dallasobserver.com | News | The End Is Near

I missed this at the time, but here's a piece on dispensationalism at Dallas Theological Seminary which leads with a scene of Associate Professor of Theological Studies Glenn Kreider using U2 in class (followed by a pretty forced transition into the article's real topic).

Sausalito Presbyterian Church U2 event

Playing catch-up... Formatting issues make this U2 church presentation by a UCC pastor serving a PCUSA congregation in California a tad tough to read, but since it deals with a lot of U2 lyrics, I thought I'd throw it in here anyway. (Just a reminder, by the way, of something I've said before -- when I link something it doesn't mean I agree with everything in it.) Although it is listed as one, the piece doesn't seem to be a sermon -- more of an introduction to a huge list of songs used in worship: "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Yahweh," "If God Will Send His Angels," "City Of Blinding Lights," "Beautiful Day," and more. I suppose one reason I've missed noticing this one for several months is that unfortunately the name of the band is spelled incorrectly throughout.

The Observer | World | With Bono the preacher man on his mission to Africa

I'm not trying to provide thorough coverage of the Africa trip currently involving Bono, Bobby Shriver, Richard Meacham of the Global Fund, Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News, executives of corporations working with (RED), etc - others are doing that much better. But I thought our readers might especially appreciate this Observer article: "I prophesy that this jewel of a kingdom is soon to become a giant...."

Repost of the original Easter-to-Pentecost challenge: Ending June 4

With all the Bono in Africa converage, the NBC Nightly News, the ONE viewing parties, and so on, I thought I'd repost our own Africa project:

I've become pretty enthusiastic about the GlobalGiving site, which offers a very direct way to make donations to projects in the developing world that, in essence, help work towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. You can search for projects that need funding by theme or region, and you can even email the actual people running them in Asia or Africa or Central America or wherever. Here's a BBC article about the concept.

My suggestion is that we do a little experiment during the Easter season, and spread some Resurrection life by seeing how far our little U2 Sermons community can get towards funding a Global Giving project in Africa. I've chosen an AIDS education program in Cameroon whose focus is training teachers to use computers to deliver information on HIV-AIDS -- in part because their entire goal is only $1000, and in part because if you're reading this you have access to a computer and know how to use it, unlike 90% of high school students in Cameroon.

Update with 2 weeks left to go: Several donations came in the first week, with a few additional ones since then. The total on the project site as of Friday was $783 (of course this may not be all from U2 Sermons), which leaves $217 to achieve the schools' goal. Click through and check it out; you can enter your own choice of amount and give by credit card or Paypal.

For all those who still think ONE's a charity campaign

"It is even better than donating because when people work, and they can buy their own food and take themselves to the clinics, then it means they are doing it themselves and they are not just receiving food parcels."

Another brief piece on Rwanda is here.

It took them 10 years to get from Psalms to Ecclesiastes, and it's only one book

Check out this long and thoughtful reflection on The Challenge of Ecclesiastes by David Peebles Williamson, interacting with a number of Scriptural passages as well as with Albert Camus, Stanley Hauerwas, "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For," St. Jerome, and a lecture by Nick Cave. Thanks David for pointing me to your piece.
Excerpt: [The cry of Koheleth] is the equivalent of a Hollywood ending where the hero is about to passionately embrace the heroine he has rescued from certain peril. She falls into his grasp, the music swells, he leans forward, and then turns to the camera and says: 'This is all pretty pointless, isn’t it?'

Right down whose center?

On the WNYC show today, it seemed to me we got to hear a lot more of Joe Levy and host John Schaefer than of Chris Scharen - it was a generalist round-up of the concept that U2 have a Christian grounding with a few examples ("40," "Mysterious Ways," "Still Haven't Found," "Crumbs,") but still an enjoyable listen in which they did let Chris get some good words in edgewise. The thing that struck me the most was John Shaefer's characterizing Christians who condemn U2 as (roughly) "people who are right down the center of mainstream Christianity." This was one of a few remarks illustrating the assumption that U2 are beloved not so much by actual committed Christians as by, I dunno, a sort of fringe subgroup of unorthodox believers who are ill at ease with church. Um... hello?

Independent RED edition

It'll only be online for a couple days, and you've probably heard about it elsewhere, but let me particularly recommend reading, in the Bono-edited RED edition of the Independent, some of the kind of stuff that would probably never get printed otherwise:, e.g. A conversation with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown about trade and the followup to the G8, EU subsidies deny Africa's farmers of their livelihood on how dumping of subsidised produce in African countries is forcing local producers out of business, The woman who has the power to change Africa which introduces Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister of Nigeria and her crusade against corruption, and International Development Secretary talks about the first day of his trip to Uganda , which covers the Lord's Resistance Army situation. And after all that reading, one might ask: so why doesn't news like this seem to get covered in Western papers?

There is also the excellent editorial I am a witness. What can I do?

WNYC 5/17

Chris of One Step Closer will be on WNYC from 2-3 tomorrow afternoon, May 17, to talk about his book with John Schaefer. They stream live online.

[Edit: Chris has just given the update that he'll be joined by Joe Levy of Rolling Stone, who will advance a "decidedly different" view than Chris', on the show.]

AIDS education - a U2 blog project through GlobalGiving

Between now and June 4 (Pentecost), this blog is urging all readers to make a donation to an AIDS education program in Africa we've selected to support through the very cool GlobalGiving site. If you haven't given yet, there's still about $320 to go towards what I thought was a pretty modest goal of $1000, which goes to kids and their teachers in Cameroon. Click through to the site and read about their goal to use computers in the classroom to help stem the tide of HIV-AIDS infection, and then put something in the donation box -- even if it has to be as little as $10 or $20.

