HENRY JANSEN

THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN ’S WRECKING BALL

Common Ground Prior to “Religious’ and “Secular”?1

Introduction Bruce Springsteen’s music is filled with religious language and imagery, principally Christian and/or Catholic in origin, although lately some Buddhist imagery can be detected as well. Springsteen himself has indicated that reli- gion is at the root of his music. In a 1984 interview he said about his first album : “there’s that searchin’ thing; that record to me is like religiously based, in a funny kind of way.… That searchin’, and faith, and the idea of hope.”2 The presence of this language and imagery has, of course, led to a great deal of discussion on what the language actually means or signifies in his music. Some commentators have a tendency to claim Springsteen and his music for their religion. The most famous example of this is Andrew Greeley in a 1988 article called “The Catholic Imagination of Bruce Spring- steen” (Greely 1988). More recently, Jeffrey B. Symynkywicz’ The Gospel Ac- cording to Bruce Springsteen reads like a list of sermon illustrations drawn from Springsteen’s music (Symynkywicz 2008). Even more recently, a review in Christianity Today of Wrecking Ball claims that Springsteen’s “work is characterized by a buoyant hope that can only be seen as rooted in the person of Jesus Christ” (Whitman 2012). The writer of this review, Alan Whitman, finds that Springsteen has more to say to him than any other , even though he finds this “curious” because “Springsteen does not claim to be a Christian” (Whitman 2012).3 Still others, like Kate McCarthy, see Springsteen as positing an alternative vision (McCarthy 2011: 20-40) or even, like Matthew Orel, a secular morality (Orel 2012: 150).

1 I would like to thank Henk Vroom, Tracy Ann Essoglou and Lucy Jansen for their helpful comments and corrections, and those who attended my session at the ESITIS conference in Bilbao. 2 Cited in, among others, Masur 2009: 115. We will present the full quote below. 3 For a Christian critique of even posing this question see Keuss 2012.

73 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1

The question such speculation raises is: Are such discussions warranted? Or is there something more basic, more fundamental going on in Springsteen’s mus- ic? Springsteen’s use of religious music is significant for the very fact that he appeals to a wide audience, a secularized audience, and even more precisely, a disenfranchised secularized audience. His use of religious language and im- agery is not necessarily Christian. But neither is it completely secular. In this article I would like to explore Springsteen’s use of religious imagery and lan- guage by looking at the “place” of space and place itself in his music. I will argue that Springsteen’s use of religious language and imagery forces the (Christian) listener to re-evaluate his or her own understanding of that religious language and imagery, seeing new connections and new understandings in his or her own appropriation of that religious language.

I will do this by looking at three songs on his latest album, two of which belong to the album proper and the last was included as a bonus track: “Rocky Ground,” “,” and “Swallowed Up (In the Belly of the Whale).” While religious language and imagery are present in the other songs on this album, they are much more dominant in these songs. My dis- cussion here will involve two different aspects of place and space in these songs. I will begin by looking at the religious imagery in these songs, par- ticularly the imagery that relates to place, for place is important in Springsteen, and concentrating on this will help to focus the discussion. Then I will explore the larger sense of place in these songs, specifically looking at the album and concerts as, to use Henri Lefebvre’s term, “representational spaces” (Lefebvre 1991: 39; Knott 2005: 39). I will then take up the question of the sense in which we can talk of Springsteen and religion, here utilizing insights gained from narrative theory.

Religious Imagery and Place in Wrecking Ball Place is important in Springsteen’s music. One might even say that place and space are foundational for many of his songs involve a journey from one place to another. Such places and journeys can be found throughout his whole career, whether we are talking about “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” “Badlands,” “,” or “The Rising.” This sense of journey is very much present in the three songs we will look at here. In each of these songs—and in the album as a whole—what is emphasized is the lack of place, as the locator, anchor, and indicator of “belonging” and the displacement of the people in- volved. In each case they are involved in a journey some kind: a journey to Canaan over rocky ground, on a train to the land of hope and dreams, on a boat trip that ends in their being swallowed up. They can be unemployed people looking for a new job, new hope, tramps who live lives defined by journeys, (illegal) immigrants, or others. In any event, they are, as Tracy Ann Essoglou likes to say, “un-situated.” They are moving from the situation of slavery, the threat that is behind them, hopelessness, to a new existence, a new land, a land

74 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL of hope and dreams. They, Springsteen’s characters, and possibly we, as audience, are displaced people, and the importance of place is emphasized by the lack of any specific place as a named geographical location either with respect to the place they start or the place they end.

The place they start from, the place in the beginning, is always a place the people in the songs need to get away from. Sometimes, in earlier songs, this place is more often experienced as a place of losers, and in later songs often as places of oppression, psychological or otherwise. Although it could be said that Springsteen’s sense of these places has deepened and matured over the years, it cannot be claimed that his earlier songs were simply examples of typical pubescent rebellion. They show a consistent depth that goes beyond much contemporary music. Although the places sometimes refer to real existing sites, most of the time the place is usually fictitious, and no further specifi- cation is given.

