baby's head

Christmas at The Alternative Hymnal: U2 - Pop

The Alternative Hymnal, this holy week, suggests that "the time where you'd think we'd be the most sure about ourselves seems to be the time where I question myself and my motives more than any other time in the world...." So why not add "Mofo" to the Hymnal?

notes from the front lines: Bono's Take on 'Evangelism'

Actually, I like ZooTV a lot, but the rest of this post does have some things to recommend it. Also, for those of you who enjoyed part one of those extended theological reflections on HTDAAB from the blog davestuff, part 4 (yes) is up.

How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb Rebuilds the Heart - byFaith Online

Gee, I think the folks at byFaith online, the web magazine of the PCA, kinda liked How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. A giddily enthusiastic sweep through all the tracks, picking out the prayers, the trust, and the remedies for hopelessness. Includes a different take on "Vertigo" and a nice brief U2 theological history as well. (For anyone who finds the notion that this is a conspicously Christian U2 album odd, this article might help you understand why so many people have remarked it.) One of a few money paragraphs: How do you dismantle an atomic bomb? U2 offers very biblical hints, beginning with the most obvious - get on your knees, and ask that your heart be broken first. Someway, somehow, in the brokenness that results, something of a "dismantling" of sin might just take place, might just lead you with hands raised to Yahweh, might just lead you to shout in the streets, or on the O'Reilly Factor, or wherever God gives you a voice, that "the sun is coming up on the ocean."

21st Century Reformation: Sermon on Kindness

It would be interesting to take bets on how soon some of the HTDAAB songs will turn up in sermons. Here's an early entry using "Miracle Drug" from 21st Century Reformation. The post is about the process of writing the sermon (which is where we preachers get converted and re-converted, if you don't know); the sermon itself, all about kindness, is in audio form, with a link at the top (it will not work in Media Player for me, but I was able to paste it straight into Winamp.) The U2 content is at the very end, and doesn't take account of the band's comments about the song being based on the story of Christopher Nolan, but uses the text well in dialogue with I Cor 13 and Matthew 25.

Ethics Daily weighs in on How to Dismantle...

Here's a review and track by track commentary on the new U2 album by a theology professor at Campbell University Divinity School; it's from Ethics Daily.com, a Baptist site. It's kind enough to cite our book. Excerpt, saying something we're hearing a lot about U2's theology: My first listen through Atomic Bomb left me with two initial impressions. First, this album is going to be a hit. Musically it's their best overall album ever, and four or five of the tracks are naturals for release as singles that should get good airplay.
Second, the majority of the people who buy and listen to this music may not fully grasp its deepest significance. Of all the albums U2 has recorded over the past 25 years, this one is the most overtly Christian in its rendering of the world. But this is obvious only to those who are already being formed by the biblical story and thus look at the world through the same set of lenses worn by the creators of this music.

Things of Infinite Importance on Fast Cars

Did you think the lyrics to "Fast Cars" were a typical extra-bonus-track piece of fun fluff set in some kind of Moroccan bazaar and tacked onto the end of HTDAAB to pacify two nations who suffer from high CD prices? You'll think again when you read the song being used in this meditation on grief from Things of Infinite Importance. While I'm not convinced these U2 lyrics are about loss, it works great in this context.

This is a song Television stole from the rabbis; we're stealing it back

Thanks to Dave from the Third Day (3D) Fellowship in Fresno for sending me not only a kind, personally encouraging email, but also another email asking if I might link part one of some theological reflections he's doing keying off HTDAAB, which draws on "Vertigo." It's not a review, though it is apparently going to go track by track; rather, it's a complicated and idiosyncratic stew of references, reflections, puns, theories, citations, and silliness, ranging over many topics, with one excursus apiece on a. the Devil and b. so-called Christian music. While reading the whole thing will expose you to some creative and interesting connections, if you haven't the time today for so lengthy an article, you can get a good sense of it by scrolling to sections like TWO ROCKING BOBS, TWO JEWISH APOSTLES, AND THE ELEVATED "I AM" or SPIRITUAL VERTIGO: JOIN THE CLUB or CHECKMATED BY MACPHISTO?

