Where you live should not decide

The African Well Fund is now selling "Crumbs From Your Table"-inspired T-shirts.

What do Bono and Billy Graham have in common? ...OK, besides that. ...OK, what else?

Answer: In one week they both hired the same DJ/ pastor, Kenny Mitchell, who is profiled in the book Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. Here's his bio and personal statement. On his homepage, you can hear some excerpts of the Billy Graham material (go to audio, scroll down).

3 weeks till the World Summit and....

I posted maybe ten days ago about an opportunity to sign up to fast and pray for the World Summit, which used to be called Millennium+5 because it is to include a review of the world's progress towards meeting the internationally agreed-upon Millennium Development Goals. The summit is expected to bring together more than 170 heads of state in NY. Readers of this blog probably already follow things like the ONE campaign enough to know that 2005 has been a key year for anti-poverty activists and Africa in particular because of this upcoming summit, as well as the G8 in Gleneagles.

Well, I'm grateful, if that's the word, to Holly at Hunger for Justice for pointing to this article. Obviously there are all sorts of political issues at play here, but here's a section likely to be of interest to you if you texted during "One" or got yourself a white armband or watched Live8: Less than a month before world leaders arrive in New York for a world summit on poverty and U.N. reform, the Bush administration has thrown the proceedings in turmoil with a call for drastic renegotiation of a draft agreement to be signed by presidents and prime ministers attending the event. The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations.... The U.S. amendments call for striking any mention of the Millennium Development Goals, and the administration has publicly complained that the document's section on poverty is too long.

"Mammon Saves"

The story on Fugees rapper Pras sampling U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" for the new single and video "Haven't Found" is getting a lot of play. Pras' mix of the personal and the political fits well with the song (early on we hear "you think that you can buy a better life" and "they got money for war but can't feed the poor," but then guest Sharli McQueen's verse is a reprimand to a boyfriend who has become distracted from her by "fancy cars" and "chasing the shine").

If you like these kinds of things you'll probably like this one. However, the refrain is changed to "you still haven't found," which in combination with the other lyrics and visuals to me gives it all an odd edge of criticism - it's easy to draw the inference that the narrator means to appear wiser than the person being addressed: I've found it, but you haven't....

Here comes the real theological point, though. Particularly given that tone and Sharli McQueen's verse, I was just floored by the irony of the online video, which uses a new technology called Pokeware. This allows you to pause the music and click on blue dots to "interact" with the artwork. A few of the blue dots reveal "Pop-Up Video" type facts about, say, the Atlantic Ocean. Most of them, however, say things like this:
I-Liquid Foundation by Iman. This oil-free, full coverage formula imparts a flawless, natural, matte finish as it softens and conditions. For combination and oily skin types. For more information about Iman Makeup Products click more info.
Or this: Lightweight Cotton Shirt by Gap. Our lightest weight woven cotton. Single chest pocket, button cuffs. 100% cotton. Machine wash. Imported.
Or this: 32" Sharp Aquos LCD-TV Sweepstakes. Popular Science invites you to enter for your chance to win a 32" Sharp Aquos LCD-TV.

I've been wondering ever since U2 released The Joshua Tree, and now at long last a prophetic voice has come forth to reveal how to find what I'm looking for. Pass the Visa.

U2 (band) - Wikipedia

I was kind of surprised to learn that Get Up Off Your Knees is now actually mentioned in the Wikipedia article on U2! Wonder who added it? (That's not a wink-nudge remark; I have no idea.) The cool ISBN function even lets you search for it at libraries.

Put your hand against the television

Not sure where this has been airing, but I just happened on this commercial for the revised edition of Walk On on Relevant's site. It's set to the studio version of U2's "Love and Peace or Else."

Thunderstruck article

Steve Beard, in an article called "Rock, Religion, and Relief," muses after a concert on U2's "charm or anointing to draw incongruent elements together for a common cause."