At first glance, the starting place in each song is clear, without identifying that place in specific detail. That place is assumed. In all three of the songs the journey has already started. There are hints, however, as to what this “place” might be. The first verse does speak of the “flock” that “has roamed far from the hill” and “Jesus said the money changers, in this temple will not stand.” The “hill” suggests the “city on the hill” and the American dream, and “money changers” makes us think not only of the money changers in the temples whose tables Jesus overturned but also the modern “money changers” on Wall Street and in the banking industry who are widely held culpable for the current financial crisis. The “flock” thus suggests the victims of the financial crisis, those who have not been taken care of, those who have seen death brought to their hometown. The video of “Rocky Ground” shows images of urban and suburban areas, fences, dilapidated buildings, empty streets, people walking slowly. The last shot is one of people walking toward the sun. All of the scenes are in black and white, with only one colour shot of pigeons flying to a building during one time the chorus is being sung. This places the listeners and audience of Wrecking Ball in any town in middle class (North) America: those who have been the victims in the financial crisis.4

“Swallowed Up” is even vaguer about the starting place. The traveller in this song falls asleep on “a dark and starlit sea / With nothing but the cloak of God’s mercy over me.” More specific indications of the place where he or the they of this song begin are lacking, and we are finally left with only the

4 This theme is a recurring one in Springsteen. In fact, most of his songs are about the victims and unsung heros of a financial system that has systematically left people displaced and out of place. My thanks to Tracy Ann Essoglou for reminding me of this point.

75 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1 context of the album to give us a sense of the starting place. Those who have been swallowed up like Jonah in the belly of the whale are the flock of “Rocky Ground,” again, those who have seen death brought to their hometown, those who have not been taken care of, the workers who turn into jacks of all trades to try to keep their heads above water in the current economic crisis.

In “Land of Hope and Dreams,” a sense of a starting place is virtually absent. Again, it is only indirectly that the song addresses any kind of context. Because the people are now on a journey to the “land of hope and dreams,” one could conclude that this starting place is the same as that in the other two songs: the place of oppression that they are now fleeing.

In light of the above, the destination also seems clear. Both “Rocky Ground” and “Land of Hope and Dreams” do talk about a destination. The former speaks of “a new day coming” and the latter says it all in the title. But the three songs also seem to belie that idea. On the one hand, there is the notion of a “new day” coming, of a “land of hope and dreams.” On the other, there is a very clear line of hopelessness running through these songs. As stated above, “Swallowed Up” offers no hope whatsoever. The only hope there may possibly be is extratextual in that the song obviously uses the imagery of the story of Jonah and the whale. Does Springsteen entertain the hope that the whale will again spew its victims onto dry land, as a kind of salvation? But there is nothing in the song to suggest this. The sense of hope in “Rocky Ground” is confronted by a rap section that seems to contradict this hope. The first part of the rap section reflects very much the “American” idea of self-reliance, a sense of “God helps those who help themselves”: “You use your muscle and your mind and you pray your best / That your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest.” But the rap section ends with a realization that, despite one’s own efforts, “only silence now meets your prayers / ... no one’s there.” This rap section is in tension with the hope proclaimed of a new day coming.5 And it is with the lines of the chorus, “We’ve been traveling over rocky ground” that the song ends, rather than the notion of hope.

The text of “Land of Hope and Dreams” is much more positive. But the way the song is sung suggests a different message. One commentator, given the way in which the song is performed on the album, wonders: “Where Springsteen’s vocals were big and anthemic in concert, his vocals here are sad, almost like mourning, and as the song moves along, he becomes increasingly desperate, as though these ideals are all he has left in the world, and the only way to hold onto them is to sing” (Lack 2012). Mazur writes about the utopian map in Springsteen: “In the geography of Born to Run, that ‘place’ may be an

5 Jonathan R. Lack comments that the rap section here is more confrontational than Rock or Gospel would be. See Lack 2012.

76 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL actual location, or it may be a particular time, or it may be a place in our hearts that gives us the faith to carry on” (Masur 2009: 118). But it goes much deeper than that it seems. This utopian map is nowhere to be found. It is simply a goal and the journey seems to be the most important thing. There is no certainty that that utopia will be found—indeed, “Swallowed Up” suggests there may be no reaching it: the travellers are simply swallowed up. But the people need to press on, believing it does exist.

Thus, the sense of no place, of displacement dominates these songs: a no- where.6 The people themselves are placeless, displaced—they are traveling between places. In two of the songs, the “place” of their displacement is de- scribed as a sea, as rocky ground. The “rocky ground” calls to mind the desert wanderings of Israel on their way to Canaan. Both the sea and the desert are dangerous places in near Eastern mythology, places inimical to human habi- tation. While the description is less direct in “Land of Hope and Dreams,” it is nonetheless implicit, since the song emphasizes the destination as one of sunshine. The place they are coming from, the place of oppression, is not where they belong. But the place they are going to is not easily defined either.

