U2 Sermons

"energy to strike at self-ism’s creed"

2012-01-18T10:23:00.001-05:00

A little late for the U.S. holiday, but here's a thoughtful reflection on Martin Luther King day and music from The Drake Effect. The post raises the question of what it means that much popular music "simply reinforces a desire for personal experiences of pleasure with self-indulgent narrowness, even much of the worship music in the churches I have frequented," and asks about music that raises issues of love of neighbor, commitment to solidarity, and so on, finding U2 a good example of the latter.

Bleed Into One redux

2012-01-15T20:44:00.000-05:00

Some readers may already have seen this on the @U2 blog, but the producer of Bleed Into One, a film chronicling the history of the Christian rock genre (mentioned before on this blog in 2008), has published a reflection on how he chose the title from a U2 lyric. He also talks about the song "Drowning Man" and its special meaning for him. The film now has a Kickstarter campaign up, as well, so head on over if you'd like to support it.

(Incidentally, if you're wondering why on that 2008 post I refer to a helpful comment from a reader, but there are no comments visible, it's because this blog lost 5 years of previous comments when the comment system I was using stopped being supported. Good times.)

2011-12-09T13:09:00.001-05:00

I just heard about a new article called "Soundtracks of Acrobatic Selves: Fan-Site Religion in the Reception and Use of the Music of U2," which appears in the October 2011 issue of The Journal of Contemporary Religion. Free viewing of the actual text isn't possible for 12 more months (even from within an academic gateway with a subscription, it seems), but the abstract says that the article analyses 40 pieces posted on a fansite in response to U2 songs, looking at how such online reflection "may contribute to the development of religious/spiritual exploration in contemporary Western societies." The authors are Clive Marsh and Vaughan S. Roberts.

Achtung! The U2 Studies Journal

2011-12-02T10:03:00.001-05:00

Check out the news of an online, semi-annual journal in U2 studies launching May 2012. The call for submissions is here, and to keep informed you can subscribe to email, or follow on Twitter.

Advent 1

2011-11-27T14:49:00.001-05:00

The Rock and Theology blog offers U2 as a case study in why rock does Advent better than Christmas.

New from Brian Walsh

2011-11-25T12:49:00.001-05:00

Get Up Off Your Knees contributor Brian Walsh has a new arts-related book coming out, Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination. Read more about it here or learn about the Toronto launch party here.

Exploring U2

2011-11-22T10:30:00.000-05:00

A reminder that Exploring U2 is out there for purchase (...especially for those of you with institutional book-buying budgets, or your libraries). I don't know who reviewer "owl" is on Amazon, but was awfully touched to read in his/her review of the book that "Beth Maynard's analysis of the U2 concert experience as leitourgia describes what U2 live means to me better than anything I have ever read - and gave me a new word." Gee. Thanks, owl.

"RECLAIM YOUR SPACE"

2011-11-18T16:34:00.001-05:00

Did anyone else think that the slogans projected on the Verizon Building in NYC last night by Mark Read and others from Occupy Wall Street were almost reminiscent of the projections in the Vertigo version of "The Fly"? (If you have not seen the video, it's here.)

I suppose it was particularly the prominence of "LOVE" that bought it to mind, but also these uplifting parts: "look around you," "we are winning," "do not be afraid," and "we are unstoppable /another world is possible." Plus the vibe of shaking off apathy into a confrontation with that nameless "them" who, in Willie Williams' text, want you to believe "THEY ARE THE GIVERS/ WE ARE THE ACCEPTORS/ WHEN WILL IT END?/ NEVER/ I HAVE NO MONEY/ I HAVE NO CONTROL/ I HAVE NO POWER." In fact, I've just reread the text of those 2005 projections (which some French fans helped me assemble back in the day; thanks), and it would have made a great addition to that guerrilla art piece that stole the show last night.

YOU FILL IN THE GAPS
YOU ARE THE DIFFERENCE...
RECLAIM YOUR SPACE
IT BELONGS TO YOU
RECLA YOUR S CE
IT LONGS TO Y U
ECLAIM OUR SPA E
IT BE ON TO YOU
RECL IM YOUR ACE
I BELONG TO YOU...
INSIDE OF YOU/ YOU NEVER KNEW/ IT IS THERE/ UNKNOWN TO YOU/ DOWN THE BLOCK/ IN YOUR FACE
CLOSE YOUR EYES/ COVER YOUR EARS/ SHUT YOUR MOUTH/ SHUT THEM OUT
YOU WILL WIN

Also, if you have not read the extraordinary interview with Read check it out. The fact that a single working mom on the 16th floor of a grim housing project opened her apartment on little notice as a secret location for the projection and refused to take money for it.... Even if you are unenthusiastic about the Occupy movement, it's quite a story.

