A Decade of H2OPE

The African Well Fund's annual "Build A Well for Bono's Birthday" fundraiser this year benefits Burkina Faso. This is the tenth year of this initiative (I think I've donated every year, and encourage readers to do so as well.) Donations from the nine previous Build a Well for Bono's Birthday fundraisers have totaled more than $213,000 and have been used to fund clean water and sanitation projects implemented by AWF partner Africare to benefit more than 56,000 people in Angola, Benin, Liberia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Consider a gift to this great cause.

Because the ONE campaign asked me to....

Water, water everywhere … nor any drop to drink

Mark Meynell of All Souls Langham Place blogs about a Sunday focusing on the world water crisis with a presentation that used U2's "Wave Of Sorrow." The sermon itself is on this page. Even if you don't care about somebody using "Wave of Sorrow," you should click through to the post to read the statistics on the global need for clean water and what gets spent on that versus on, well, other things.

Blog Action Day on Poverty, Oct 15

This post is part of Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

Tom Davis, President of Children’s HopeChest, reflects in "Neue" on hunger and food waste using "Crumbs From Your Table." He connects it with the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

Excerpt:
Our table scraps alone are staggering. How so? The U.S. government estimates that 27 percent of our country’s consumable food ends up in landfills. That’s a pound of food per day for every American family. Supermarkets, restaurants, cafeterias and the average family are all part of this culture of waste.... In fact, recovering just 5 percent of that food could feed 4 million people a day. That’s about half the population of Somalia, one of the “hungriest” countries in the world, according to U.N. findings. The crumbs from our tables.

FT.com | MDG Blog

Some may see this as less or more off topic, depending on your theological persuasion, but: Beginning with this Q&A on the MDG summit, you can follow a series of blog posts all week from Bono as he spends a week in New York at the Millennium Development Goals summit. Jeffrey Sachs also will be contributing. (The MDG blog itself is here.) Interesting in this Q&A to hear Bono refer to what he does with world leaders as "judo," the same noun that the band used repeatedly to describe the aim of their ZooTV personas.

On the same topic, readers in the US who support the goals of the ONE Campaign, have you signed their petition for Jim Lehrer to ask one question about global poverty at the presidential debate?

Tom Sheridan interview on ONE

Citizen Sugar has a great interiew with Tom Sheridan, who is a lobbyist with Bono for the ONE Campaign. (That's part 1; part 2 is here; more to come.) A bit off topic for this blog, but some interesting comments on different kinds of celebrity activism and what makes Bono's work so effective. ("I've been working with him for almost eight years. He's been at this for a long time and there's no one out there that doesn't believe that he's not only committed to it but that he's incredibly credible on the topic.")

Africa update

There's an evocative and informative video of an interview with Bono (and Jamie Drummond) about the DATA agenda and its many successes in Africa over the past few years on the Guardian site, along with an article that profiles Drummond (more video on him here) in very interesting detail. The video's filmed during the liturgy at what one guesses is either a Catholic or an Anglican church in Tanzania (Tanzania has 9 million Catholics and 4 million Anglicans, so let's say, a little better than a 65% chance the place is Catholic).

The things that happen on mission trips

Worth a link not for anything it says about U2's music, but purely for historical value, the as-yet-untold story of how one committed 1985 World Vision volunteer in Ethiopia inspired another.

Public Service Announcement

I expect that this may not be available for very long, but for those who have not seen it, the video of Bill Hybels' interview with Bono as broadcast at the Willow Creek Leadship Summit last summer has been put up in several parts on YouTube, beginning here.

"It's not about charity, it's about justice."

Tim at Occasio has some reactions to the Idol event last night. A number of similar thoughts went through my mind while watching the part of it I was able to catch.

"it is love and only love that can rattle the 'iron cage' of late-modern capitalism"

The most recent issue of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture features an article called "Burned Over Bono: U2’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Messiah and His Religious Politic." (It would be quite interesting to know what percentage of people recognize the "burned over" allusion in the title before it's explained.) As with many articles, the term "Bono" is unfortunately used in several places to mean "U2," and this slighting of the creative work of the other members of the band is a shame. U2 diehards will also see moments where recourse to books like U2 Live or Bono: In Conversation or U2 by U2 could have been helpful. But overall, interesting and creative thesis argued interestingly and creatively. And hey, our book is namechecked in a footnote.

Abstract:
Within the last decade, many fans and members of the popular press have labeled Bono, lead singer of the band U2, a “Rock ‘n’ Roll Messiah,” because of his global humanitarian efforts and relentless effusion of theological and political messages in song and concert. Focusing on the relationship between religious practice and secular activism, I argue that Bono has performed a secularized soteriology–a public prescription of spiritual and economic salvation unbounded by religious institutions–that conjures an imagined World Polity; and this message has been packaged and delivered in ways that blur distinctions between show business and modern revival techniques.

Bono at the NAACP awards

....What was it I was talking about last night again?


Watch for a subtle evocation of a relevant passage from the epistle of James in there.

"We humbly suggest that you can do both."

I'm surprised this parallel isn't all over the blogosphere... Anyone who has any interest or involvement at all in the ONE campaign, or cares about seeing issues of trade justice, debt cancellation, and more/better aid rise to the level of public consciousness where politicians will have to do something about them, should run to the theatre to see the movie about William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace. Observers will instantly recognize the "Bono" and "Geldof" characters, as well as the Edun/(RED) parallels, and more.

Nuclearity Podcast

I mentioned a while back that I had been interviewed for the podcast Nuclearity, which is doing an episode on Africa and Bono's work with the CCM community. That episode is up today. Featured (besides me) are Michael W. Smith, Steve Taylor (who talks about his own experience of adopting a child in Uganda), Wes Stafford of Compassion International, and writer Adam Palmer. If you listen you will enjoy hearing me steal a lot of lines from ONE speeches.

Their description: U2's singer Bono traveled to Nashville to meet with a group of Contemporary Christian Musicians. Find out why this singer, who has avoided the "CCM" label for years, was motivated to make this trip. Discover what Michael W. Smith saw backstage at a U2 concert. Hear how a trip to Uganda changed Steve Taylor's life forever.

"not just a private matter"

Christopher Dodson, Executive Director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, has sent along a link to his U2's Bono Challenges the Faithful, which looks at similarities between Roman Catholic social teachings and some of Bono's public statements.

"...always reaching out for people who you least expect to be your friend."

I'm not sure how I missed this at the time, but the recent book Mandela: An Authorized Portrait contains an essay by Bono that will probably be of interest to readers involved in social justice ministry. You can read it on the site of Borders Australia.

World Economic Forum

The Davos World Economic Forum Annual Meeting is streaming live this year, so if you'd like to see the panel Delivering on the Promise of Africa which will include Bono, set your clock for 1/26, 18:00 central European time. Description: "In recent years world leaders have agreed to unprecedented commitments for aid and debt relief, while African governments have committed to new standards of governance and transparency. But questions remain as to whether these promises will be met and if Africa can sustain growth and development...."

Nuclearity

I did a phone interview this morning for Nuclearity, who are doing an episode that will cover Bono's activism. I'll post a link to the show when it becomes available.

ONE in Kenya

The ONE Blog is liveblogging from the World Social Forum in Kenya. A great read if you want to know what is going on with local anti-poverty organizations in African countries.

one plus one plus one makes.....

Sunday's Stand Up Against Poverty, in which the ONE campaign and many many many other like-minded organizations participated, successfully set the official Guinness World Record for the largest single coordinated movement of people in history. How many people stood up last Sunday for the Millennium Development Goals and to let world leaders know we want extreme poverty ended in our generation?

23,542,615.