First real rumblings? Who knows...

Anyone who has read my chapter on the theological history of U2 in Get Up Off Your Knees might remember my expressing a certain surprise that there was little or no public criticism of U2's return to a) omnipresence and b) wearing their heart on their sleeve during (in particular) the 3rd, post-9/11 leg of the Elevation tour. I talked about the Rattle and Hum backlash and wondered why there seemed to be no similar attacks from the critics in 2001-2002. Though I haven't seen a show yet, it's obvious the overt political tone is back, as is a more explicit Christian profession most of us thought we'd never see again. I've been wondering, as a Joshua Tree-era fan myself, if U2 were possibly going to be able to get away in 2005 with combining their current massively high profile with the same kind of stuff that got them branded as self-righteous, pious, know-it-all, and over-impressed with their own importance in the late 80s. While I've seen some critical comments on the political content of the show and on the band sometimes going through the motions, they have been in dominantly positive articles, and there's been plenty of wholesale fawning, too. Chicago, however, marks the first real "give us a freaking break, U2" stuff I've read: this one, but most especially "The Rev. Bono" from the Sun-Times. "Every bit as phony, bombastic and manipulative as a Britney Spears concert, the Republican National Convention or a televangelist's miracle-working dog and pony show." Man, reading that put me right back to 1988. What's next?

Make poverty history

If you missed the ONE print ad that appeared yesterday, referring to the "defense, diplomacy, and development" triad, and asking support for Bush's FY 2006 budget request, here's a PDF. Half a million Americans have now signed the ONE declaration.

Conquering and to conquer

For those of you who missed it during its run on @U2's front page, the Edge contributed this image, an original drawing, to be auctioned next week as a fund raiser for the Irish Seal Sanctuary. Seals I-III, as Matt pointed out, is a pun, and he explained it better than I could: The hand image with writing is reminiscent of one of the images from the HTDAAB deluxe book. But the text here refers to three seals -- a white horse, red horse, and a black horse. Some of you will immediately know that Edge isn't referring to seals that swim in the ocean; it's a reference to the first three of the seven seals of Revelation in the Bible. Reading this as someone with congregational experience, I had to smile thinking back to the different groups of parishioners who were always intrigued by the detailed symbolism of apocalyptic books, one of whom was those Christians with precise, technical, scientific minds. Incidentally, I would much rather have this as a T-shirt than the similar Edge "intelligent design" maze U2.com is selling.
[post edited 5/16 to include image, courtesy of @U2.)

Youth study session on U2

I was recently pointed to this lectionary-based U2-related youth group session outline from earlier in the year. While it makes several general comments on U2, it's based on Psalm 40 and uses "40." (A much more plausible song decision now than when the study session was published in January.) Anyway, overall, the lesson plan is just fair and has some U2 misinformation (The whole band "traveled with the Secretary of State to discuss assistance in foreign countries"? ATYCLB was released only 2 years ago? etc.) But I'm linking it for archival purposes and as something that could perhaps be adapted by a youth group leader with more U2 knowledge.

One Step Closer

Chris Scharen, a professor at Yale Divinity School, is working on a new book about U2. On his blog, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God, he issues "an open invitation to the blogosphere to help me make the book better than what I could write alone." I hope some of you will take him up on this, particularly the folks (I know you're out there) who got nearly perfect scores on that recent Sol O. Mann quiz, or who are lovers of the ZooTV and/or Popmart eras, or who could give Chris some thoughtful reactions from a non-Christian perspective.

uno, dos.

Had a nice series of emails the other day with Steve Stockman, author of Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, a book I suspect most Get Up Off Your Knees fans have read. He is winding up work on the revised edition (which extends up through the beginning of the Vertigo Tour), and hopes to have it out by late June.

Kicking at the Darkness: The Singer Speaks

Overall, this blog has the same policy as the Get Up Off Your Knees book: we're not really a place for discussion or speculation about the personal spiritual beliefs of artists. I try to keep a broader faith-and-culture, art-and-proclamation focus. One thing this means is that I don't often post U2 band member quotes, which I imagine is disappointing for the many people getting here lately in search of excerpts or quotations about God or religion from the new autobiography type book Bono: In Conversation. If that's what you're looking for, material from Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas is now beginning to show up elsewhere in the Christian blog world. I am guessing there will be a whole lot more within the next few weeks.

God in the house

I'd been thinking about doing a post, sifting through some of the reviews of the Vertigo Tour so far, that would analyze examples of the spontaneous religious language used by the secular media to try and describe the experience of seeing U2. I didn't get to that, so here is something very different, a series of comments on U2 live in the form of U2 concert reviews from the Christian online world.

Let's start with a Relevant review of U2 live, followed by extensive discussions that aren't really on the topic of the article. (Funky Presbyterian takes a funny shot at the title: Of course God was there; he can afford the ticket prices.) Jeffrey Overstreet writes a thoughtful review of the first Seattle date.

Other Christian bloggers are posting more spontaneous reflections as well, and I'll link a few, noting that we should all cut them some slack for their wild, over-the-top, just-back-from-the-gig, these-are-not-drunken-as-ye-suppose-type enthusiasm, OK? From U2 in Denver, here's a review post at the Ready Room including funny cell phone comment. The Radley Porch and The Banty Rooster both try to describe the same concert. Here's Uptown Pilgrim who recently returned not only from U2 but also from a mission trip to El Salvador, tying that in and reflecting on community. Mike at Waving or Drowning starts his U2 in Vancouver blog post "Just back from church..." and promises more in-depth reflection later (well worth checking for. Call Paul.) Life of Turner and EternaLee were there too.

Obviously, there are also people posting about how the band are working for the Evil One and anyone who perceives a positive spiritual effect is deluded, etc. Sorry, but you'll have to do your own Googling if you want to read those.

Finally, here are a Presbyterian college minister's reflections on seeing U2 versus coming to church; this gentleman seems to have less U2 background than the writers linked above, but is doing some interesting personal wrestling. Incidentally, this is the first description I've heard of leaving a lone spotlight trained on the crucifix at the end of "40"; one-shot deal or ongoing image, anyone know?

"...a lyric ran through my head..."

Get Up Off Your Knees contributor Mike at Things of Infinite Importance writes about his most recent trip to Africa and what it's like to observe the Confirmation of kids who are under a death sentence purely because of geography.

ONE from Religious News Service

The Religious News Service does their part with a story on ONE, reprinted here in The Baptist Standard.

notes from a truth-seeker - U2 Live in Seattle

Rachelle of notes from a truth seeker, urban abbess of Monkfish Abbey, lets her husband make a guest post about having seen U2 live in Seattle. Theology, merch, political rants: sounds like U2 to me.

[EDIT: Seattle-related addition. For those who are asking, "Who is Steven Reynolds of World Vision?" (the guy "One" was dedicated to, who Bono said was the source of his passion for Africa), he's the same guy who wrote these, and in the Kentucky one he relates the backstory, dating to Ethiopia in 1985. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak on AIDS in Africa at Soulfest last summer.]

radio rebellion: U2 in Worship...the obvious question

Now here's a really on-topic post for this blog! Chris over at radio rebellion is doing a sermon series on the fruit of the Spirit, and he wants to use some U2 media with it. With his permission, then: What suggestions do our readers have for this worthy endeavor?

A few that immediately come to mind for me:
Joy: the U2 visual surely most used in churches, "Streets" from the Boston DVD; or perhaps "Elevation" from Slane (live video).
Faithfulness: "A Man and A Woman" (no video) or "I Will Follow" (from Boston or anywhere else as video)
Self-Control: If you've got a really really cool church, "If You Wear that Velvet Dress" from Pop. Probably nobody has a church that cool, in which case I'll nominate "Vertigo." (video or not)
Love: Totally depends where you're going with it. Could be anything from "Pride" to "All I Want is You." "When Love Comes to Town" might be a nice blank slate for a preacher, since love is depicted as life-changing but never actually defined.