Sheila Walsh, ONE, and Women of Faith

I don't often report news about the people who make up U2, but since I do track ONE campaign stuff and had already linked to a post reflecting on hearing Bono in Dallas from another blogger, why not....
I don't know much about the organization Women of Faith, but here's one of their leaders, Sheila Walsh, quoting Isaiah 58 and promoting the ONE campaign after meeting with Bono in the company of Women of Faith's president Mary Graham and Chuck Swindoll's sister Lucy Swindoll. Photos are here.

Larry James' Urban Daily: Bono: Prophet to the World

The President and CEO for Central Dallas Ministries, a human and community development nonprofit with a focus on economic and social justice blogs about hearing Bono this week in Dallas.

Faith and Theology: Travelling outside karma: U2's Grace

Thanks to Ben for letting me know about the reflection on U2's "Grace," and more specifically on its guitar line, that he just posted. Coolest sentence in the thing, IMHO: "Even when Bono begins for a moment to lapse into a kind of vocal works-righteousness, with his too-strenuous repetition of the final line, the guitar riff continues undisturbed, so that the small vocal flaw is sublated and transformed, caught up and carried on the gentle rhythms of grace." Also, here's one for our readers; a commenter asks in response to Ben's words: What do Bono and Barth have in common?

Orthodox Church in America - retreat curriculum

Through a very random google, I ran into an outline for a 2002 youth retreat drawing on U2's "Walk On" (and other musical material that was popular at the time) from the Orthodox Church in America. Sadly no sermons from the Orthodox tradition were submitted for Get Up Off Your Knees, so I'm always pleased to be able to highlight Orthodox sites reflecting on the band's work.

GlobalGiving AIDS project

A little under a month remains in this U2 blog's campaign to support an AIDS education program in Africa. Readers, if you haven't given yet, there's still about $350 to go towards the goal of $1000 we want to reach for kids and teachers in Cameroon this Easter season. Any amount, even something as little as $10, can make a difference.

READ THIS IF:Your favorite song about heaven is NOT "I Can Only Imagine"

The unique and ever-prolix Fresno Dave is thinking about "Where the Streets Have No Name." Kudos to him for finding that MercyMe clip, as middling as the performance is, because I have to admit its introduction made me stand up and raise my palms to the ceiling. Thanks also, Dave, for the kind words about my writing.

If you don't like $14.95 for the six-session one in our book you could buy this....

Westminster John Knox Press, the publishing house of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have put out a new one-session $5.00 study guide called "The Music and Message of U2" by Jim Coons and Greg Cootsona. Product details here. Hat tip to Michael.

[Edit: one of the folks involved wrote and asked if I would also link the blog related to their overall "Thoughtful Christian" project, so here it is.]

Christ's Church of the Valley U2 wrapup

Some of you may remember the church in Arizona that had a U2 ticket giveaway as an outreach last year, a program that elicited eyerolls from some and applause from others. Here's their internal report on how it went, where you can also read comments left at their website. Hat tip to M2.

nevermind the bricolage: MP536: The Spiritual Journey of U2

Another perspective on the Fuller Seminary U2 class, chronologically so far: startup /
Boy / War / Unforgettable Fire / Live Aid

Easter Season week 3 - Africa challenge

During the great 50 days of Easter, U2 Sermons is celebrating the power of the risen Christ to change lives by supporting an AIDS education program in Cameroon whose focus is training teachers to use computers to deliver information on HIV-AIDS. 97% of teachers in Cameroon do not have any computer skills, and 90% of students graduate from high school without ever having seen or touched a computer in the classroom. We did fine with donations the first week, but not so well the second week. The great thing about this project (other than that it's through the cool hands-on GlobalGiving site) is that their goal is only $1000: if half of our daily readers gave $10, we'd be there in a heartbeat.

NPR : Sunday Sermons, No Longer Unplugged

From our homiletics and pop culture department: I missed this at the time, but during Holy Week NPR actually managed to run a fairly reasonable story on normal clergy using the kind of normal media normal people are familiar with in normal sermons for normal congregations of normal people who are normally familiar with normal media.

TheBolgBlog: MP536: The Spiritual Journey of U2

Ryan Bolger gives an update on how his co-taught MP536: The Spiritual Journey of U2 mission class has been going at Fuller Theological Seminary.

"United 93" -- "See you for a swim"

I was quoting another blogger's earlier post about "One Tree Hill" when I said "It takes an unusual consciousness to garner comfort from apocalyptic imagery...." Well, check out this sidebar to a United 93-related interview with a California man who lost his wife and the couple's unborn child on that flight. It ends up dipping into that kind of comfort-via-eschatology by way of answering why "One Tree Hill" turned up once (only) on the Vertigo tour, in U2's Oakland concert last November. (Hat tip to scatter o' light.)

Caritas: U2 and Lament

I posted some weeks ago a description by an audience member of Greg Stevenson's recent U2 presentation at Abilene Christian University. Well, Greg, who has a lot to say in the overall field of religion and popular culture (here's his book on Buffy), is now blogging and offers two related posts himself, focusing on one of the more popular topics among people who write on the Christian perspective in U2's work -- U2 and Lament, and Lament part 2.

Easter season, week 2

A reminder that during the Easter season we're trying to spread some Resurrection life through Global Giving by seeing how far our little U2 Sermons community can get towards funding one of their Africa projects, an AIDS education program in Cameroon whose focus is training teachers to use computers to deliver information on HIV-AIDS. (Some donors are leaving a comment on the original post after they have given.)

