U2 Sermons

Alive at 33

2009-11-04T08:43:00.001-05:00

The blog An Unapproved Road posts some reflections on the closing concert of the 360 tour. This is part 2, which I've linked because it's the most comprehensive, but you will probably want to click back to part 1 as well. It's a rich reflection by someone who loved the show, and it has a lot of interesting nuggets along the way, especially around the closing three-song coda which has come in for some critique. Excerpt:

All of these songs express the soul’s hunger for clarity, for release, for union with the Source or the Destination, or both -- being stuck, seeking some light, getting lost, being found. Certainly this is a regular theme in U2’s music, but this particular setlist is built, not around political calls to arms, but almost entirely around this inner longing to be truly known. We want to know our place in the world, we struggle to belong, to be loved.

U2 has long understood the political implications of spiritual wounds, and the media’s emphasis therefore has been on their politics… because God knows that’s easier than spirituality. But on this tour it seems the band has chosen to focus on the spiritual work required to change the world – consistent with the tone of "No Line on the Horizon."
The coda at the end of the show, the shadowy suit of lights, mimes our hidden story of fatigue, futility, and emptiness. Maybe it also says something more oblique about U2’s life as rock stars – certainly critique of the Pop Life is not new to their work. I don’t know.
But either way, say goodbye to the suit of lights. On your knees, boy.

Spiritual Directors International on the Rose Bowl

2009-11-01T16:05:00.000-05:00

The folks at Spiritual Directors international offer a guest post suggesting some reflection questions to ask yourself after watching the Amazing Grace--Streets segue from the Rose Bowl show on YouTube.

U2 Quiz : For those who have ears to hear

2009-10-30T14:46:00.000-04:00

Readers may remember the quiz on spiritual aspects of U2's work by Sol O. Mann that came out a few years ago. The author has now updated it with a number of questions on the NLOTH era, so take a look and see how you do this time around!

Where Could We Go from Here? - Books & Culture

2009-10-28T20:24:00.001-04:00

Scott Calhoun, director of the U2 academic conference, who long ago wrote a review essay on Get Up Off Your Knees for Books and Culture, is back five years later in the same publication with a thorough, balanced, and thoughtful look at the state of and the prospects for U2 studies. An excerpt (in which are suggested topics yet to be fully explored):

New directions? How has U2 instructed and delighted millions of fans from all walks and faiths with the basic biblical narrative of creation, fall, and redemption without being thought of as a "Christian" band? What does U2 do in their concerts which makes many say they have their religious experiences there, but not in churches? What tensions are present and necessary in U2's work to produce spiritually instructive works of art? Which songs best constitute a U2 psalter for postmodernity? Why does U2 employ the best talents in the live entertainment industry and devote so much time, energy, and material resources to filling stadiums — in order to lead audiences in singing songs of sacrifice and surrender?

Thanks to Scott for a great review of the literature so far... and for his kind words about this blog, too.

Recent audio by Jeff Keuss

2009-10-28T09:34:00.004-04:00

Those of you who heard Jeff Keuss at the U2 academic conference (and maybe those who didn't!) might enjoy giving a listen to this 40-minute podcast by him called "U2 and the Future of Transformational Leadership." It's on iTunes, taken from a recent event at Seattle Pacific University. (I haven't had a chance to listen yet but everything I've heard him do on the band has been thoughtful and insightful.)

Live review: U2's 360 Tour at the Rose Bowl | Pop & Hiss | Los Angeles Times

2009-10-26T13:17:00.000-04:00

I usually don't link reviews or general U2 news, but I'll make an exception for this commentary on last night's performance at the Rose Bowl. Though marred by the contemporary civil-religion assumption that there is of necessity a conflict between the spiritual and the physical, the piece makes some excellent comments about the effect of the Claw. But I'm most intrigued by the reviewer's comment that U2's work is ultimately "a meditation on space: the majestic natural landscapes that the Edge's guitar playing often describes; the crowded dance floors or train platforms Clayton and Mullen's rhythms evoke; the inches between a whispering mouth and a lover's ear, or the infinite journey of a prayer hurled into the air." I would want to add there that in U2 the prayers can be as intimate as the whispers, and the words addressed to human lovers can be far more distant and alienated. But still, the image is a good one -- a meditation on space -- and I've never heard it put quite that way before.