If I were doing this I would also probably do something I don't do much, which is quote the actual people in U2, rather than just their lyrics -- because there are some excellent fruit of the Spirit quotes that come immediately to mind.

Grab bag of articles

Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Richard E. Stearns of World Vision piggyback on U2's Seattle dates to publish an editorial on the goals of the ONE Campaign such as debt relief, fair trade, and extending medical and information technology to Africa. Nice article; pity the Seattle editors can't spell "U2." Incidentally, if you are in the USA and support Make Poverty History, but weren't following what happened at the G-7 last weekend on debt cancellation, some people are emailing Treasury Secretary Snow about it this week. A longer article, US, Europe Spar on African Aid, gives more background. [Edit: and if you are Canadian (while I know you guys have other political issues to think about at the moment too), some people are calling Paul Martin's office about his reneging on the promise to get to 0.7% ODA, as well.)]

On a less serious note, hat tip to Bob for sending along this article: Pope Requests Audience with Bono.

A nod to the online world out there

Back when U2 Sermons was a baby blog, I used to thank nearly everyone who linked us. Nowadays, that's not feasible. So how about a housekeeping post featuring some hitherto unacknowledged folks (i.e., if I'm sure I've mentioned you already, you're not going to show up here). I assume it's obvious this is not a blanket endorsement of any of these blogs, which I would not have the time to read thoroughly if there were 48 hours in a day. While all are apparently interested in U2, some of them I'm guessing wouldn't be interested in each other. Further, you might be interested in them, or you might not; I might, I might not; who knows. At any rate, thank you to:
:::post-protestant thoughts:::, notes from the front lines, roblog, ...looking to the Light..., Disaster Area, Andy & Shona's Blog, Uncle Plastic, emergent layer, Hi-Speed Soul, Touching Ground Zero, Cheaper Than Therapy, Calvin College Student Activities Office weblog, Life of Turner, Perfect Blue Buildings, Gideon Strauss, Donn's Center of the Universe, Planet Telex, Dismantle, Roland Allen, Ragamuffin Ramblings, ::frazzle dazzle me::, The Buck Stops Here, Simon Sarmiento's Journal, feminary, Speakergeek, Existential Punk,odyssey, Emerging Question, ZkyWords, Ordinary Community, and Waving or Drowning?

Not your money: your voice.

200,000 Americans have signed the ONE declaration in the past four weeks. I wonder if this fact will give any pause to USA bloggers asserting that, while other nations may warm to the Global Call to Action against Poverty, Americans will simply never support development initiatives that include government spending as one aspect of their strategy?
Probably not.
Anyway, if you haven't seen Bishop Griswold and the Rev. Robertson back to back yet, you can now watch the full ONE ad here.

Surprise: It's an actual post mentioning preaching technique.

Last Sunday I preached a guest sermon in which I probably set myself too many tasks. One of them was that I felt I needed to at least namecheck U2, since I had been invited as co-editor of Get Up Off Your Knees. Among many others was, at a transitional moment, briefly bringing the Atonement into people's heads before leading into something related to it (an appeal grounded in 1 Peter's treatment of "enduring unjust suffering"). I found an easy way to do both of these at once by quoting from the new Bono: In Conversation book. Here's (close to) what I said:
I'm going to be talking a little in the adult ed time about some work I've done on the spirituality of the band U2, and I've been reading a new book which is an extended conversation a French secularist had with U2's frontman Bono. And at one point Bono is trying to explain the Atonement to this French secularist and talking about what the Cross means to him, and he explains that the world and human religions operate on the principle that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And he gives a nice precis of how the action of your sin should lead to the reaction of God's judgment, but on the Cross "love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions - which," he adds, "in my case is very good news indeed." Mine too.

(Sorry about all those and's, but, you know, ORAL STYLE.) At one service "trying to explain the Atonement to this French secularist" got a laugh; I'm not positive but I think I may have expanded on it a bit in response. Oh, how I wish I had had access then to this interview, posted on @U2 the very next morning, in which Michka Assayas, the French secularist in question, says of the effect of working through these conversations: "I've made the journey from fear to faith myself." Whatever he meant, it would have been fun to throw that in.

Incidentally, I more or less agree with the same @U2 staffer's words in this piece, perhaps especially if you're interested in U2's Christian underpinnings, about which Bono is extraordinarily candid on a personal level throughout In Conversation: "My review, in brief: Go buy this book right now." A mainstream media review is here.

U2WeblogPT: "40"

Any of our readers who speak Portuguese may enjoy this reflection on "40". I was touched to be included (along with "all Christians") in the "dedication" of the piece, whose author says he is an agnostic.

While I'm talking about non-Anglophone U2 fans, it's always interesting to find one's posts being discussed in Swedish, a language for which machine translation leaves more than usual to be desired. And, finally, a big Grazie mille to my new Italian friend who came up with Paris U2 tickets for me.

Bono, Blake, and biblical utopianism

Anu at u2opian wrote recently to share a post he made about the new version of "Where the Streets Have No Name." The connection with Blake is interesting, although I don't know enough about Blake to assess how unique or significant such a connection might be. However, I like the Hobson quote a lot.

One semi-tangential thing I will comment on, because I was discussing it with a friend already.... It's bothering me a bit that people these days tend to say "Streets" is about "heaven," in the popular-piety sense of an idealized afterlife. I don't remember the song being so exclusively associated with that notion before the heavily Christian reading of it, inserting "new Jerusalem" Biblical quotes and a Eucharistic introduction, that U2 gave on the Elevation tour. I think (and here I agree, I suspect, with Anu) that to say "Streets" is about "heaven" in that very limited and popular-piety sense sells a spacious song way short. But it's a very different matter to view that song as expounding Jesus' much richer, more complex, and more paradoxical proclamation of the Kingdom of God. That has room for both what people loved about the song on the Elevation tour (the manifestation/ecstatic experience of the Kingdom now), and for what concertgoers are wrestling with about the Africa version (the not-yet demand that the Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.)

BTW, while I recommend taking a look at Anu's reading of it, speaking from my personal perspective as a believer, "Streets" is the opposite of "utopian"; it's reality therapy. Which is why I cringe to see its vision relegated to pie in the sky when you die.

What is security?

Still catching up on things: Interesting to see that the 2005 Fraser Valley Arts and Peace Festival in BC included a workshop called "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: U2 and the Culture of Fear" by Trinity Western University professor Peg Peters.

Caught up in the rapture: it's a U2 reference, not a Left Behind one

One of those internet collisions....Just after I'd mentioned her here, Camassia shares her thoughts on the book for which this blog is a shameless promotion ploy. In addition to comments on sermons by Steve Stockman and Brian Walsh, she includes some persuasive reflection on why "Sunday Bloody Sunday" needs to be read in the context of the entire War album.

"Somethin' wrong with Jesus?" "Jesus is all right."

Hat tip to the always thoughtful and articulate Camassia for pointing me to this Transfiguration sermon from "blip", using the most-preached-on U2 song in the catalog.

Notes on a Physician's Life - Earnest & Enthusiastic

Here's an interesting U2-related post, as useful to religious professionals as to medical ones, about why it's good to love your work, even when colleagues "seem cynical and weary."

For anyone in the Boston area

I will be giving a half-hour adult education session on U2 and religion at a congregation on the North Shore of Boston next Sunday morning, April 17, as well as preaching the morning services. If you're interested, email me for details.

21st Century Reformation: Did I forget to Mention I saw U2 last Weekend - Review

A California pastor takes his church's worship band on a continuing education event. Read about it at 21st Century Reformation.