prophets of a kind

I intially saw it on a blog by rosie hartnell, but then found the original of this HTDAAB review by Brian Draper, lecturer in contemporary culture at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Excerpt: Christians used to debate passionately whether U2 were really 'one of us' or not. ...It's easier to see now, however, that this was a band ahead of its time, with a songwriter attuned to both the changing culture and the tensions felt - but rarely voiced - by many Christians. ...For those caught between the somewhat black-and-white theology of charismania and the dusty religiosity of the established church, U2 were, and still are, prophets of a kind.

HTDAAB book

Just a quick note to say, since I normally observe blog etiquette and don't change past entries, that I've made some small edits to the post I made explaining the theological themes in the box set book back in November. People continue to come straight there from various links, and I just cleaned a few things up with help from a commenter or two.

Mile High Musings comments on the new U2 album

Here's another walk through HTDAAB from someone with theological training, Sam at Mile High Musings.

Off The Record on U2 being more on the record

I don't know how many of you regularly read "Off The Record" from @U2. Matt says he originally wrote a whole review on the much more explicit spirituality on HTDAAB for their staff wrapup, but trashed it. Nevertheless a couple nice comments on that theme in this week's edition.

Why don't more evangelicals care about the AIDS crisis?

Cathleen Falsani, who wrote a column on our book and traveled with Bono on the Heart of America tour, isn't willing to put a positive spin on the World Vision survey I wrote about recently, and she tells us why - with HTDAAB content, too, if that's what you're here for.

"I didn't know how powerful that innocence was"

I'm told by email correspondents that you can't read the thing about Anton Corbijn's exhibition I linked to below, in connection with some comments about rebirth as a theme in the How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb lyrics, unless you've paid your $40 to U2.com. Well. It goes a little something like this:

Bono: I think one of the most important moments for me on this album happened when I went to see Anton Corbijn's exhibition. Anton has done all our album covers and has been a very close friend of the band, and one of the most important photographers in the world and truly a great, great artist. He had a museum show in Holland where he's from, and I went to see it and he hadn't told me but there was a room full of giant photographs of the band and a lot of me from when I was very young, and he put me in to the room and I was like 'Just get me out of here!'

And then I saw this photograph - I guess I would have been 20, 21 - getting into a helicopter, the first time I'd ever been in a helicopter, first or second video we made, and it was New Year's Day, and we're just about to take off. And I saw this face, and the face was so open and so empty of complications and so the naivety was there and it was so powerful, and this Dutch journalist came up and said, 'Bono, what would you say now to this Bono back then, have you anything you would say?' And I was trying to think what I would say, and it kind of just came out of my mouth, I said, 'I'd tell him he's absolutely right, stop second guessing yourself.' Back then I didn't know how powerful that naivety was, I didn't know how powerful that innocence was so I was trying to rid myself from it, I was trying to set fire to myself, and get rid of this, become a more worldly person, become a man of the world, and of course the less you know, the more you know, sometimes the less you feel, and really understand.

Harbinger: Dreaming

I missed this post at the time, but it's worth linking in retrospect a couple months later. Here Harbinger talks about eschatology in a song by techno artist BT and in U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Got to excerpt this, which nails the problem with the criticism that a committed Christian should affirm having already found what s/he was looking for: The misunderstanding arises from placing the center of gravity of salvation upon a personal conversion experience, as opposed to where it biblically stands, at the re-creation of all creation and final elimination of sorrow that God will institute in the future. In the meanwhile, Bono was then, and still is, out-Christianing all the Christians. Hat tip to Hopeful Amphibian.

That's Jehovah to you

Album comes out: Nov 22/23
"Yahweh" first used in church services: at least 2 places weekend of Nov 27/28

I am not going to be reviewing HTDAAB per se, for those that have asked. But I may say a word or two about some songs, and I think right now I'll comment on the lyrics to "Yahweh." Here I speak only for me, not for anyone else involved with the sermons book or our publisher or anything like that.