Interview on KRDU

2009-10-20T20:10:00.000-04:00

Some of you might be interested in this podcast of an interview I did today for KRDU in California, just generally talking about U2 and faith.

If you get the chance

2009-10-15T13:27:00.002-04:00

Does this make anyone else wonder if U2 and their team have arrived at the point of realizing the show really needs "Unknown Caller," even if Americans won't sing it?

Confab

2009-10-11T19:35:00.000-04:00

A fun moment during the U2 conference was getting a shoutout from Bono onstage; the post linked there also lets you hear his much longer tribute to Agnes Nyamayarwo.

Footnote

2009-10-10T20:14:00.003-04:00

Just a more experiential footnote to my post yesterday about how I didn't see this tour as engendering leitourgia as successfully as previous tours. I got a U2.com mail Friday whose purported link to Willie Williams' recent diaries from the 360 tour actually led to an entry from back in 2000. Typical U2.com, but the piece was one I had never read, a very arresting journal entry reacting to the concert U2 played at the Man Ray in Paris upon the release of ATYCLB.

The reviews of the 360 concerts are very, very good, because U2 put on a very, very good show and are very, very skilled at what they do. Very, very good is an admirable thing to be. But wanna read what somebody sounds like who has just experienced U2 leitourgia in full flight? Here.

Reflections on my own paper at the conference, and on the 360 show

2009-10-09T10:08:00.007-04:00

My presentation at the U2 conference looked at 5 characteristics of leitourgia as set forth by a cluster of recent liturgical theologians (David Fagerberg, Alexander Schmemann, Aidan Kavanaugh, and Peter Fink) and described how U2 shows have fulfilled them, with examples from across several tours. I did this in deliberate contradistincton to the popular "church" metaphor -- which I don't think is all bad, but has significant potential for misprision and category mistakes. (The 5 characteristics of leitourgia were roughly: the sense of any divide between the sacred/secular is demolished and exposed as a psuedo-Christian lie, a group of people become something they were not as a mere collection of individuals through a deliberate process evoking a corporate connection, a promise of ultimate fulfillment is rendered perceptible to the senses, the world is done the way it ought to be done [justice is enacted], and people are engaged in a way that helps them offer up the totality of their uncensored lives and selves.) BTW if you are going to use even these brief paraphrases in connection with U2, please have the courtesy to cite me and link me.

Anyone who really knows that literature would have recognized that I was begging several questions and working with the source material in a very generalist way, but I was betting on the field of liturgical theology per se (as opposed to theology of worship or liturgy, practical theology, etc) being so tiny that hardly anybody there would be equipped to call me on it.

I had mostly finished the paper by the time I saw the 2 Foxboro shows, and of course several of us went to the Raleigh show during the conference. There's been a lot of discussion online about this tour, its audiences, and its setlist (or setlists, since they keep tinkering with them), with people coming out various places about whether it's working, and I don't feel a need to rehash any of that. It is true, though, that I had a bit of an existential crisis about the paper after Foxboro, because the current U2 show, in my opinion, does not successfully achieve the 5 characteristics I was working with. It is trying in several ways, I think -- even trying too hard -- but not succeeding. I want very emphatically to say that this assessment has nothing whatsoever to do with questions like whether spiritual themes are more or less to the front in the show (focusing on that would essentially violate my point 1, in fact).

Whether this is deliberate or simply something U2 have been pushed into by a combination of circumstances such as a pre-NLOTH commitment to the Claw, a low-selling album with no hits, and the need to please US stadiums full of casual fans, I don't know. But I ended up simply putting in a few small disclaimers that these 5 points reflected U2's modus operandi for much of their career. And nobody asked about it. But on some level, I guess I am still hoping that maybe there might still be some developments in this show (future legs?) that can foster the leitourgia experience that is what (unlike many many others, who of course have every right to come for very different reasons) I value most about the band live.