CCM Magazine U2 review

This is one of those "catching up on old stories" posts. Here's CCM Magazine reviewing How to Dismantle. Some truth in this closing comment: "If U2's career is like a journey of faith, the band's early albums contained the enthusiasm and certainty of a new convert; Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop were the questioning and rebellious teenage years and with All That You Can't Leave Behind and (even more so) How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, U2 is showcasing both its musical and spiritual maturity." Even more truth in the opening salvo: "Can you name a recording artist who has inspired Christian music's top acts as much as Bono and his band U2? Good luck."

Minor landmark

This is just a small thank you to all the readers of this odd, narrow-topic U2 blog, which today made it to 70,000 hits. (Our 70,000th page view was from Thailand, incidentally.) If only that many people had bought the book, think how happy TASO would be. And I know, it's small potatoes in the real internet world, but still....

Should have waited a day to post about Make Poverty History

It seems another ad specifically promoting the American segment of Make Poverty History, which you can't see online as far as I can tell, will begin airing in the USA on ABC and MTV on Sunday, featuring celebrities and religious leaders. The AP put out a story on the launch, featuring Bono and Brad Pitt, and I can't overstate my delight at reading that two of the religious leaders who will "complete each other's sentences" are "evangelist Pat Robertson and the Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States." This is not a debate on the merits of either of those gentlemen, but right now, it's really hard to imagine two people less likely to appear in the same sentence, much less the same endorsement campaign.

I'm going to give a few more references on all this, since I've had some emails asking me to (one saying "you've got to link Bono's TED speech! I finally get it!") -- and also since often when I post something U2-related on the topic, I get responses that make it clear many people aren't aware of the basic outlines of the issue and think it's a charity fundraiser, or some kind of slanted criticism of their particular government. I expect the questions will only increase as more people see the Vertigo Tour, so maybe this will be helpful.

Background: 191 countries pledged in 2000 to meet by 2015 something called the Millennium Development Goals, which if you click and read them, are not at all pie-in-the-sky idealism, but have targets that are measurable, pragmatic, and obviously achievable. The human realities of the facts behind these targets are very hard for us in the West to wrap our minds around, as is the way they together create what Jeff Sachs calls "a poverty trap" which prevents nations from "getting onto the first rung of the development ladder." The statistics make us glaze over, or the images turn into a sort of tragic Spielberg movie in our minds, and we shift our generosity and attention to something easier for us to imagine, like a natural disaster.

Anyway, one among a huge number of steps on the way to those targets is that high-income nations have set the benchmark of raising their annual aid to 0.7 percent of GNP of each donor country; very few nations have yet done so. There is a good Q&A on the Millennium Project site that will help you learn about the key issue of trade, the perennial suspicion that aid might be wasted, and the particular challenge of sub-Saharan Africa.

We're five years in, and this year is the review year; September is the MDG review meeting (July is the debt meeting). The resources are there, the know-how is there, but progress is such that there's no way the goals will be met by 2015, especially in Africa, unless some major political will gets mobilized. Perhaps obviously, that mobilization is what's going on with the text-to-UNITE thing at U2 concerts. Why 2005? will tell you more about why there is an international campaign to muster that political will this year. The New York Times also published a great editorial on why now is the time; you can read it here (PDF).

There are obvious resonances to tenets of Judaism and Christianity here, although as with the Civil Rights struggle in the USA, obviously many people who have no spiritual convictions grasp the moral force of the argument anyway. Nevertheless, it's no surprise that faith-based organizations were among the first to embrace campaigning on the Goals -- building on the Jubilee movement -- and many of the ONE Campaign's founders are Christian groups. One key evangelical coalition is the Micah Challenge. You you can see a very long list of organizations who are working alongside each other here, and among them, of course, is DATA, the lobbying group founded by Bono.

Here are several ways you can get involved. ONE will gladly sell you a ONE Campaign white wristband (go here if you're outside the USA). And again, Americans can sign the ONE declaration, which is what that video this post started with is promoting.

Crumbs from your table

This piece on the OOZE reflects on U2's (so far unperfomed) "Crumbs from Your Table" as both a personal and political message. Hat tip to The Alternative Hymnal for linking it.

2005: MAKE HISTORY

Over the coming months, millions of people will see and hear this Make Poverty History video in cinemas, at concerts, on the radio, and online. Watch it here: "We don't want your cash, we do want your voice and support."

30 questions for those who have ears to hear

I mentioned recently that the "Gospel and pop culture" quiz writer Sol O. Mann had kindly given me a preview of his 2005 U2 quiz, just in time for the Vertigo Tour. Well, it's up in full now at CanadianChristianity.com, and even if the quiz didn't link this blog directly I could have figured out it was online by the search terms I'm seeing this morning, as people go out looking for answers. If you despair after awhile, though, the answers are in fact at the bottom of the quiz, copiously commented and documented... and incidentally, they're followed by perhaps the most exhaustive collection of links on U2 and religion, God, Christianity, etc. that I've ever seen.

U2 au stade de France !

Franco-American multi-cultural-Christian-community-outside-Paris planter Jonathan honors today in a particularly sadistic way. You need some French to get it (explanation in the first comment). Incidentally... I am still looking for tickets to this concert.

[Edit: oh, and there's also this, which could have been funnier.]

Vertigo Tour review highlights

It seems rather out of place to post about anything but the new U2 tour at the moment, so I thought I'd cite some of my favorite lines from the zillion mainstream media reviews of the San Diego opener. Thanks to a few people who sent me links; Google News pretty much has it all, though.

As Bono knows better than anyone, it's hard to smirk when you're singing at the top of your lungs. --New York Times
Not since the sparse days of The Joshua Tree has spectacle taken such a distant backseat to statements at a U2 concert. ...Heavy-handed? C'mon, this is U2. You must accept a modicum of heavy-handedness to get to the galvanizing strength and cathartic potential of the music. --Orange County Register
After defining U2's identity with a spare stutter, [the Edge] now draws from a staggering range of sonic pigments that evoke passions as mournful, euphoric and furious as anything Bono conjures with language and lungs. --(lost the reference on this one, sorry)
Perhaps there is a room where Americans resent listening to an Irishman lecture them about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ("He wasn't just talking about the American dream," Bono explained. "His dream was even bigger than that.") But this wasn't it. --New York Times
Bono gave the audience another shout-out, changing the lyric "I'm at a place called Vertigo" to "San Diego." (Good luck in East Rutherford.) --MTV

And, just like they did from about '83 to about '89, journalists all have the end of their articles handed to them on a platter again:
"I will sing, sing a new song," Bono chanted. "How long to sing this song?" the crowd chanted back, over and over, until the only sound heard throughout the arena was the forceful thickness of thousands of voices in unison, long after U2 had walked offstage. --Associated Press

I guess in this case being called "pulpit-worthy" by a secular source is good.

I think that this AP review of U2's San Diego concert that opened the Vertigo Tour last night has to take some kind of prize for over-the-top religious language about the band.

Lights go down

Thanks to all the extra folks who stopped by yesterday during what was obviously a global opening-night U2 internet frenzy. If you want to see pictures, read discussions, or debate the setlist of the U2 Vertigo Tour opener in San Diego, there are lots of great sites where you can do that. My three comments: I can't wait to hear "An Cat Dubh-Into the Heart" (not to mention "Electric Co"); I'm sorry to learn so many old reliable chestnuts got reinserted in the show at the last minute (moving from faith back to fear?); and, it'll be very interesting to see the political overtones to "Streets" allowed to resonate a bit more.

Goodbye Heart, hello Egg. Anyone who's going tonight, have a great time.

African Well Fund - Building Hope One Well At A Time

The African Well Fund has just launched their 3rd annual campaign to build wells in Africa for Bono's birthday. From Easter Sunday through the month of April, the African Well Fund invites U2 fans to make a donation in honor of Bono's birthday on May 10th (a date on which U2 will be playing live in Chicago this year). The launch of the campaign, at the Vertigo's Eve party in San Diego last night, started the donation tally at $3500, enough to build at least two wells.