May your dreams be realized

Along with people everywhere, this blog is in shock and mourning at the news of the murder of Brother Roger of Taize in the middle of Compline last night, in front of 2500 young adult retreatants from all over the world. While it's not yet clear what the motivations of his murderer (a woman from Romania) were, one instinctively lines the situation up with the deaths of those other great peacemakers Martin Luther King and Gandhi. The community -- from 23 nations, Protestant, Anglican, and Catholic, living in a tiny village since the 1940s as a witness for reconciliation -- is perhaps rereading with new eyes the prayers of Brother Roger, one of which I have on my refrigerator and will excerpt here:
You, O Christ, open to me the way of risk. You walk ahead of me on the road to holiness, where happy is the one who dies of love, where martyrdom is the ultimate response. The No that is in me, you transfigure it day after day into a Yes. What you want from me is not a few bribes, but my whole existence.

A month away: Sep. 14-16 is the World Summit

The G8 was the first focus event for 2005; here's number 2 (and it used to be called Millennium+5, in case you're confused; I was). This 3-day event in NY will bring together world leaders to review how we've done, 5 years on, at achieving the agreed-upon Millennium Development Goals (hint: poorly, especially in Africa. Incidentally, the ONE Blog is beginning to try reporting on how debt cancellation and targeted aid are working in very specific locations, which if people pay attention could do a lot to reduce some Americans' chronic suspicion about partnering with non-Western countries).

If you sympathize with ONE and Make Poverty History's campaign to hold our leaders accountable for their promises on this, you can sign up to fast and pray during the World Summit here. Also, can any readers tell me of online sites that have information on vigils/ demonstrations in NYC itself? It was very easy to find full instructions on how to travel to the G8 in Edinburgh, but I'm not having much luck this go-round.

Incidentally, the World Youth Day, which is a large Roman Catholic event going on this next week in Germany, is also focusing heavily on the Millennium Development Goals this year.

Finally, for readers who may not be familiar with the facts about trade, odious debt, and development that motivate this whole campaign, I've tried over the past several months to keep posting links to explanations. This time, let's go to a Christian on the ground in Africa (well, he's on sabbatical at the moment, but has lived there since 1989): here is a mission worker in Burkina Faso giving a very good introductory summary.

The Banner - The Faith of U2

In the August issue of The Banner, the denominational magazine of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, James Kwantes writes an article born out of his experience of a U2 Vancouver concert.

deliot's blog | U2Source.com

A newer site worth checking out is U2Source.com, whose one mission is to make audio of U2 interviews available. The first one I happened to load up was from 1985, done by Mary Turner, whose bright and cheery intro to the band hit all those notes U2 descriptions used to hit in the 80s. Her tone was already making me smile wryly ("Four musicians with more than cars, guitars, and girls on their minds!") before she made it crystal clear that this was 1985 (and made me laugh out loud) by adding, "Plus, three-quarters of the band are Evangelical Christians!" Somehow I don't think that kind of language has been on the bio handout for radio interviewers in awhile.

Mere words

A lovely personal post on faith and art from Waving or Drowning.

Grace over Karma

Anyone who watches the Christian blog world has seen the recent explosion of citations of one passage from the Assayas book, often not well attributed and lacking context. Christianity Today posts, on its Christian Music Today site, a much fuller and more professionally explained and contextualized excerpt from Bono: In Conversation.

Soul at Work

A recent article in the Sunday Independent (registration required, or you can read the @U2 reprint) features a new book by a theologian named Margaret Benefiel, whom the article claims "is one of the biggest-selling religious authors in the world" (Hmmmmm. Memo to Lamott, Warren, Meyer, Borg, Spong et al: call your publicists). The book, ExecutiveSoul: Soul at Work, profiles a number of spiritual organizations -- that is, businesses run on faith-based principles. One of the organizations she selected is U2; interestingly, The Edge agreed to be interviewed on this topic and appears in the book. Excerpt from the article:
Dr. Benefiel said: "Soul at work is not a theological abstraction or a dogmatic mantra but the way that sustained purpose, culture and identity can transcend and enhance an organisations performance and success."
In the book, The Edge said the band have their own Christian way of living.
He said: "There is that community sense that I would associate with the Christian ideal of looking after your neighbour.
"But it isn't always pretty. In fact it's often very rough. Like do you care enough to risk confronting someone with the truth even if it is going to hurt them?
"That's love in action, real commitment to one another, real community and it has nothing to do with being nice to everyone at all times."