Of course I know that many Christian listeners were instantly thrilled by "Yahweh"; I have to admit that at first, I wasn't one of them. It reminded me of "40," and after all U2 has done since 1983 for them to return to the place where they close an album with a straight-ahead inarguable hymn just seemed to me far too pious and self-limiting for them. (I probably would have liked the song instantly had it been on a Matt Redman album, don't get me wrong...) I've gotten used to the idea and can take the song at face value now, but it took awhile. (And I do sympathize, as a Christian: sometimes you just really want to shout the truth of how you feel about God even if you know many people will misunderstand you.)

There's an obvious lyrical retread of the earlier U2 song "Do You Feel Loved" (lyrics down at the moment because of the Universal fiasco, sorry) but I also wonder if there is an influence from "Take My Life and Let It Be," especially since the message is precisely the same as that hymn's?

I initially thought the only non-personal verse on "take this city if it be thy will" was odd. Now that I realize they will be singing it in maybe 70 cities, and thus getting maybe 1,400,000 people total to sing it with them (in those people's own cities), it seems like a shockingly bold stab at spiritual warfare. However, Angela Pancella has a whole different theory in this comment which is pretty persuasive too.

Another thing by which I initially was annoyed was the "tell me now why the dark before the dawn" line, which struck me as a sort of insincere Mandatory Bono Insertion: "can't write a whole song of faith, must insert a doubt-reference even though it's obvious this lyric is actually madly in love with a vision of total consecration." Then, out of nowhere, I heard it in my head as the kind of utterance recorded in Exodus 33 when Yahweh and Moses are having such an intimate tete-a-tete that Moses blurts out "now show me your glory!" As if it's sort of "now that I'm finally right next to you I'm going to be so daring as to expect an answer."

Another member of my household is quite taken with the "what no man can own, no man can take/take this heart and make it break" line. There's an odd comment on U2.com about the reference having to do with people not being able to "own" Jerusalem, but it also vaguely evokes Biblical references like Rom 8:38-39, and a passage that is semi-quoted earlier in the song, John 16:21-23. But I think what he likes most is the repetition of "take" - how it brings home that the ultimate gift of self is too big to be given to, owned by, another finite human; total self-abandonment is only for God.

Finally: I was interested to hear in the alternate version that there was originally a much muddier, vaguer period of wandering around before the "Love is like a drop in the ocean" revelatory moment, and that near the end there was originally one chorus that (with typical U2 wordplay) changed the text to "Yahweh, You're waiting for me, I'm still waiting for the dawn." In both cases, they seem to have decided that the watchword of the hour was total clarity and removed things that suggest hesitation or lack of commitment.

"And I saw this face, and the face was so open and so empty of complications..."

Drop by the newly designed U2.com to see Bono telling, as part of his inspiration for one of the tracks on HTDAAB, the very same story about the Anton Corbijn show I was mentally connecting with the album in this post. "I think one of the most important moments for me on this album happened when I went to see Anton Corbijn's exhibition," he says. I have to say I feel rather vindicated!

odyssey: There'll Be No Emergence Without Joy

Does it sound too much like a bad joke to ask what Taize, Bono, Bishop Tutu, and Paul Ricoeur have in common? Odyssey doesn't think so. Sivin Kit picks up the same idea. But they missed a great Bono quote on joy (it shows up on @U2's homepage regularly).

Incidentally, something that does not give me joy is this business of Universal suddenly forcing the major fansites to take down their U2 lyrics after permitting them to be posted for years. These sites are the most professional U2 resources on the net, far surpassing U2.com in timeliness and completeness. They've helped countless people to deepen their appreciation for the band's work, and to boot the material they post is -- unlike the lyrics on the official site -- often actually correct. Talk about eating all your friends with a mouth full of teeth.

World AIDS Day - 1 December 2004

The African Well Fund, a charity founded by U2 fans, invites you to join their virtual vigil.