The AWF, founded in 2002, is a 100% volunteer organization of U2 fans who have raised over $70,000 so far to fund water projects in Africa through Africare. Here's where you can donate. This blog recommends participation in this kind of charity campaign, while not forgetting that justice is the longer term answer.

Easter

I am death
the mighty destroyer
of the world

Rock of Ages: The Passion of Judas

Purely in honor of the Triduum, I'm re-linking something from last year, The Passion of Judas, a reflection on "Until the End of the World" by a Catholic priest in Santa Cruz. I see that the blog Stranger in A Strange Land was obviously on the same wavelength yesterday, and has stayed there today as well.

It's about humility; it's about understanding; it's about internal change.

While a tad overwritten for my taste, this review of "How To..." from Zachry O. Kincaid at the Matthew's House Project is worth a look. (The Matthew's House Project is committed to "exploring the Christian story as a means of cultural awareness, re-enchanting the public square with Christian imagination, facilitating the role of the arts in nurturing, nourishing, and evoking experiences of contemporary society, and grounding our participation in culture in our experiences of the local church.") I enjoyed the comparison between U2's album and recent comments by an Amnesty worker: "I've seen amazing things," she says, but "the promise of human rights and the assurance of 'never again' are repeatedly betrayed." The purpose of her actions, she says, resides in the words of Jesus and his call to the least among us. "My motivation is no longer to change the world, but to live out a testimony."

U2 - A Hollywood Jesus Music Review

Hollywood Jesus reviews U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

mission of love

Blogger and pastor Terry Timm draws on Mike Kinman's Palm Sunday sermon in our book to create some reflections of his own this Holy Week.

Agnes Nyamayarwo of TASO

Get Up Off Your Knees benefits The AIDS Support Organization in Uganda, and Agnes Nyamayarwo, a volunteer nurse there, has become well known for helping audiences worldwide understand the realities faced by HIV+ Africans. The U2 fansite Interference interviews her. Excerpt: "During some of the hardest and darkest periods of my life, I would sit in my bedroom and ask God, 'Where do I begin?'... Some people had already started distancing themselves from us. It was indeed a terrifying experience trying to imagine how my children and I would continue living [with] this stigma around us. I used to read books looking for answers. Some of the answers to my problems came to me while reading the Bible late at night and I was inspired to continue struggling with my life for the sake of my children."

You can donate to TASO here, but as Agnes makes clear in the interview, private charity can never be sufficient in this situation: please also visit the ONE Campaign or its equivalent in your country to encourage your government to participate at its promised share in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth reviews U2 Show.

The Politics of God

A recent quote by Bono about "the distance grace covered on the Cross" is making its way around the weblogging community. If you've seen it without attribution, it's from the jacket of Jim Wallis' God's Politics : Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.

Don't read this if you don't want tour spoilers.

The @U2 blog was posting updates on what U2 was rehearsing in Vancouver this past week, and if you don't want to know one of the songs that is something of a surprise, you should not read the rest of this post.
SPOILER SPACE
Stop now.

Still reading? So someone heard, and I've seen this elsewhere, "An Cat Dubh-Into the Heart." It was widely predicted that there would be Boy material on the tour, but of all the songs on that album I am maybe most delighted to see this pair as a real possibility. Even before news started coming out of the rehearsals, I thought it would be the perfect Boy setlist addition to mesh with the themes of HTDAAB. Why? Because...

1) "An Cat Dubh-Into the Heart" was U2's very first foray into leading listeners musically through an experience of sin and redemption. This experience is a U2 trademark, often done these days live by another kind of pairing: first a song that sets forth evil/sin clearly ("Bad," "Please," "Running to Stand Still") and leaves the audience asking a question ("What hope is there? How do we get out of this?"), and then the overwhelming answer and redemption with "Streets." Since the transmutation of evil into redemption is directly depicted in the HTDAAB book, and since U2 have talked about HTDAAB as "a journey from fear to faith," I'm looking for them to pick that process up with a special vividness live this tour. "An Cat Dubh-Into the Heart" would not suprise me at all as a way to do so.
2) The sin portion of the pair, "An Cat Dubh," has an attractiveness-of-evil theme that fits with "Vertigo." Plus the interest it shows in creating a sort of evil "sound" fits with "Love and Peace or Else" -- for that reason, btw, I also wouldn't be suprised if "Exit" made the setlist. (Hey, when you start taking on evil at the scale they've evidently decided to take it on, you want to pull out all your "evil song" stops for drama. I hear "Exit" as carrying its own redemption inside it, but most people disagree with me.)
3) The redemptive portion of the pair, "Into the Heart," is about rebirth, about becoming an innocent child again. HTDAAB: "I'm at the door of the place I started out from and I want back inside." Enough said.

Of course, a song getting rehearsed is no guarantee it will appear. But we'll know beginning Easter Monday (or Easter Eve if you won tickets to the Great Vigil in LA). That's one heck of a cheeky time for a band boasting, as the Boss put it recently, "one of the greatest and most endearingly naked messianic complexes in rock and roll" to start a tour. Thank God they didn't arrange for exactly fifty days of shows.

Wrathall redux

Here's a much longer story on the U2 and Philosophy book I posted on last week. It includes some helpful expansions on the material cited in the 2 other articles, and information on some of the essays that will be included. They also have a working link to the original Salt Lake Tribune article, the one that initially wasn't available online.

For those who have ears to hear

I received a private email from Gospel and pop culture quiz writer Sol O. Mann, whose 2001 U2 quiz is here, letting me know he's got a new one ready for publication. Our book is in it! While we're waiting for the link, he was kind enough to let me give you a preview. So try your hand at these:
--While in New York City, U2 visited Harlem and sang "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" with a church choir. Name the choir.
--This U2 tour programme contains an image of an angel holding a sign on which Psalm 34:7 is printed:"THE ANGEL OF THE LORD ENCAMPETH AROUND ABOUT THEM THAT FEAR HIM AND DELIVERETH THEM." What tour was the programme from?
--BBC host Chris Evans once asked Bono what he'd sing if it was the last song of the last show. What song did Bono pick?

Upcoming event

If you're near Hoboken, NJ, young, Roman Catholic, and not doing anything on this Monday March 21st, you might want to drop by the RENEW International Theology on Tap presentation "U2's legacy of Faith, Justice, and Rock and Roll" by Father Kent Weidie ST (scroll down a bit).

What can I give back to God?

Someone got here recently by searching on "Bono stewardship quotes" (odd time of the year to be looking for that...), and I decided to see what else they might have found. That search turned up this sermon from the National Presbyterian Church, where some over-attentive U2 Sermons readers might possibly remember I spoke at a U2 class in October, shortly before the actual sermon was given, in fact. Preacher Eunice T. McGarrahan deals with Psalm 116 as a great statement of the best motivation for stewardship, situates the text within the classical order of Mass, and ends by explaining the Streets Prayer from the Elevation Tour.

Quotes from Bruce Springsteen during his RNRHOF induction of U2

"This was a band that wanted to lay claim to this world and the next one, too."

"It is (in) the constant questioning in Bono's voice where the band stakes its claim to humanity. Bono's voice often sounds like it's shouting, not from over the band, but from deep within it: 'Here we are, Lord.' "

Spiritual windows

You readers may think I'm putting in too many plugs for Cathleen Falsani, but here she is with something else that comes close enough to the general topic of this blog that I feel I need to post it: her take on the new, Eastern-religion-tinged spirituality spots on MTV.

"BYU prof says U2 more than musicians, they're philosophers"

I'm hearing that there are some books in the works on U2 and Chistian theology, but here's a new twist: though I can't find it on the Salt Lake Tribune's site, the @U2 mailing list sent out an article they published recently about a new book called U2 and Philosophy. It's coming out in 2006 from Open Court, a publishing house that's also done books on the philosophy of pop culture phenomenons like the Matrix movies and Harry Potter. (In fact, I own their The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer.)

