Visnja Cogan has a suggestion for preachers: don't mention reality

I'm linking this because the reviewer's reaction made me laugh: the Irish Independent (registration required) discusses the new U2, An Irish Phenomenon by Croatian-French author/fan Visnja Cogan, opining that most of the book is "dangerous territory with pitfalls of pretension cropping up with every paragraph." But here's my favorite comment in the article: "From a fanatical fan's point of view perhaps some of this quest is fascinating but in the section on spirituality she states: 'What bothers me, however, is the use of U2 songs in sermons as U2 have never tried to convert anyone and they have never preached to anyone.' What! Did she ever see Rattle and Hum with that hectoring egomaniac drawling in his ludicrous John Wayne accent and spouting off about whatever 'issue' came into his head?"

Cogan walks right into that one; but joking aside, just based on the one sentence quoted, it's a bit harrowing to imagine what kind of results would come of her principle being applied universally -- a sort of rigid cultural isolation of believers, in which no Christian homiletical work was permitted to interact with any art, writing, film, music, theatre, or cultural product that wasn't already explicitly "trying to convert." Imagine having to live with that kind of repression!