I'm happy to say that after our first week, the Cameroon project now has less than $400 of its desired $1000 funding left to go.

wandering church: U2 and hebrews

Playing catch-up: Isaac at blip reflects on "I Still Haven't Found," wondering if years of listening to it "predisposed me to the Epistle to the Hebrews."

prayerbookproject: the church has left the building

If nothing else, Worshiping with Benedict, Wesley and Bono: Exploring Ancient Future Liturgies is a great title for a workshop.

sydneyanglicans.net: Grace vs Karma

Nothing too new in this reflection plus review of Bono on Bono from Greg Clarke of the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education (CASE) in New South Wales... but since it mentions Get Up Off Your Knees, why not link it?

Grace Notes: U2 and liturgy

A thoughtful post on U2 and liturgical planning from one of our contributors.

Easter week update

Happy Easter Monday. Just to say, the link to the AIDS education program in Cameroon in yesterday's challenge post is now working.

GlobalGiving - an Easter Season challenge

Christ is risen! Easter is here, and there are 50 days -- great ones, according to liturgists -- until Pentecost. I want to propose that we celebrate it together in a particular way. I've become pretty enthusiastic about the GlobalGiving site, which offers a very direct way to make donations to projects in the developing world that, in essence, help work towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. You can search for projects that need funding by theme or region, and you can even email the actual people running them in Asia or Africa or Central America or wherever. Here's a BBC article about the concept.

My suggestion is that we do a little experiment during the Easter season, and spread some Resurrection life by seeing how far our little U2 Sermons community can get towards funding a Global Giving project in Africa. I've chosen an AIDS education program in Cameroon whose focus is training teachers to use computers to deliver information on HIV-AIDS -- in part because their entire goal is only $1000, and in part because if you're reading this you have access to a computer and know how to use it, unlike 90% of high school students in Cameroon.

U2 Sermons gets in the neighborhood of 150-200 hits a weekday; we could make a significant impact or even enable the iEARN-SchoolNet-Cameroon folks to reach their $1000 goal. I've already given a first donation to start us off. Click through and check it out; you can enter your own choice of amount and give by credit card or Paypal. If you're willing to leave a comment here (even anonymously) we could track how many have taken part. Happy Easter!

when the soul wants, the soul waits

And while we wait: 2006 Amnesty International Easter Action

Good Friday: what once was hurt, what once was friction, what left a mark...

I've linked many examples of a wide variety of different kinds of church service using U2 in Christian worship over the years, and for today here's yet another: the Seabreeze Church band in Huntington Beach CA covers "Grace." It's much less ambient than the U2 version. (The sermons are online as well but not cross-indexed to the music that went with them.) This church, of Southern Baptist parentage, seems to have a live music repertoire that also incorporates Coldplay and others, as seen here.

[Edit: title fixed; wasn't awake yet!]

"It takes an unusual consciousness to garner comfort from apocalyptic imagery..."

This post from a general blog about which I know nothing (I've only very briefly skimmed anything but the post I just linked) reflects on a couple of songs about reactions in the face of mortality, "Closer To The Light" by Bruce Cockburn, and "One Tree Hill" by U2. I love the story about the elderly man in the writer's church around the time Joshua Tree was released.

Via Crucis Grid Blog: the Way of the Cross online

Today the U2 Sermons blog for the book Get Up Off Your Knees is particiating in the Via Crucis Grid Blog - a global, multi-site, media-rich, thoroughly ecumenical walk through Holy Week.

Quae maerébat, et dolébat,
Pia Mater, dum vidébat
Nati poenas inclyti.

Quis est homo, qui non fleret,
Matrem Christi si vidéret
In tanto supplicio?

The Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Blessed
Mother
am I still your son
You know I've waited for so long to hear you say so


(Youtube, which is hosting the above media, has inconveniently closed for part of the day this station has to be posted, to work on their site. If you're here and it's not running yet, you could visit again later.)

previous station: Jean, Maggie, PmPilgrim
next station: Preston, Annie, Elena, Martha2, PmPilgrim, Only Wonder Understands, Jimmy
whole schedule here

One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic

A student at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis -- site of previous U2 and Christian faith-related audio talks by Ned O'Gorman and Nathan Tiemeyer -- preaches on unity using John 17 and the U2 song "One."

Bread for the World Offering of Letters

This has probably been up for ages, but I was on the Bread for the World site recently and discovered a "Message from Bono" promoting their 2006 Offering of Letters. (Are you asking: What offering of letters?)

"one but not the same"

A reader has motivated me to clarify something. I'm sure many of you who visit here are aware of this, since I've hammered on it ad infinitum, so I ask your patience. But for those who may have gotten the wrong impression: Get Up Off Your Knees represents the work of laypeople and clergy from many, many Christian denominations, ranging from Roman Catholic to Presbyterian, from Church of Christ to Anglican, from evangelical to mainline, from liberal to conservative. It seeks to honor and draw on the work Christian leaders from diverse perspectives all over the English-speaking world were doing in using U2 in liturgy and worship for decades, long before Raewynne and I thought of putting a collection together documenting one aspect of that longstanding work. Anyone who links Get Up Off Your Knees with the idea of cheerleading for any particular denominational perspective, or, God forbid, recruiting new members for any particular institutional church, has missed the point.