The editor is Brigham Young University professor Mark Wrathall, who makes some interesting comments in the Salt Lake article: "Achtung Baby" through 1997's "Pop" found the band flirting with existential despair; 'Last Night On Earth' is Nietzschean; even the most abstract philosophy can be seen every day in pop culture. So far so good.

However, if the Salt Lake reporter's paraphrases are accurate on Wrathall's comments about U2's theology, I suspect some of the analyses there may be wider of the mark ('Vertigo' "celebrates earthly love as a form of spiritual fulfilment"? The band's early work "reflected traditional Christian pessimism"? 'Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' is about "whether religious faith alone could fulfill a person"?)

Later, the Deseret News published another, different article on the same topic, which explains that there are several professors of philosophy submitting essays. (It also says that U2's Christian material is the topic of Wrathall's.) Fortunately, the Deseret reporter doesn't include as many dodgy comments. Whatever you think of the hints at how U2 will be read in either the Deseret article (online) or the Salt Lake article (on the @U2 list), it'll probably be an interesting collection.
[NB: This post has been edited for clarity, thanks to a commenter voicing confusion about the quotes.]

What's a sermon worth?

A clever piece by Cathleen Falsani winds together two upcoming Chicago events with outrageous scalped ticket prices. You know from the author that one of them will be U2's "Vertigo Tour," but the other may surprise you, and she treats the topic well.

Dismantling death again

Just a quick welcome to all the folks visiting from U2.com's forums to take a look at my post on the deluxe HTDAAB book. Hope you'll stay awhile. [By the way, I just edited that original post slightly, thanks to a commenter who informed me that in the plate with the symbols of the monotheistic religions surrounding a globe, the symbols are arranged to spell out COEXIST.]

Keep walking

I learned from this post taking issue with Steve Stockman's reading of "God Part II" that there's a revised edition of Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 coming out.

Popmart and prophecy

I've been studying Isaiah recently, whom I am currently recommending for "Most U2ey Biblical author" because of the way he juxtaposes glorious Day-of-the-Lord, ultimate-redemption passages with the most nitty-gritty technical political critique/lament. (And in fact, right now I've actually got it all straight in my head about Pekah and Rezin and Sennacherib and all those guys - a state of affairs that will probably last no more than two weeks!) Anyway, Isaiah is magnificent, but what I want to post about is the famous song of the vineyard in chapter 5. Its climax in verse 7 ("[God] looked for justice, but found bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard a cry") contains two well-known puns: "He looked for mishpat, but found mispat; for tsedaqua, but heard tseaqua."

As I sat there thinking about that poetic device, the opening sound effects of the live versions of "Last Night on Earth" unexpectedly sounded in my head, and then I realized why: "I went looking for spirit, but found alcohol/ I went looking for soul, and I bought some style/ I wanted to meet God, but you sold me religion."

"I reckon he'd be wearing a track suit, in Africa, working with AIDS patients."

Loosely U2-related in the "Friends and Collaborators" category: The RTE show "Rattlebag" recently presented the debut episode of "The Last Friday", for which Gavin Friday (the Irish love those puns, don't they?) put together a "sound collage" show on representations of Christ. Our host won me over instantly by beginning with Patti Smith's "Gloria," but he makes a lot of interesting comments about his own Catholic upbringing (since "the Bible didn't really come into it," he ended up "hanging around with Protestants and Plymouth Brethren"), includes three readings from "The Message" ("a language that you could, like, talk on the telephone... no sort of airy-fairyness, no filigree"), and mixes clips from everyone from U2 to Billy Graham to Nick Cave to Sinead O'Connor. Gavin gives the last word, incidentally, to "Jesus' blood never failed me yet." You can listen to the show via RealAudio.

"I got the money, all kinds of drugs of choice, everything, but this is my life now."

I suppose, as a Christian blog in the general field of spirituality and culture, we ought to give a little nod to the big Korn and Jesus story.

By the way, on an unrelated topic, since today's public internet sale was even worse than the last one for this venue, I'm looking for two seated tickets to the Paris Stade de France U2 concert on either July 9 or 10. I promise not to whine too much about this here.

Disarming Words

A senior writer and editor at Bread for the World in Washington, D.C. appears in
"Sojourners" to review U2's latest album. Again, as I said of another recent review, little new insight here but I'm linking it because of the well-known religious media source.

"The message is the same: to surrender - whether it is your possessions or your heart."

Caroline Puntis of Damaris' Culture Watch has put up a Christian discussion guide to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which also uses a number of well-chosen quotes from interviews. Hat tip to Fresno Dave. If you missed their guide to "All That You Can't Leave Behind," by the same author, it's here.

Theofilter

Thanks to the folks at Theofilter: Theology on Tap ("a place to read what people are writing about God, alongside Music, Life, Art and whatever else comes to mind")for adding U2 Sermons to their list of sources.

"community is a two way street"

Continuing on thematically a bit from yesterday's post... U2 performed "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" at the Grammys, sparking this reflection on mutual support, Christian community, and Acts 2:41-47 from Terry's Thoughts. Sounds like a good sermon topic.

How to dismantle the atomic Bob

Mind and Soul does a nice piece of work on "father issues" in HTDAAB. Excerpt: Being able to be ourselves and to have 'left home' psychologically is a key part of maturity. 'Father' becomes 'Friend'.... I wonder if we have a particular responsibility to work things out with our fathers so that we are not transferring onto God things that are actually of our father. God is his own person.

U2 Dismantles Bomb with Love

This article is only fair, and offers no particularly new insights on HTDAAB, but since it comes from a major spirituality website, I suppose I should link it.

One person, one voice, one hope, and other things that begin with "one"

Word is the ONE Campaign has a video that will premiere tonight during the Oscars: "ONE Word for the ONE Campaign." I think ONE's list of founders is pretty impressive: Bread for the World, CARE, DATA, International Medical Corps, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, Plan USA, Save the Children US, World Concern, and World Vision.

Also, they're now selling ONE wristbands.

"Cafe Style" U2

The folks at Ascension Balham Hill wrote me to ask that I invite anyone in the London area to FAITH, DOUBT AND ROCK 'N' ROLL: the musical and spiritual journey of U2, featuring a U2 cover band and words from Sam Hargreaves, on 6th March at 6.30pm. Consider it done.

ONce more with feeling

Religion News Service picks up, and Christianity Today reprints, the story about Calvin College's class last month on U2 which I wrote about here.

The least of these

Here's Bono in yesterday's New York Times commenting on Bush's trip to Europe. He depicts aid to Africa as something these arguing continents can agree on, and must agree on, and as part of that he makes this comment about European reaction to American pieties: [Bush needs to] clear up some confusion about America's basic beliefs. Americans are overtly devout. And yet Europeans, who inhabit a more secular world, give more per capita than Americans to what the Bible calls "the least of these" - the world's poor. The United States is in 22nd place, last in the class of donor nations. (Add private philanthropy and it's up to 15th.) Europeans see the discrepancy, and they smell hypocrisy.

Bono is, of course, European, so he would know how they think. But I can back it up: I was doing some extended visiting with many Christians, all of whom would have called themselves evangelical, in more than one non-English-speaking country on the continent around election season last year. I read a poll in the major French evangelical magazine in which about 70% of their readership answered "Do you believe that Bush is sincere in his profession of Christian faith?" no. I participated (and not of my own initiative) in multiple conversations about this topic in evangelical churches, Bible studies, and in the backs of vans, and they all had the same consensus: No one whose policies treat the needy (and/or the environment) the way Bush's do could possibly be a disciple of Christ.