El Semanal article

I normally don't post quotes, but I'm making an exception for this one, since this is an Anglophone blog and the passage is probably not widely available in English; it was translated from a magazine in Spanish (El Semanal, #927, 31 July, p. 22 for you archivists out there). Most of the article, it seems, is about Africa and political work, but the piece includes this section as well:
"The spiritual journey, faith, is the important thing about U2. For me, rock is something spiritual," [Bono] explains. "We live in a bizarrely agitated world with a tremendous void of spiritual life. I've always been a very reflective person and I feel that music is like a sort of sacrament that speaks of magnificent things. All the members of our group are spiritually centered."

Bono cites the Scriptures with the mastery of a theologian, and the Bible is his bedside book. "I always felt a relationship with God through silence, and in the Bible I found the answer to everything, but when you come down to it none of that that had anything to do with religion in Ireland. My father was Catholic and my mother was Protestant. Irish religion was lived in such a strange way. I wouldn't say [my family] gave me any religious training."

"The religious instinct is something innate," he claims, "like the instinct of play, and it should be the basis of people's lives. I'm always cautious in talking about my faith because it gets dealt with in a weird way in the world. You've got to be careful, because there is a lot of fanaticism and very little respect or tolerance."

The sighs and joys of selling Harry Potter

Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds bookstore in PA has some good words about Harry Potter and a number of U2 books, including ours (and about U2 themselves.) He wrote a lovely review of Get Up Off Your Knees back in the day.

El Paso Times article

Playing catchup: There is basically nothing in this month-old article anyone interested in U2 and God doesn't already know, but I'll cite it anyway for completeness' sake, since it does mention Get Up Off Your Knees.

"Not for Christians, but out there for the world to see"

Here in quick time format (scroll down, it's a javascript window) is a U2 sermon entitled, but not based on "Vertigo" from a church called "the tapestry" in Richmond, BC. The preacher, who says he's about to see the band in a few days, quotes both a sermon by Brian Walsh and Eugene Peterson's forward from Get Up Off Your Knees, and also uses "Still Haven't Found," "40," and video from U2's performance at the Super Bowl where "Streets" was led into with a paraphrase of the same verse from Psalm 51 that launches the Church of Ireland matins liturgy ("O Lord open my lips/ that my mouth show forth thy praise" -- frequently misquoted as "that I might show forth" by people who don't recognize the verse, I might add.) The sermon is more about the overall witness of U2 than any particular song.

Stocki talk from last spring, and article from this summer

Calvin College's student activities weblog has put up some files of talks from the 2005 Festival of Faith and Music. One of them is "Crumbs from your Table: U2 and Justice" by Steve Stockman. I was interested in Stocki's comment about his white ONE/Make Poverty History wristband (the one that's on my left wrist as I type this, and incidentally I have some extras if anyone needs one). He asks how many people at the seminar besides him are wearing it, and then simply tells them if they were part of the same sort of evangelical Christian audience but lived in the UK, they would all be wearing one. He also talks about trade justice in the context of Edun, and mentions how his regular visits to Cape Town have changed his understanding of how necessary it is. (And incidentally, just because you're not in Edun's high-end fashion demographic, that doesn't mean you can't buy fairly traded clothes.)

While we're on the topic of Stocki's connections with Cape Town, ALL BECAUSE OF YOU, I AM - U2, AFRICA AND UBUNTU is an article he wrote reflecting on the political messages of the Vertigo Tour for a South African magazine. Excerpt:
The Biblical idea of interdependence, captured in Africa's idea of Ubuntu, was the secret of how Nelson Mandela reconciled his people with the violent criminals of the cruel white oppressor in post-apartheid South Africa. Co-existence was vital not only to the peace of the nation but to the very identity of his people. Archbishop Tutu took Ubuntu, the springboard of his thinking, and turned it into a theology that the world needs to hear, wake up to and start living. U2 have heard it and are spreading the word -- "All Because of You I Am." Everyone!

I still haven't found what I'm looking for - Generational Text

Duncan at PostKiwi uses "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" as an example of what questions to ask of texts that "form and express the values of a generational cohort." It's also worth reading his more general post which he links along the way. (As anyone who has read Get Up Off Your Knees knows, one of the sermons on "Still Haven't Found" makes a similar case about the song.)

odyssey: Mystic Preaching

The preachers' conversation over on Odyssey sparked by some remarks from Bono has been a good one, and after a break of sorts, Chris took it in a new direction: Mystic Preaching. Worth a read.

Sun and ONE

Have you heard the one about Bono, the Pope and the airport security guy?