Angels, Cowboys, and Christians

Readers interested in U2's artistic collaborators may have already seen this Wim Wenders profile and retrospective at Christianity Today Movies, but there's a much fuller version of it at Looking Closer (which also links a great interview of Wenders from Image journal where among many other things he discusses how his angel films transformed his spiritual life, and his eventual movement from Catholic to Protestant Christianity.)
A Wenders quote from the Looking Closer version of the piece: "It’s the nature of Christianity that it needs to work through conviction, and because of the way you approach it, and not by trying to become a missionary through your work."

you give yourself away

To me, there is something startlingly moving about this 60-voice Belgian girls choir (scroll down a bit) performing U2's "With Or Without You." You would think it would be a novelty act, but it leaves me feeling sort of like I do when a child reads the role of Pilate, or Peter's betrayal, in the Passion on Palm Sunday.

book stuff

A notice has come my way that resonate in Scarborough Ontario will offer an evening on "U2 in Theological Perspective" tomorrow March 31, featuring Robert Vagacs, author of Religious Nuts Political Fanatics. While we're on the topic of books, I'm looking forward to seeing the final version of the other new U2 'n' God book, One Step Closer by Christian Scharen, within the next few days. [Edit: ...of which you can read an excerpt here.]

Daily Life in a Homeless Shelter - Dylan

As someone who used to work in a homeless shelter, I have a soft spot for the blog Today at the Mission, whom I found because they link here. (I wish our Mission had had a cat named Impossible.) The host, [rhymes with kerouac], is working on a book of reflections using Bob Dylan and posts here on Slow Train Coming.

Make it three times stuck

Thanks to Lynne for pointing out to me in a comment her sermon using "Stuck in a Moment," linked here (it's a PDF).

"a truth that is clearer than simple addition...but."

A very personal post from Job's Tale (that blog is kind enough to link here), using "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

e~mergent kiwi: 7 things I learnt from Bono about worship leading

The title says it all. So...Take a look at 7 things e~mergent kiwi learnt from Bono about worship leading. Don't miss the interesting discussion taking place in the comments.

Build a well, buy a shirt, place a bid...

Today is World Water Day, which makes it a great time for the U2 fans at the African Well Fund to announce their 2006 fundraiser.

Colorado Christian University - Ethos

Blog readers anywhere near Colorado Christian University might be interested in their late-March event "Ethos, a dialogue on faith and culture." I note Jeff Mallinson of CCU is speaking on the "How should Christians engage culture?" panel; he did one of the few thoroughly realistic reviews of Get Up Off Your Knees for the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. (I was, at the time, so pleased to see a reviewer do anything other than gush merely because the book was about U2 that I wrote and thanked him.) The featured speaker is Barry Taylor, whose (co-authored) faith and pop culture book A Matrix of Meanings I found somewhat helpful if a bit uncritical and sweeping.

Occasio: In the City of Blinding Lights, part 1

Tim Neufeld weaves "City of Blinding Lights" into three reflections on a recent urban ministry immersion experience he led. Creative use of the song's images. (The link is to the first; follow along by clicking the navigation text at the top.)

Finding God in unexpected places | csmonitor.com

For folks who've been wondering what it's like, here's a fairly thorough review, or more of a profile of the contents, of Cathleen Falsani's The God Factor. In the interest of full disclosure, she was kind enough to send me a copy after I mentioned her book here. It's a unique window into a lot of well-known people's outlooks on religion; for people like me who can't help but do our theological thinking within a highly-developed structure that much greater minds than our own have spent centuries forming, it's interesting to see how many of the interviewees have sort of constructed their own theories. Bono, one of the obvious exceptions to that comment, has a chapter based on Falsani's well-known CT piece, but it does incorporate new material (including, to my surprise, some specific stuff about being raised Anglican -- which will, I guarantee any Anglicans reading this, make you flinch with knowing embarrassment.)

twice Stuck

Thanks to the person who got here searching for a sermon on "Stuck in a Moment," I found this 2003 effort from Lakeview Church -- it has quite brief citations of both "Stuck" and "Beautiful Day," with an overall theme of "moments." I also happened upon this more sustained reflection on the whole notion of stuckness in a "Single Minded" column at StudyLight.org.

Isaiah 58 stuff

There are a number of U2 sites covering the tour postponement, so as with most general news, I'm not going to do that here. Prayers are obviously in order. And while you're focusing outward, for any readers who may be interested, Jubilee USA offers a way to email World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz prior to the upcoming World Bank Board meeting. The hope is that they can be persuaded not to make all but 17 of the 42 countries promised debt cancellation at the G-8 in Gleneagles wait till mid-2007 for it.

Definitely somewhat off topic

So, in the spirituality and culture department, any Matisyahu fans out there? Anybody seen him live? I think "King Without a Crown" is pretty persuasive.

Things I Might Be Convinced to Give My Left Arm For.

LOL.

ACU Lecture

A brief writeup of some of what Greg Stevenson said about U2 and the lament Psalms at Abilene Christian University last month.

request

A U2 Sermons reader emailed a few months back to talk about social justice, the church, and the search for God. Now he writes to make a request that with his permission I'd like to share with you all:

In no small way your book, website, Steve Stockman and "Walk On," and the words and music of Paul Hewson, David Evans, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton have brought me "home" to Jesus. I felt u2 were worshipful, "in this world, but not of it" and I found through your website a community of likeminded people who have essentially encouraged me to catalyze my faith through committing my life to Jesus. I am getting baptised soon and I wondered if you could keep me in your prayers.

Can we? I think we can.

Talk on U2 from last weekend

My U2 presentation on the 27th was recorded. I've put up an MP3 for download rather than strain the church's little server, in case anyone wants to hear it.