Please hear me that I'm not trying to have a conversation about this topic here. Please. This blog has both Republican and Democratic readers, and the Americans here will understand clearly how Bush's Christianity, for a very large group of American believers, looks self-evident and typical. (Even Bono goes on to show that he understands that many Americans think about these issues quite differently then Europeans.) So I very much do not want to see a comment thread start on the premise "But I love Bush!" or "I don't!" I'm posting this just because I found it very interesting that Bono chooses to attack on that point: Do you Americans know being last in foreign aid makes your faith look ridiculous to us over here? And even to those who on every other point share Bush's evangelical Christian commitments?

Here's DATA's response to the 2006 US budget request, while we're at it.

Art that faces outward

Faithasawayoflife, whose author Christian Scharen is "currently teaching a series of classes on the theological voice of the rock band U2," makes some comparisons between U2 and Christo's installation "The Gates" in Central Park.

The Gospel According to ? - Books & Culture

I'd flagged this to blog about nearly a month ago, and then forgot: A typically insightful book review essay by Andy Crouch on the joys and perils of trying to find the Gospel in pop culture. I particularly like his points that being able to place the symbolism of a pop-cultural product in its wider context is vital, and that just because a text is authentically spiritually rich (as U2's work is, though he spares U2 books from critique in his essay), that does not guarantee that the people reading/writing about that text will be theologically seasoned enough to give it its due.
Excerpt: But our games and our stories grope toward something beyond themselves, and in that sense they indicate the gospel by a kind of negative space, by the shape of their yearning. And this, it seems to me, is the reason to watch The Simpsons or ESPN - not so much to find the truth, but to find the space where the truth might fit. And to remind ourselves - as the best of these books do - that wherever we look in culture, that gospel-shaped space is there.

Social principles

I was pleased to hear recently from a lay leader at Colonial Hills UMC in San Antonio TX who has been teaching an adult education course using the curriculum on U2 spiritual themes in the back of Get Up Off Your Knees. He tells me his pastor visited the class recently just in time for "One Tree Hill," and after getting a little more educated about U2, asked this lay leader to make her a compilation of U2 songs she could use in another class on social justice - specifically the "social principles," a phrase Methodists will recognize. (From announcement of the class: Two of the passions of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, were personal holiness and social action. Hopefully, both of these passions can still be found in most United Methodists.)
So here's Don Buelter's tracklist of U2 songs to use when teaching Christian social justice. Anyone have any additions or comments?
Please
Sunday Bloody Sunday
North and South of the River
Peace on Earth
Walk On
Where the Streets Have No Name
In God's Country
Crumbs from Your Table
Mothers of the Disappeared
Miracle Drug
One Step Closer
When I Look at the World
If God will Send His Angels
Drowning Man
When Love Comes to Town
Pride
Yahweh

As one commenter wrote: Gotta love what words can do when writers are honest and true.

Somewhat, but not totally off-topic: Anyone who's remotely interested in analysis of the culture that sustains Christian rock that is Christian (to borrow from Switchfoot) not just by faith but by genre, should really read this article in GQ by John Sullivan. (I owe a hat tip to GetReligion's post for pointing me to it.) He attends the massive Creation Festival and turns in a thorough treatment full of interesting, often funny detail; for those of you who are only in it for this, there are two different sentences of U2 content.

But honestly, this is a marvelous piece. There are some wonderful, sharp sentences: I'd assumed that my days at Creation would be fairly lonely and end with my ritual murder.

However, the thing that makes the piece extraordinary, and deeply moving I suspect to anyone who doesn't just bring too much bias to the topic to muster any sympathy for evangelicals at all, is the way Sullivan writes about his own past. For he was a believer once, back in the 80s, and lost his faith. He writes powerfully of his own disillusionment, but even more so of his engagement, which began at a small and fervent Bible study group:
[I was] powerfully stirred on a level that didn't depend on my naivete. The sheer passionate engagement of it caught my imagination: Nobody had told me there were Christians like this. They went at the Bible with grad-seminar intensity, week after week. Mole was their leader (short for Moloch; he had started the whole thing, back in the '70s). He had a wiry, dark beard and a pair of nail-gun cobalt eyes. My Russian-novel fantasies of underground gatherings - shared subversive fervor - were flattered and, it seemed, embodied. Here was counterculture, without sad hippie trappings.

Sullivan has that haunted tone, that lingering wound of longing in nearly everyone of intellect and substance who has ever been in a group like this; I always associate it with Jacob limping because of his hip.
My problem is not that I dream I'm in hell or that Mole is at the window. It isn't that I feel psychologically harmed. It isn't even that I feel like a sucker for having bought it all. It's that I love Jesus Christ. "The latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose." I can barely write that.... Why should He vex me? Why is His ghost not friendlier? Why can't I just be a good Enlightenment child and see in His life a sustaining example of what we can be, as a species? Because once you've known Him as God, it's hard to find comfort in the man. The sheer sensation of life that comes with a total, all-pervading notion of being - the pulse of consequence one projects onto even the humblest things - the pull of that won't slacken. And one has doubts about one's doubts.

For those of you who have good imaginations, I think there might be a little more U2 content in this piece that is apparent at first.

The songs are in your eyes

A blog that kindly links us,...looking to the Light, reflects on "Miracle Drug," asking if Bono "is singing it from different perspectives." (Maybe more than half of U2 songs - wild guess off the cuff - have more than one voice, more than one perspective in them; but it seems an especially safe bet here, since it's The Edge that sings the reply to the prayer "God I need your help tonight.") A couple of the lyrics' Bible allusions are also linked for you in the post. I'd guess that "time will disappear" is a looser one, as well; not so much a quote as the kind of idea that's wandering around Revelation 21, say.

Incidentally, I just checked back at the Shack Community and their "Miracle Drug" sermon, which looks to be about AIDS and compassion, using Matthew, James, Jewel, Sarah McLachlan, and more, is up as well.

I Lent

It didn't hit me until a few verses into the Gospel, but...
Here's hoping everyone from a lectionary-based church had a fruitful worship time this morning at what for the next few years I'll probably be thinking of as Just Give Me What I Want And No One Gets Hurt Sunday.

If U2 were a multiple-choice question, the answer would be "all of the above."

I haven't written an induction speech myself to enter in the current @U2 @10 contest and won't have time to, but even though it's off topic for U2 Sermons, this deserves a link: "My Fan Year" inducts U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cathedrals and Alleyways: A Spiritual Commentary on U2's Most Personal Album

Thanks to the folks at the Shack Community at USC, who are having a series on HTDAAB, for giving me a heads up about it. I have had a chance to give only the briefest skim to the sermon on "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" that is posted currently, but you can see text (and in future hear audio) week by week as their gathering of house churches works through some of the tracks on the album. Here is press coverage of the series, where you can see what you think of some of the comments made.

Footnote

By the way, a footnote to yesterday's post: as long as we're in Genesis 3, everybody did get the "Fast Cars" narrator's comparion of his lot to the fate of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, right? "My garden's overgrown, I go out on my belly crawling..."

...and no one heard a word - how to dismantle an atomic bomb

I'm belatedly linking these comments from singer/songwriter Jeshua C. Erickson on HTDAAB principally because of his U2 Bible reference suggestion in "Yahweh" - I've been assuming it's John 16:21 that's alluded to, but maybe it's simply the curse at the Fall in Gen 3:16. Not that the two are mutually exclusive.

I said I wasn't going to talk about it, but it's such a scandal I will anyway.

Raewynne, co-editor of Get Up Off Your Knees, posted in the comments below that she wasn't able to get tickets for any of the shows in her area of the country. Yeah. OK, I think I'll just comment that U2log are covering the presale debacle well, and a great history piece of what U2.com promoted and then failed to make good on is up at @u2. It's nice that there's apparently some accomodation for those who couldn't use their codes, but what about all those of us who used them to buy the awful and overpriced seats that were our only options?
And meanwhile, a search on "U2 ticket" on Ebay right now brings up 3890 items, the first few with prices of $1450, $1499, $2100, many of them GA or great loge seats....