"too much theological content"

2009-10-08T19:39:00.003-04:00

Tim Neufeld has responded to my post where I complained a bit about people treating U2 lyrics as Christian proof-texts in a wooden, decontextualized way. I smiled at his citation from the talk 3 members of U2 gave at a retreat for musicians in their early years (I'd forgotten that "We’re a Christian band! It’s all over. We’re finished!" story) but the more interesting point is Tim's challenge: so what constitutes theological content, anyway?

U2 Academic Conference T-shirt

2009-10-07T16:52:00.000-04:00

Did you think the conference shirt was cool? (I did.) Now you can order one for yourself!

Sleep-deprived post-conference musings

2009-10-05T16:34:00.005-04:00

A few VERY random takeaways mostly from Neil McCormick's talks at/after the U2 conference, purely because he is the most recent thing in my mind.

First, I was struck by McCormick saying flat-out that U2 are not an Irish band. One knows that only half the band are actually from Irish families, and that The Edge is Welsh and Adam Clayton is English, but McCormick's suggestion that the proper term would be "Anglo-Irish" made a penny drop for me.

Second, McCormick's assertion that the importance of U2's Christian commitment to both their work, and their career arc in general, simply cannot be overstated (and he says this as a skeptic himself.)

Third, this side anecdote. McCormick attended a paper presentation on conservative aspects of U2's work by Steve Catanzarite (who wrote that book on Achtung Baby grounded in Roman Catholic theology) and was critical of it as "hearing what he wanted to hear." Neil picked up the book at the conference and, during a conversation with Bono on Sunday, critiqued it to him, saying that the idea of approaching Achtung Baby as an extended working through the idea of the Fall was, again, inappropriately reading ideas into the album, simply an example of how listeners hear whatever they want to hear in U2's music. Bono responded, "It sounds to me like he's bang on."

Both this anecdote and the previous assertion Neil made ("cannot be overstated") tied in for me (personally) with working through a (completely unrelated) comment from a theologically trained acquaintance who said roughly that it was annoying hearing people "read too much Christian theology into" U2's lyrics. In thinking that over, my response would be that while I very often share a similar annoyance, I'm not sure that the problem is exactly quantity: "too much." I've been shocked a few times myself by the abstruse Christian ideas Bono has cited in connection with or as the actual source of U2 lyrics -- things that, had I heard them from someone else, I'd likely have responded to with "You're reading way too much theological content into that."

I'm annoyed when people choose bits of U2 lyrics as excuses to say something they want to say about theology without stopping to notice what the actual preoccupations of the whole text are. I'm annoyed when people highlight nothing else in U2 lyrics than the kind of material that would of necessity appear anywhere any Christian content is in play. I'm annoyed when people use U2 lyrics to claim U2 for their theological team. I'm annoyed when people pick a few U2 lyrics out of context to check off the "pop culture" box in their largely unrelated Christian talk. I'm annoyed when people act as if every U2 song must somehow be in code, a secret message that's "really" "about" some inner-circle Christian topic. I'm annoyed, in other words, when Christians interact exploitatively, superficially, thoughtlessly, or in a partisan way with U2 lyrics. And yeah, that happens a lot.

But I'm beginning to question if there's such a thing as claiming "too much" theological content for U2 per se. Maybe the real problem is just people claiming that content poorly.

conference resources continued

2009-10-05T14:05:00.002-04:00

Through my exhaustion, I just wanted to say quickly that Tim Neufeld (linked below) blogged a number of other presentations including mine, and Steve Taylor also blogged several, of which I've randomly linked one. If you were blogging, I missed it, and you'd like your notes linked too, let me know.

conference followers....

2009-10-03T16:48:00.002-04:00

Also FYI, the @U2 Blog is recapping the plenaries.

U2 Conference: Dr. Anthony DeCurtis

2009-10-03T15:29:00.000-04:00

Here's a writeup from Tim Neufeld of Dr. Anthony DeCurtis' keynote at the U2 conference.