Pursuing God with U2 group in Winnipeg

Willowlake Baptist Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba will offer the 6-session U2 Bible study found in the back of Get Up Off Your Knees beginning March 5. PDF of the flyer is here.

a dog's life: Christians and Culture...

Gotta sympathize with this guy's reaction to parts of his recent "Attractive Apologetics: the points of contact with today's culture" workshop in Sydney.

Here's a good Ash Wednesday activity.

It's well worth the 14 minutes to watch and listen to this great tutorial on global AIDS from the Kaiser Foundation. Hat tip to Mike.

SEE

Long-term readers of this blog will remember that after seeing U2 in Europe I was enamored enough of the new visuals for "The Fly" to write "No secret at all," a theological reading of the song's new live presentation on the Vertigo Tour in light of previous presentations. I split it into 3 parts for length: 1, 2, 3. Since at that point no video was easily available, I narrated most of the visuals in the final post.

I was delighted to discover today a clip of the song from a late 1st-leg indoor Vertigo show. It isn't quite the later Europe version yet and suffers from not having that gigantic overwhelming screen; however, it still gives a very good sense of the general flow of the last 2 minutes of the visuals. This video of "The Fly" runs from the moment when the agenda of Them begins to be exposed, through the revelation of the secret of "giving in to love" and the urging to "reclaim your space... inside of you... you never knew... it is there... you will win," on to the final moment when the opening warnings begin to work backwards: "SEE/I DON'T WANT TO...." and "LETTERS BECOME WORDS BECOME SENTENCES BECOME LIES BECOME YOU." Go watch it right now. Hurray for YouTube and atu2 for posting this.

"Crumbs From Your Table" at OWU 3/2

News on an upcoming March 2 lecture by Steve Stockman at Ohio Wesleyan. A previous version of the same lecture is here.

ONE Budget Committee Sign-on Letter

For any American readers who are not members of the ONE campaign and thus may not get the notice, there is a sign-on letter at the ONE site asking the leaders of the House and Senate Budget Committees to fund President's Bush's full budget request for International Affairs. When I signed Thursday night, signatures were coming in at the rate of about 25 a minute.

samaritanity: "they say they want the Kingdom..."

Seth at samaritanity has some thoughts about U2's live shows and all the recent faith-oriented coverage of the band. Thanks for the plug for Get Up Off Your Knees, Seth!

U2 lecture

For anyone in the Boston or lower NH area, I'll be speaking at Christ Church S. Hamilton Mon evening the 27th at 7:30. After a brief introduction to U2's career, we'll be looking at how U2 treat themes of theodicy, idolatry, and eschatology, followed by Q&A. Feel free to email for further information.

Occasio: My Drive with Bono

A Fuller Seminary student (DMin in Missional Leadership) and teacher at Fresno Pacific University posts some reflections on a selection of U2 songs, missional theology, and how culture shapes faith.

The Worx Group Blog: U2: World's Biggest Band... and Smartest Brand?

Thought I'd link this commentary on U2's image and promotional strategy from the Worx Group, a marketing communications company. They recommend "a commitment to evolving your brand while remaining true to its core competencies," something the church all too often treats as an either-or.

Fixing a hole

I have no idea how this happened, but a post in which I linked to an essay about "Where the Streets Have No Name" on CADRE Comments vanished into thin air. So I'm relinking it.

Thanks for the link U2Achtung

Un grand bonjour aux forumiens de U2Achtung. Merci pour le lien!

Link-age

I got an email from Trent at Staring at the Son wanting to make sure our readers were aware of his site. His comments have also inspired me to redo my "U2 and God" links, which are largely to articles featuring Christian writing about U2; I hadn't substantially updated that section since about 2004. (Everything now over there has been previously blogged about, I believe.)

Almost heaven, West by God Virginia loves U2

I used to live in West Virginia, where religion writing has a particular tone. A big U2 fan at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph tries it out on U2. The article is a quilt of quotes and stories from recent interviews and events, thoughtfully arranged for a specific audience, interspersed with apologia. (I'm guessing the author doesn't know the historical reference of the fish in the sand image though.)

"Thank you for preaching to all the people who will never listen to me."

An incredible coup from Scott Calhoun at @U2: pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson talks about U2 and his reactions to some of their work. Read it immediately.

ACU February Lectureship

Abilene Christian University presents its 88th Annual Bible Lectureship on February 19-22, 2006. The Gospel and Culture track will include a coffeehouse session (see sidebar) called "From Rage to Ecstacy: U2 and the Psalms" by Gregory Stevenson, who is also known as a Buffy scholar (there's a review of his book here).

all right, all right....

I've actually been telling people who've emailed me material that sorry, there'll be no more posts on the aftermath of last week's prayer breakfast; but I've changed my mind for the sole reason that I don't think anyplace else has collected references in the blogosphere all that well. So I will send you, after all, to Jay Swartzendruber's remarks which have a lot of material from the meeting after the breakfast, also covered by Kim Lawton in an "unplugged" web supplement to PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. David sent me a link to his related post about grace, and I also was interested to notice a not-too-unrelated speaking venue coming up on the calendar (hat tip to ktrayn78). Many many bloggers have reposted DATA's or Sojourners' prepared text, and there are also discussions of one sort or another going on, including at least one started by a Get Up Off Your Knees contributor. These are all links for the sake of documentation, not endorsements.

Bono Waxes 'Prophetic' : "The church is leading."