"I feel OK as long as I'm getting criticism from both sides."

Again, thanks to an alert reader: The U2 fan site Interference interviews Philip Yancey, who has described having some contact with the band and of whose book What's So Amazing About Grace Bono is a supporter. I linked a story about that in this post. Somebody get out there and interview a few other Christian authors U2 has mentioned (well, those that aren't dead, I mean).

Also, I'm sorry the comment system has been so wonky lately.

"willing to embrace and be embraced by what they have been chasing all these years"

Thanks to an alert reader, as Dave Barry would say, for sending me the link to this reflection on HTDAAB's place in U2's oeuvre by Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor Jeff Keuss, currently Visiting Professor of Theology and Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, Seattle Pacific University and Northwest Graduate School. (Busy guy, huh?)

I'm not familiar with The Other Journal, where it appeared, but this bit should give a good flavor of the piece: The closing tracks of U2 albums always seem to close as a benediction and 'song of sending' of sorts - an overt turn to the liturgical and direct assessment of Christendom and the Christ that can be lost amidst it. Whether it is the direct Biblicism of '40' from War, the mystical apophatic darkness of 'Love is Blindness' from Achtung Baby ("Love is drowning in a deep well, All the secrets, and no one to tell"), the re-framing of Pilgrim's Progress for the E generation in 'The Wanderer' from Zooropa, the whispering cry of the Psalmist in 'Wake Up Dead Man' from Pop, or the resignation to the call of Grace - ("What once was hurt, What once was friction, What left a mark, No longer stings, Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things, Grace makes beauty out of ugly things") in 'Grace' from ATYCLB - U2 continues to draw its productions to a close with an opening to something more - more than what words and music can convey and an opening to the 'not yet' of the Now. This is continued in HTDAAB with the ending song 'Yahweh.'

(Aside to theologically minded readers: I'm 100% with the link to apophatic theology for 'Love is Blindness,' but can someone tell me whether I have misunderstood the meaning of a word used early on in the article, 'perichoresis,' all these years? Is it not, after all, a word meaning the internal dance in which the members of the Trinity exchange mutual love? Sorry for the abstruse question; we now return you to the riot over the U2.com presale.)

Presale

Well, there are plenty of places to complain about the U2.com fan presale fiasco yesterday, so let's not waste too much time on that here. I did, eventually, manage to get what sounds like a not very good and overpriced pair. Hope other readers were as fortunate... if you can call it fortunate.

How to kneel

Dave King at Idea Joy comments on the retro feel of the word kneel in HTDAAB. Nice point, and it also goes for "atomic bomb" which is pretty retro as well (as opposed to, say weapon of mass destruction.)

Vertigo Tour

Since there are readers of this blog who are more in the Jesus fandom than the U2 fandom, I'll just go a bit overboard here in making sure everyone has heard that U2's Vertigo Tour schedule will be announced on Monday the 24th, and that the public sale of tickets begins the 29th. There is a presale for U2.Com members who joined by the 24th, if you are willing to risk it (the last one was a disaster, it's 40 bucks US, and the billing and account establishment this time around has already been messy.) You can also buy tickets and travel packages through ETS, using a referral code from @U2 who get pride of place because they have been so kind to Get Up Off Your Knees, or a code from U2log who only mentioned our book once way back when we were looking for submissions - but are still marvelous and always well worth a read.

The fact that the tour has been announced is exciting, since there were times over the past couple weeks when people were theorizing there wasn't going to be a tour. However, if you've been praying for the situation of illness in the Edge's family, this positive announcement is no reason to stop.

Ineffable bawdiness

This post is sort of a minor policy exception, since our book and the blog have really chosen not to focus on material that speculates on the behavior or personal faith of members of U2, but the article is so interesting in its analysis I have to link it. Kate Bowman, Student Activities Coordinator at Calvin College (yes, this college), writes for Catapult Magazine about the alternating American evangelical approach/avoidance dance with Bono. "I'm truly perplexed when people are shocked and dismayed over a stray expletive or a lap dance anymore - have they not noticed how Bono conducts himself when he's not working for AIDS initiatives and writing biblical allusions into his music (and sometimes when he is)? The man is nothing if not a Rock Star." In the process, she reclaims a wonderful English adjective, pays a visit to Buechner, and checks in with the theology of the incarnation. More: Although a number of traditions (including the Reformed one) have a robust theology of the body, most of us came to faith in an environment with its moral roots in Puritanism and its philosophical moorings in Platonism. Both dichotomize spirit from flesh, soul from body; I will let you take a wild guess at which one of those is considered essentially good and which is essentially evil. Yet the vilification of the earthbound is not what Jesus had in mind when he dwelt among us in the flesh.
Not sold yet? This is a promise: If you are a Christian and a U2 fan, you really need the closing Madeleine L'Engle quote.

Quotes from 2004

A nice personal collection of quotes called "2004 on God." Without actually checking, I believe the ones attributed to Bono are all from a book published this past year. Incidentally, Cathleen Falsani has posted a much more eclectic piece on the same theme.

"scholars see a clear sacred thread"

Here is the story from Grand Rapids on the Calvin College sociology class using U2. Some great comments from interviewees. Excerpt:
"What they have to offer is a vision," says Mark Mulder, who is teaching the U2 course during Calvin's three-week interim semester. "They're saying there's something wrong with the world. But at the same time, they offer a hope. The gospel message is embedded within."
Mulder, who teaches sociology, sees the band bringing a Christian worldview to a "very elaborate cultural critique." In that critique, they share common ground with other rock bands such as Radiohead and movies such as "The Matrix" trilogy, he says.

The Prodigal Journey of U2

A wonderful meditation on U2's career (and HTDAAB reflection piece) through the metaphor of the wandering pilgrim, something first tried 10 years back by Bill Flanagan in U2 at the End of the World and now updated at The Phantom Tolbooth. For my money, the article is at its best when tracing the pilgrim's journey over U2's various albums, but does a bit too much shoehorning of HTDAAB songs into its metaphor (even needing to ignore some of U2's public comments about their own lyric references along the way). Quite a marvelous point though about the importance of the "choosing love over romance" theme.
Ending of the article: [U2's] '20s were thoughtful, spiritual, and fiery, the 30s were celebratory, artistic, and sensual. Now, the '40s are shaping up to be about the things that really matter. That's where the album's title comes in: it's about cracking the code to decipher the things in life that are really tricky. U2 has approached them first with innocence, and then with denial, now they are really getting somewhere.

If you're looking to buy the book....

I discovered recently on our publisher's website that Get Up Off Your Knees is apparently currently being reprinted. I suppose that's good news, especially since people keep asking me how many copies the book has sold, and at least now I have this much information: in its first year, it sold more than the publisher printed.

"The root cause of a lot of the problems in politics is hardness of the heart."

I mentioned earlier that I wouldn't be doing a review of How to Dismantle, but that I did reserve the right to ponder a couple of its tracks occasionally. I did that with "Yahweh" here, and I want to make some comments on "Love and Peace or Else" now. Not counting "Vertigo," this was the HTDAAB track that made the most impact on me on first hearing, just for its sound and force.

First things first: Everyone and his brother says this is a song about the Middle East, and I would like someone to try and convince me of that. Was there a comment from the band that I missed? There's not much in the lyrics to suggest so specific a reference throughout. The words "daughters of Zion...Abraham's sons" certainly could mean Jews and Muslims, but needn't, given those two phrases' broad Biblical pedigree -- they could, like "Crumbs," just as easily be critically addressing the Christian community, especially if the later "troops on the ground" are Americans in Iraq, and if the question "where is the love?" at the end is directed at them as well.