"We’ll get it wrong. And sometimes we’ll get it right."

2011-11-14T08:53:00.000-05:00

Some readers might find this off topic, but I was interested to see a post using "One" pop up on Tales From the Hood, a no-nonsense blog about international aid and development. Unusually realistic and refreshing, this anonymous blog is always a great, if sometimes snarky, read that chronicles the "inner struggle to balance being a full-on unapologetic professional aid worker while also staying eyes-open to the inconsistency, dilemma, paradox and sometimes plain absurdity that very clearly exist in the humanitarian aid industry." The post on "One" uses the song to comment on the priorities of aid workers and beneficiaries in an imagined conversation about issues in the aid system. (For a sense of the commitments of the blog, check out Humanitarian Aid 101; for an intensely sarcastic piece that should ring a bell for anyone who has ever had to work with impractical donors motivated mostly by their own emotions, head to the 2010 Best in #SWEDOW awards.)

Famine and ONE

2011-11-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

A reader heads up: The column "Faithful Citizenship" on the Patheos portal is using some quotations from Bono and U2 songs over the month of November, when their goal is to "explore the problem of hunger around the world and at home." The current installment includes material from Rowan Williams and N.T. Wright as it reflects on Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom.

"At home in the in-between"

2011-10-31T14:19:00.000-04:00

There's a U2 retrospective up on Slate today that's worth reading. While I think it misses the point or overgeneralizes in a couple of places, some really thoughtful material makes it in along the way. Excerpt:
In the end, U2 won for losing. They went on to accomplish what few artists—and very few rock acts—have ever succeeded in doing: wholesale transformation. Influenced by trends in industrial metal, Manchester rave rock, and synthetic soul, 1991’s Achtung Baby ought to have been a spectacular failure. But rather than a desperate bid for cool (Bono’s “Fly” shades aside), the album has the disarming feel of a psychological breakthrough. Recorded in Berlin as that city noisily emerged from the Cold War, the album asserted tentativeness, from the Edge’s spindly, impatient vibrations—every minute he tries on another idea, another gesture—to Bono’s spooky, fragile falsetto. Righteous posturing gives way to twisted love songs and surrealistic similes. On stage the band abandoned bighearted largesse for ironic indulgence, but the pose couldn’t mask the excitable bewilderment of the music. The album’s closing hymn answers “Amazing Grace” in the negative, upending Bono’s (and Christendom’s [well, at least kataphatic Christendom's? -ed]) favorite metaphor. “Love is blindness,” he insists, cooing and cracking. “I don’t want to see. Won’t you wrap the night around me?”

Taking bets on how widely this gets picked up...

2011-10-19T11:27:00.000-04:00

This link will probably only be good today, 19th October (and I can't get the archive/search function to turn up anything in Firefox, personally), but the front page of today's Metro Herald paper in Dublin covers the fact that Bono was cited as a modern-day prophet in a children's Roman Catholic religious education text and that some Dubliners find this comical. Careful readers will remember that there are 2 previous such children's books treating Bono as an example of Christian faith in action out there: A Powerful Voice and Breaking Through By Grace. But those weren't from, em, Ireland. (HT Scott.)

"fly naively and land with a thud"

2011-10-04T09:57:00.000-04:00

Steve Stockman pens some reflections for the 30th anniversary of October, including some material situating the album in the freewheeling house church trend of that ear.

2011-09-27T11:58:00.000-04:00

I should have mentioned: Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll? is now available for Amazon pre-order. (Yes, I know.... academic books cost a lot.)

The Screwtape Songs: Bono, C.S. Lewis, and Zoo-Era U2 : U2 Interference – U2 Fans, Pop Culture Webzine, & More

2011-09-24T11:49:00.004-04:00

Perhaps it's Tim Neufeld week here at U2 Sermons! Check out this article called The Screwtape Songs: Bono, C.S. Lewis, and Zoo-Era U2 over on the fansite Interference. It gives an interesting overview of Bono's use of C.S. Lewis' work at various points in U2's career. Thanks also to Tim for the hat-tip on my series of posts on "The Fly" in the Vertigo era, the Zoo and Elevation eras, and the transition between the two. (If you only have time for one of those, read the one on the Vertigo era.)

Class opportunity

2011-09-20T13:59:00.000-04:00

We've watched a few iterations of the Fresno Pacific University course on "Theology, Culture and U2" pass by on this blog, and those of us who were at the U2 academic conference got a chance to hear about its effects. Now a version of the same course is being offered to the public for free at North Fresno Church (in California) starting this weekend. To learn more, check out Tim's blog.