CT has an article up called Bono Waxes 'Prophetic' (I'm presuming that's not what GetReligion - who used one for their report on the topic - would call a sneer quote). This blog does try to cover issues of economic justice, so I'm linking it (even though there isn't much about U2's art) for the idea that Isaiah 58 is "absolutely the prophetic utterance of this moment in time... What it really suggests is that if we do God's business, God will be more in ours. To use the colloquial, it's God watching our back." I also got a kick out of Charles Wesley's hymnody getting a big nod from Bono; I've long thought the Wesleys were one of the very best analogs to U2 theologically and artistically.

"not only cries out against injustice, but also dares to imagine an alternative"

I'm always happy to get emails pointing out some article I may not have seen, so thanks to Steve Harmon for letting me know about his "U2: Unexpected Prophets" (PDF), found in the "Singing Our Lives" issue of Christian Reflection, a publication of the Baylor University Center for Christian Ethics. Steve's article considers U2's work under the rubrics of "Grounded Implicitly in Worship," "Steeped in the Biblical Story," "Portraying the Triune God," "Sharing Christian Hope," "Basing Salvation in Grace," and "Calling for Prophetic Social Engagement"; of course, you know I'm going to nod at the 4th section, where the observation is made that "a tension between the already and the not yet... is the key theological concept for understanding the spiritual significance of U2's music." I blogged about a previous U2 analysis by the same author here, and he helped us all out with some patristics vocabulary in a comment to this post. The article is kind enough to cite Get Up Off Your Knees (which got a little bump in sales with all the Bono National Prayer Breakfast stuff yesterday; thanks, folks) as a recommended book.

There is also an accompanying lesson plan (also PDF) including Bible conections, a cool reading from Augustine, discussion questions, and a closing hymn.

Last Bono at the National Prayer Breakfast post I hope

All this National Prayer Breakfast stuff is a bit off-topic for a book blog (although welcome to all of you visiting from the Washington Post and other such sites), but I'm intrigued by the fact that MSNBC actually is now running a live vote on whether the USA should do what Bono suggested in the piece of his sermon that some homiletics folks would call the "application." (It was nothing new, of course; two million Americans have already signed on to the idea.) If only more homilies were taken so seriously.

[Update: I don't know about a transcript, but full video and audio of Bono's address at the National Prayer Breakfast is here.]

[Another update: the text of Bono's address at the National Prayer Breakfast is now available here as prepared for delivery (i.e. without the ad libs.)]

addendum

BTW I probably should have said this in yesterday's post -- the National Prayer Breakfast is broadcast on C-SPAN II, and is being streamed on the C-SPAN website.

National Prayer Breakfast 2006

I wasn't going to post this since I couldn't find any references to it anywhere else and thought it might not be public, but now that I have: I was interviewed today for an article in connection with the National Prayer Breakfast tomorrow in Washington DC, at which I was told Bono is the keynote speaker. (For our non-USA readers, this annual breakfast is not an official event, but is put on by the Fellowship Foundation, an evangelical Christian group. It sometimes raises controversy. This year, according to the press, King Abdullah II of Jordan is speaking at the lunch afterwards.)

Tollbooth stuff with quiz

David Buckna, whose comprehensively annotated U2 "30 QUESTIONS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EARS TO HEAR" quiz from last year is here, has a new "2005 Year-in-Review: The Gospel of Rock" quiz in the Phantom Tollbooth this month. (It nicely reuses the ending trick question from the U2 quiz.) The current Tollbooth also has a review of U2's Vertigo: Live From Chicago DVD up, judging it and U2's other performance videos "indispensable as documents of the gradually evolving magic that is U2 in concert."

update, added in late 2007: David emails to ask we re-link his U2 quiz which has moved to here.

Kneeling on Thanksgiving Day

Playing catch-up: Not sure I've ever seen a use of "Mysterious Ways" in homiletics, so I'll link this old Thanksgiving sermon-starter from Currents in Theology and Mission, which mentions pretty much the briefest possible citation from the song as a thematic suggestion for preaching on the holiday.

"Gold Lamé ....Stages on Life’s Way"

Thanks to philosophy professor Mike Austin of Eastern Kentucky University for sending me a link to his paper "We Get to Carry Each Other: U2 and Kierkegaard on Authentic Love." "A Man and a Woman," "Staring at the Sun," and (wait for it...) "Luminous Times" all find their way into this reflection on erotic love as described in Kierkegaard's three stages of life: the aesthetic (where one might expect rock musicians to be located, but...), the ethical, and the religious. Clever little first section, too.

Get That Out of Your Mouth #21

In case you haven't seen it elsewhere: an interesting Pitchfork column on indie rockers of faith. Excerpt: "...consider the work of people who are described as 'thinking Christians'-- a term that's about as patronizing as 'intelligent dance music,' but let's go with it for now. Take the quest for spirituality on Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, or the piety and humility of Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans, or to widen the circle, the furious morality of the abolitionist preacher in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, or the scene in Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me in which the reverend asks Mark Ruffalo's drifter if he considers his life important. If we shun the religious content of these works, we're missing their emotional and intellectual power. You can disagree with the church of your choice, but to dismiss religion altogether-- and to write off the best ideas, the best people and of course, the best indie rockers-- that come out of it, seems pointless. Why shoot the messenger just because you're scared he has a message?"