Moving on. To me, the song is distinguished by the landscape it inhabits: the efficacy of intentional sacrifice as a weapon against evil. (No single enemy is named, although we get images of evil expressing itself both in society and on a personal scale, and we hear it in the heaviness of the guitar and in the effects.) This is an idea one associates with Martin Luther King, who of course got it from Jesus; but there's also an allusion to an image from Tom Lantos which Bono has used in his Africa speeches, of stopping the train which is taking people off to die by lying down across the rails yourself. ("Lay your love on the track; we're gonna break the monster's back.") The bulk of the lyrics are either recommending this kind of sacrifice ("lay it down,") extolling its results (corporate "love and peace," as well as individual rebirth which permits one to approach the end of life "with a wrinkled face and a brand new heart,") or seeking to muster courage to do it ("I'm not easy on my knees," but maybe I can surrender if I "let you break" my heart.)

Here's an aside on the frequent requests on HTDAAB for a broken heart. I don't think it has much to do with the secular sense of the term, of being saddened by loss in love. Especially knowing that Bono has volunteered for and continues to work with World Vision, one thinks of their founding narrative, which recounts Dr. Bob Pierce writing in the fly-leaf of his Bible: "Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God." That doesn't mean "let me feel sad," but "let me experience God's love such that it makes me into a person who takes action." Thus in Christian parlance, to ask God to break one's heart is to ask him to open it, to enlarge it, to make possible a greater compassion, to remove its resistance to Love. Wesley: "Now the stone to flesh convert/Cast a look, and break my heart." Cowper: "O make this heart rejoice, or ache... And if it be not broken, break." (And from a U2 article in the current "Rolling Stone": "The root cause of a lot of the problems in politics is hardness of the heart.") Those who come from sacramental traditions and hear the words "and when he had given thanks, he broke it" every Sunday will also want to add that breaking is necessary for consecration. Someone on a U2 forum illustrated the concept with John Donne's "Batter my heart, three-person'd God" -- a nice connection. But the point in all these examples is not the breaking itself, but the transformation that brokenness makes possible.

In calling for such surrender and consecration for a higher cause, "Love and Peace or Else" also inevitably touches on what churchy Christians would call "Stewardship" themes: "lay down your treasure" (treasure being a favorite Gospel word to contrast the worthless things we set our hearts on with that which is truely valuable). That idolatrous treasure is often money, but the thing that needs to be let go of can just as much be a mindset, an attachment to an idea of racial or religious superiority, or anything you value more than God: "your sweet lovely," whatever it is. I'm delighted by the rationale given for this -- which also provides another reason why Universal should let fan lyric sites back online, since the "official" U2.com lyrics are, as often, obviously wrong. (In a number of places.) The reason you should "lay down your treasure," brother, as anyone who stops and listens can hear clearly, is that "you don't have time," not "for," but "before a jealous lover." God's jealousy for his beloved people is all over the Bible; I'll just quote one thing he says after "they made their hearts as hard as flint." A classic stewardship point: if you're serious about serving a jealous Lover, trying to keep a grasp on "treasure" (or "guns") for an illusory security isn't worth your time. God longs for us to let all those false defenses go... not so we'll feel loss, but so he can birth something much better in their stead.

The transcendent power of "laying down" your treasure or your life is a very Johannine theme: the phase occurs repeatedly in John chapter 10, and I suppose one really ought to point out that it is also the focus of a Johannine verse Bono reels off from memory in one of his DATA videos for Christian music festivals. And that larger thematic environment brings us back to a comment that's being made a lot about HTDAAB. Forget the issue of whether or not there are intentional Biblical allusions to various passages about "treasure" or "jealousy" or "laying down" here; the song is nonsense without the context of the belief that the universe is designed such that when a called and willing volunteer lays himself down on the altar, in the words of C.S. Lewis, "Death itself would begin to work backwards."

(Hey, isn't that CD booklet about death? Hey, isn't half of it written backwards?)

Kicking at the Darkness: Social Justice, Spiritual Longing, and U2

I did a phone interview today with a reporter from the Grand Rapids Press who is doing an article on an interim (winter term) course at Calvin College focusing on U2 "as a vehicle for exploring themes such as political morality, liberation theology, and current social arrangements." Not sure when the article will appear, but I'll keep an eye out for it.

Got a confirmation class to teach this spring? The Religious and Moral Education Press delivers for you.

Not having a specialty in popular hagiography, I'm putting this link here for documentary purposes only. No comment. A couple other examples in the same textbook series: here and here. I didn't recognize the publisher at first, but RMEP is apparently an imprint of SCM-Canterbury.)

Five Favorite Posts of 2004

OK, I'm way way way late on this, but I will finally join many other Christian bloggers in responding to Bob's suggestion that we list our own 5 favorite posts of the last year. The format of this blog means that much of what I put up is links and tidbits, so it's hard to pick favorites out of those. In one sense I'm proudest of some of my "research" posts that offer context to news items, such as Bill Hybels of Willow Creek visits U2 in Dublin, or Brennan Manning, yet, or Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed.

But limiting myself to posts in which I actually wrote something, I'll choose these 5 in no particular order:
Sola Fides, Sola Gratia
Uncut Legends Comments
You say I took the Name in vain? Well, I don't even know the Name.
After elevation, vertigo
How to dismantle death, basically

TallSkinnyKiwi: How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

Let's celebrate Epiphany with another spiritually informed review of the new U2 album, this one by TallSkinnyKiwi, one of the big-league emerging church bloggers... whatever that concept means. (Maybe I'm no longer entitled to joke like that since I recently was sent two free books for being an "emerging church blogger" myself.) While you're on his site, he's always worth reading, and he also had a nice post earlier on "Crumbs from Your Table" and the tsunami.

RollingStone.com: U2 Postpone World Tour

Whether or not you've heard the news referenced in the title already or not, just a reminder that there's a prayer request hidden in that story.

WWJLT?

OK, I gotta link this one. A review of HTDAAB by Jesus. No, wait, it's actually by the folks at Stripwax for Lumino Magazine.

"too many songs ignoring the truth in disastrous times"

Interesting conversation on (among other things) why U2 seem to be able to get away with issuing explicit Christian material lately without getting slammed by the media, as other artists sometimes are, at a site new to me: The Daily Commune, A Christian web-neighborhood of art and conversation. A mixed bag of opinions, but here's a sample: I read an interview with Bono in "Rolling Stone" where the interviewer joked about John Lennon's comment that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus (the scandal of that comment was how true it was, by the way) and Bono responded by saying "It was Jesus that made us big." I think why the media never attacked them as much as they would someone else, or why some just excuse it, is because a) they were too good a band and too innovative to ignore, b) they were anti-establishment, pro-social justice, and pacifists so they looked more like a real rock or folk band than they looked like Michael W. Smith, and c) their message wasn't empty pietism, but there was action behind it and they expected you to follow.

One Year Bible Blog

Just some quick props to "average dude" Mike at the One Year Bible Blog, which is gathering around 650 folks to read the entire Bible together in 2005. He's kindly blogrolled U2 Sermons and, seemingly, introduced the book to an entire new audience.

BBC - Radio 4 - Today Programme

A few days ago Bono was guest editor for the Today program on the BBC. Not surprisingly, a number of the topics had to do with poverty and Africa. Visit this page to read who was featured, and to hear from Sister Benedicta about working with people with AIDS in Ethiopia, and from (Anglican) Archbishop Ndungane of Cape Town (who was recently in New York to launch the Micah Challenge) about God's promises and how they relate to the promises made in connection with the Millennium Development Goals. All of this ties in with Make Poverty History.

Happy New Year

No I'm not going to quote the obvious U2 lyric, but I will offer congrats to @U2 as they begin their 10th anniversary celebration. Maybe you'll want to enter their fiendishly difficult Trivia Quiz and try to win an iPod. Not me: Without researching, I know 4 1/2 out of 20.