The Day Metallica Came to Church

2011-09-01T14:33:00.000-04:00

I've linked here before a few of Pastor John Van Sloten's U2-related sermons from New Hope Church in Calgary, Canada. I knew that he had a book, but until getting a chance to read it recently I wrongly assumed it was a collection of pop culture sermons. In fact, it's a thoughtful personal reflection on preaching that along the way covers questions about seeing God in the world around us, including music, film and art (both popular and classical). It's called The Day Metallica Came to Church and might be of interest to any readers who are preachers themselves.

Random stats

2011-08-26T09:23:00.001-04:00

Hmm, it turns out my most popular post since 2009 (when Blogger started tracking such things), from about a year ago, is Your heart is my home, a reflection on the new version of "Mercy." OK, but I still wish I'd gotten to hear it live.

Teaching U2: The Classroom as Theological Learning Space

2011-08-23T20:57:00.000-04:00

One of the papers I had the pleasure of hearing at the U2 academic conference in 2009, but which sadly will not be in the Exploring U2 book, was Tim Neufeld and Jessica Mast's "Teaching U2: The Classroom as Theological Learning Space." I am glad to learn that a version of it, published last year in Pacific Journal, is now available online. Go forth and read!

More in the "what worship leaders can learn from..." genre

2011-08-05T11:52:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Bob Keeley for tipping me off to this recent post on what worship leaders can learn from U2. There have been a number of such pieces linked here over the past couple tours (here's a recent 360 one, e.g.), each of which brought a little something different to the topic. In looking over past examples, I was reminded that one of the highlights in terms of both initial insights and subsequent discussion has to have been this 2006 post from Steve Taylor (whose work on "Bullet the Blue Sky" will also appear in Exploring U2, incidentally! /shameless book promotion off).

The Next Christians and U2

2011-08-01T05:03:00.000-04:00

Here's a nice little narrative from a pastor whose sabbatical began with the Nashville 360 show. It includes a thoughtful take on Christian subculture in light of Bono's failing to remember Michael W. Smith's name onstage.

Adam

2011-07-29T12:36:00.001-04:00

Those of you who enjoyed Stephen Catanzarite's book on Achtung Baby may want to drop over to the blog for the 33 1/3 book series and read his account of presenting the book to Bono at a recent 360 concert. Incidentally, the paper on U2's conservative voice that's mentioned briefly will appear in Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll?

The Substance of Things Seen

2011-07-25T04:51:00.004-04:00

Here's an interesting post from State of Formation comparing two 2011 "big budget pop concerts": Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour and U2's 360 Tour. The author, who very helpfully does not confuse leitourgia with worship, finds a deeper liturgical sensibility in Gaga's current tour than in U2's. "Lady Gaga, whatever you think of her message, unflinchingly embodied that message at every point in her production.... Gaga’s production just is an enactment of that freedom with and for her fans," he writes, "which is why it more nearly approached an authentic liturgy — the work of a people — than did U2’s production, which was largely a spectacle."

I haven't seen the Monster Ball show, so I can't comment on it, and I have no idea if the author has seen any of U2's other tours (some of which IMHO succeeded far better than this one - as masterful, mature, and fulfilling an experience as the 360 show now is - at enacting the kind of corporate emotional and spiritual "trajectory" the author was looking for in which "the medium just is the message.") I also think it's important to remember that any U2 show is crafted collaboratively by lots of artists and it really won't do to ascribe the whole tenor of the experience to a "Protestant" worldview on Bono's part. But based on the five 360 shows I saw, I would tend to agree that any specifically liturgical sensibility of this show taken on its own is, indeed, uncharacteristically weak.

I believe in love.

2011-07-22T16:12:00.000-04:00

Here is a brief post from The Scriptorium that takes a look at two possible readings of "God Part II," asking if the song's narrator is sincere or not in the final affirmation of belief in each stanza. Excerpt: Luther spoke of the dramatic tension of the Christian life as one in which believers are simul iustus et peccator —at once fully righteous and fully sinful. This makes no sense, but it sure does explain a lot. On this second reading, Bono’s ‘I’ is sincere throughout, even if he is a hapless, sorry mystery to himself and us.

#U2360MTL

2011-07-08T09:11:00.001-04:00

I'll be at both Montreal concerts, and have been in town for a few days. I just want to say that I have been to U2 shows in France, 4 venues in the US, Scotland, and Ireland, and I have never seen anything like the thoroughness of planning for the crowds, public dissemination of information/maps, and transportation data that has happened around these shows. Kudos to the city, the STM, and the local planning team. Of course, we'll see how it actually goes down tonight! ...but I feel better informed about every aspect of how things are going to work than I have ever felt heading to a stadium show.

Edit: Just saw this -- Scott Calhoun (I'm guessing) will be on Montreal's CJAD 800 with Dan Laxner at 3:15 Eastern Daylight Time today to talk about the U2 academic conference. Tune in if you're not in the GA line!