MINISTRY AND MEDIA: U2 Bible studies and discussion starters

I had a nice email from someone last night describing how he'd incorporated the video for "Original of the Species" in to one of the Bible study sessions in the back of Get Up Off Your Knees and the way his class reacted to it. These are all more dated, but I'm pretty sure I have not yet linked any of them yet: Here's a youth group session on "Vertigo" from Group magazine. There are two more by the same author in earlier issues, working with U2's "One" ("synopsis: Christians are called to love others unconditionally") and "When I Look at the World." And yet another: a full youth group Bible study using "Grace" and St. John Chrysostom. I drew on Group regularly for my job from '94-97, and I have to say that while the U2 doesn't surprise me at all, the Chrysostom does. The times they are a-changin'.

following some trails from a "Journal of Religion and Popular Culture" Dylan article

Way back in 2002, Michael J. Gilmour had an article, They Refused Jesus Too: A Biblical Paradigm in the Writing of Bob Dylan, in Vol. 1 of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, and I've just found it. While the piece is interesting in its own right, covering "a very specific way the Bible appears in some of Dylan's songs, namely the application of Christological imagery to himself and his vocation as an artist," I also want to point out the fruit of a brief pause over some U2 content in the methodology section. The author notes the problem that "the study of religious aspects of artistic work frequently turns to questions about the artist's faith, as if art is necessarily a window to the soul," and then gives us some fine reflections on the power of celebrity culture to skew the work of anyone seeking to study religious themes as expressed by a popular artist.

Following that is a persuasive list of reasons why all efforts to speak for what artists like U2 and Dylan personally believe "with song lyrics and poems as the primary data are doomed to failure." (On the U2 front, introductions to the band's faith have sometimes tried to avoid this problem by including personal quotes -- usually largely from Bono -- but to me this tactic merely exacerbates the skewing, idealizing effect of celebrity on the author's material.) Anyway, there's a lot of interesting stuff here along with some important warnings for anybody seeking to write about U2 (or any popular artists) from a theological point of view.

Gilmour has also published books in this field: one (perhaps an expansion of the JRPC article? don't know) called Tangled Up in the Bible: Bob Dylan & Scripture (there's a review here). I find it kind of amusing that Amazon suggested I pair this Dylan book with another (not out when Gilmour wrote the article) that represents the "art as spiritual biography" concept he does such a nice job of dismantling.

However, what's more relevant here is the brand new anthology he edited, Call Me the Seeker: Listening to Religion in Popular Music - you can see the contents in more detail. Call Me the Seeker has essays on artists like Nick Cave, Sinead O'Connor (with a clever analysis of fan-listserv reactions to her spiritual references), and the Stones (an article on "Sympathy for the Devil"), as well as two helpful and persuasive (IMHO) pieces on raves. And of course, U2 are represented in the book: first by Gilmour's own 2003 "The Prophet Jeremiah, Aung San Suu Kyi, and U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind: On Listening to Bono's Jeremiad," which long-term readers of this blog might possibly remember I found largely unpersuasive, and second by "Comic Endings: Spirit and Flesh in Bono's Apocalyptic Imagination, 1980-1983" by Brian Froese, newly of Canadian Mennonite University. This latter is a thorough tracking of patterns of language and metaphor in U2's early albums (happily, it's unable to resist citations from the later ones too, despite its narrowly defined scope), showing how U2 lyrics grow towards an increasingly sophisticated interweaving of "apocalyptically informed Christian spirituality, a prophetic concern for social justice, and an initially ambiguous masculine heterosexuality." The guy's been paying attention.

Anyway: isn't it great to see more and more work being done in this field that doesn't stop at "here's what I think this band thinks" or at introduction to the concept that popular artists deal with religious themes?

spring course

Fuller Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies will offer a spring quarter course in its Contemporary Culture/Postmodernism concentration called "All That You Can’t Leave Behind: The Spiritual Journeys of U2" (scroll down a bit). The description makes me think they've offered it once before, maybe in about 2002. The teacher listed is Barry Taylor, whom some of you may know from the book A Matrix of Meanings.

Christian Wrestling - Iconoculture

That's not metaphorical Jacob and the angel wrestling, but actual wrestling. Main point: we're mentioned once again on Iconoculture, who originally wrote about the Get Up Off Your Knees book here.

Pride excerpt

Missed it yesterday, but here Chris Scharen posts an excerpt from his (soon!) forthcoming book. If you've been curious, this gives a good sense of how he's approaching the topic and the kind of material he's using.

"We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check..."

This weekend is the Martin Luther King holiday in the USA, and would be a nice time to read, or re-read, some great preaching: the "I Have a Dream" speech, from US Constitution Online. I think it's often half-assumed that this speech was the source of the MLK video which U2 formerly inserted in the middle of live versions of "Pride," but that was actually the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech 5 years later - also worth reading. (Incidentally, I looked briefly online for the text of the U2 statement regarding Arizona's Gov. Meacham's opposition to this holiday which was read at the first night of the Joshua Tree tour, just to continue the MLK weekend theme, but couldn't find it. Anybody?)

Faith goes pop - BBC pieces

Catch-up post: Al Rogers looks at religious messages in pop songs for the BBC. He's dealt with Good Charlotte, Coldplay, and more, and here's his brief "spiritual U2" broadcast, which focuses on the old story (which for some reason hit the news again in mid-2005) of U2's having turned down an offer of $23 million to use "Where the Streets Have No Name" in a TV ad.

"Us"

"This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a God, but for another - doubtless very different - St. Benedict." --After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre

Last night, it happens, I finished reading School(s) for Conversion. For anyone who read that, or the related CT article, or who has noticed with interest the diverse crop of places like this or this or this or this, you may find some weird and unexpected echoes going through your head as you read Angela Pancella's new @U2 piece on Soul at Work, a book by Margaret Benefiel which I blogged about when it came out. An appendix to the piece includes the whole section devoted to, not the band exactly, but what the author calls "the U2 community," in this book on "spiritual organizations."