Presentation wordle

2009-10-03T05:15:00.001-04:00

Just for fun and with thanks to Tim Neufeld who put up a Wordle of his presentation, here's one of my Sunday morning conference paper "U2 Live: Where Leitourgia Has No Name."

Reminder

2009-10-02T08:39:00.000-04:00

If you're interested, again, I'll be on the radio at noon today Eastern USA time: 1 hr live on the U2 conference with Scott Calhoun, Matt McGee, and Agnes Nyamayarwo. Stream live, or listen to the podcast later....

U2 in DC writeup: God’s Politics Blog

2009-10-01T16:49:00.000-04:00

Jim Wallis posts on U2’s Music and Mission–and My Kid’s First Rock Concert for Sojourners.

Durham, here we come

2009-09-30T18:01:00.001-04:00

I'm leaving tomorrow for the U2 academic conference in Durham. Hope to meet many readers there! Remember you can follow on Twitter with #U2conf.

Soon

2009-09-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

There's less than a week until The Hype and The Feedback, the first-ever academic conference on U2. I wanted to share a couple things with readers in the run-up:

--First, you will be able to follow at least some conference sessions and speakers on Twitter with the hashtag #u2conf which we will be asking everyone to use. Right now, follow http://twitter.com/U2Conference to make sure you get any further details needed.
--Second, at noon on Friday, just before the conference kicks off, I'll be on "The State of Things" on North Carolina Public Radio (WUNC) to talk about the conference with MattMcGee of @U2 and Agnes Nyamayarwo of TASO Uganda. It looks as if the station does have both live streaming and archived audio in case anyone would like to tune in.

White as new year's day snow

2009-09-27T07:26:00.000-04:00

RTE has been doing a "30 years of U2" event, and in conjunction with this they put up a number of rare U2 radio and TV clips from their archives. Several of these are very early and well worth it purely for the hilarity value, but I do want to comment on one in particular.

Near the bottom of the first page of archives, there's a 5'45" clip where an especially horrifically-mulleted Bono talks to Gay Byrne about the video for "New Year's Day." Byrne asks: why snow? and Bono's response is so arcane as to have made me stop and rewind the player a couple times -- but indicative, I think. Essentially he says that the album they are about to release is titled War but its theme is actually surrender, and "I had this idea of using the snow as a sort of covering. [He explains about flying white flags as a symbol onstage.] And then I thought of the white snow, the ultimate sort of symbol of surrender."

I wonder what percentage of an audience would connect a white covering at all with surrender, much less see snow as its "ultimate symbol"? ("White as snow" is at least a direct quote that has some currency in the culture; this covering/surrender image is wandering around somewhere near the end of a series of conclusions drawn from... I dunno, things like Psalm 51:6-8, Rom 4:7, Rev 7:8-15, Gal 3:26-27 and maybe elsewhere?) It hits me how incredibly abstract, obscure and cerebral this intended symbolic message of the snow in the video is; if a fan independently argued for it on a forum, they'd probably be mocked for grasping at straws.

I sure never would have thought of snow = white covering = surrender, but for one thing, perhaps it throws a little more light on what's going on with the long-time live pairing of "Until the End of The World" and "New Year's Day."

...and not see it

2009-09-26T13:43:00.002-04:00

Thanks to the folks at the Mockingbird blog for sending along Nathan's writeup of what spiritual connections he made with several moments in a recent U2 show at Giants Stadium. I'm really hearing a fair amount of confusion from people about what's going on with this tour, and am having a difficult time processing my own reaction to the two Foxboro shows, so it's nice to be able to share a piece by someone who seems to have had a pretty straightforward U2ey experience. (Also, make sure you catch his interesting comments about the steering wheel microphone.)

Researcher for the U2 conference looking for respondents in church leadership

2009-09-23T17:01:00.001-04:00

The folks who are giving the paper "A Preacher Stealing Hearts in a Travelling Show: Bono and North American Evangelicals" at the U2 conference next weekend need your help! They are in search of survey respondents to answer a few questions about U2's influence in church circles in North America in the areas of worship, politics, and social justice. If you are a Christian leader of some kind and feel that you can speak to this subject, you're invited to fill out their U2 Paper Questionnaire.