Kudos to both Benefiel and Pancella (whom we should all thank anyway as she steps away from her @U2 role) for drawing our eyes to something undergirding U2's work that is rarely made explicit, not much asked about by reporters, and only highlighted by the band in occasional pieces like that "the hardest thing to do is to stick together" poem that came with the U2 iPods. (What a weirdly subversive thing to package with an iPod. But then, I guess you do things like that when "rather than being a once a week concept, it's sort of the way we try and live.")

Nice to be noticed

Thanks to Once Upon A Time In The North for naming Get Up Off Your Knees as one of the Top Fives of Twenty-Oh-Five (best books read, that is).

Thanks to the Portuguese CoeXisT blog for naming U2 Sermons "Melhor blog internacional" of 2005.

All too aware of the contradictions

In this 7-minute audio excerpt from a recent issue of St. Anne’s Public House, a quarterly audio ministry of Christ Church, Spokane WA, Joost Nixon draws on the Assayas book to reflect in "A Case of Vertigo" on why "my attempts to exclude the frontman for U2 from my brain have been consistently frustrated." Some of it is the kind of over-personal "but if... how can...? And yet..." stuff that gets old to those who follow U2 and spirituality conversations, but Nixon cites correctly (a relief these days), and St. Anne's Public House is enough of an off-the-beaten-path source that some of you might enjoy giving it a listen.

Top 5 in 2005

The Corner's asked some of us to participate in its Top 5 of the year list in which bloggers get to highlight some of their own favorite posts. Here are mine, which focus on some of the relatively rare instances when I write at length out of my own perspective on a blog which is still really a promotional device for the book Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog. This year there seem to be a lot of song readings. They're in no order.

1. "The root cause of a lot of the problems in politics is hardness of the heart." This is a reading of the song "Love and Peace or Else," done before the Vertigo Tour started. I think I've been proven off the mark on at least one point by the live sequencing, but I still like the piece.

2. @U2's Drawing their Fish in the Sand archive was updated this year, and I wrote about my involvement with it in U2 Biblical References....

3. This post, "No secret at all," is probably my major blog highlight of the year, split into 3 parts for length: 1, 2, 3. It's a theological reading of U2's song "The Fly," explaining its new live presentation on the Vertigo Tour in light of previous presentations. I think I am still the only person who has written on this topic.

4.teach me how to sing: U2 world-premiered their 1993 song "The First Time" in 2005; here are some comments on it.

5. Too cute and in-jokey? Maybe, but I made myself laugh with "Best to be upfront about these things."

Building on hope - Trade still a problem

One more catch-up post today since this stuff is already dated: In a year round-up story, the LA Times opined that "The year 2005 will go down as a turning point in the global war on poverty." The article is worth noting because it takes the time to give a realistic history of how the Cold War-era misuse of aid led to the cynicism advocates are now having to battle: "For decades during the Cold War, the Western world for the most part regarded impoverished nations as chess pieces in the struggle against communism. If foreign aid was doled out, it was mostly to prop up friendly dictatorships that could be counted upon to crush leftist insurrections. Nobody much cared if the aid disappeared down a sinkhole of corruption; helping people out of poverty wasn't the point. The inevitable result was cynicism about the effectiveness and purpose of international development."

(While we're talking about setting the record straight on African aid, there's a substantive reply to the recent Theroux "Rock Star's Burden" article at 3quarksdaily.)

You can also hear a BBC interview with Bono on the "2005 roundup" topic here. In it he goes into detail about the non-results of the recent WTO talks in Hong Kong (about which ONE asked supporters to email their leaders). Also, great story about a market day in Accra. Along the way comes an explanation of how the CoeXisT portion of the Vertigo show relates to these issues and what its point is... not that the people invested in attacking it are likely to pay any attention.

However, the most telling thing about that interview, IMHO, is this. Along the way there's a light aside that will have become quite familiar to anyone who reads U2 news -- Bono comments that despite the other three members of U2 having been "spiritually and indeed financially" supportive of his development advocacy work, at times he thought he was going to get kicked out of the band for being too boring or something. Well, at the highest point I saw, this piece analyzing successes and failures of the global 2005 anti-extreme-poverty focus had generated 163 stories on Google News, 162 with headlines like "Tension in U2 over Bono's Campaigning" (a story so exciting, apparently, that my local TV station covered it two nights running on the 11:00 news) and "Bono's U2 Breakup Fears." Only one out of 163 covered the real topic.

Sure, 6500 people died today for lack of drugs Westerners can buy around the corner, and the rice industry in Ghana has collapsed because of unjust trade regulations, but what's really important and worth broadcasting worldwide? A few celebrities may have at some point had a little tiff.

Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog: Incarnation, Fowler, U2...

Well, that was fun, but 12 days is a long time to hold posts in reserve, so we'll be playing "post 12 days of Christmas" catch-up here: let's start with six theological thoughts about the incarnation and U2 from Alan J. at Prodigal Kiwi(s). The same blog has a more recent reflection on using U2's history to teach faith development theory a la James Fowler.

12 days of Christmas #12

what am i to do
just tell me


rejoice


we will
rejoice

12 Days of Christmas #11

i've seen enough
i'm not giving up

12 Days of Christmas #10

in the curve of the moon
in the shadow cast across my room

12 days of Christmas #9

o great ocean
o great sea

12 Days of Christmas #8

though torn in two
we can be one