Thus, Springsteen’s use of spatial imagery in these songs does not necessarily support a straightforward “Christian” reading. One cannot conclude that he is presenting the Gospel. On the one hand, his use of this imagery and language here connects this religious imagery with a very real and concrete situation, and that necessarily changes the perception and understanding of this lan- guage. On the other hand, his use of religious imagery here, such as “Canaan” or “flock” challenges the reader to look again at the religious language as taught in a Christian tradition. “Canaan” becomes more than a conceptual term with reference to the Israelites escaping their slavery in Egypt or a spiritualized term for Christian hope. The use of “flock” intensifies the connection of this term with the poor and oppressed of the Gospel by now connecting it to the poor and oppressed of modern-day America. The term “flock” in Scripture will now be read with this reference in mind as well. The use of religious language and imagery here in the common ground of Springsteen’s music opens up new uses and meanings.

This sense is reinforced by the larger question of the place where these songs are performed. Any discussion of place with respect to music needs to take the performative aspect into account (where it is performed) and the effect that has on an audience or those listening to the music in question.7 This is no less true

6 His song “Open all Night” on his Nebraska album ends with the words: “Hey, ho, rock ’n’ roll, deliver me from nowhere.” 7 I make this distinction because I think there is a difference between an audience and a participatory group of listeners in, for example, a church service.

77 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1 of Springsteen. His music and performance situates his audience in a particular place and this has an effect on the understanding of the language and imagery, including the religious imagery.

The Album and Concerts as “Representational Spaces” and “Spatial Practice.” A “representational space” is a lived space where those who inhabit it can ex- perience totality in the midst of everyday life (cf. Knott 2005: 37). One could say that such spaces appear to offer a moment of transcendence. A church building is such a place, for example, because of what it symbolizes. Lefebvre describes “representational spaces” in the following way: space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of “inhabitants” and “users”, but also of some artists and perhaps of those, such as a few writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe. This is the dominated—and hence passively experienced—space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. Thus representational spaces may be said, though again with certain excep- tions, to tend towards more or less coherent systems of non-verbal symbols and signs. (Lefebvre 1991: 39) The lived space in which Springsteen’s music is experienced as offering such totality or transcendence are (either) listening to his albums (or, alternatively, watching a You Tube video) and/or the concert. In both cases Springsteen’s performance draws the listener or attendee at a concert into a world portrayed in songs whose images are closely linked. The experience of the concert be- comes, as we will see below, symbolical of a different reality. In that sense, Springsteen claims representational space and contests that space with trade- tional religion, producing, in turn, its own spatial practice (cf. Lefebvre 2009: 38; Knott 2005: 40f.).

The first way in which this occurs is through the type of music played. Spring- steen is a rock singer and performer. But such statements, given the wide range of styles, demand more specificity. Although Springsteen’s own musical style has grown and expanded to include strains of folk, gospel, country and even rap, the basis of his music was and remains what is known as the Jersey Shore music scene: The Jersey Shore music scene—often associated with Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, and the Asbury Jukes—tends to focus on the daily lives of working- class Americans in industrial towns and cities. Its sound focuses an early 1960s rock aesthetic with a rhythm and blues flavor, one related more closely with Muscle Shoals (a particular style of blues referring to gritty, organic, and raw performances captured on tape) rather than the polished ideals connected with Motown. The carnival elements of the shoreline boardwalk (also pictured in the cover art on Tracks) are both sub- liminally and overtly implied in the music of the Jersey Shore scene through sounds that mimic the pipe organ and calliope of the circus. (Cadó and Abbruzzese 2010: 98)

78 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL

The connection here with the working class is further enhanced by the other styles that he also mastered, such as folk and rap. American folk music puts him in the tradition of singers like Woody Guthrie, with their emphasis on the disenfranchised of society. Modern rap does so as well. Both types, folk and rap, reinforce the focus on “the daily lives of working-class Americans.”

But there is also another, and important, aspect to the performative aspect of Springsteen’s music with respect to his audience that enhances the role of the concert and album as representational space: the religious side. Both in studio versions of his albums and in his concerts Springsteen constantly places his listeners in a religious setting. In the 1999 Reunion tour he spoke about the “ministry of rock and roll” and contrasted the life right now that his concert gave to the promise of everlasting life.8 At a concert I attended he spoke of the as a “rock ’n’ soul” band, emphasizing the connection of that type of music with spirituality and religious concerns as well as with sexuality.

It is not only that he experiences or presents his music in this way. Scholars have drawn attention to an almost religious feeling his concerts produce, speaking about “communion,” as even the American president Barack Obama did.9 There is a ritualism happening here. Kate McCarthy writes of waiting in traffic to go to a Springsteen concert when a fellow fan noticed her out-of-state license plates and remarked about their long journey, asking if she and her companions had enough beer to see them through the long wait. She writes, Like all ritual, Springsteen performances and their peripheral events are able to sustain the intense communitas experience by virtue of their removal from “real” space and time. In this case, people share beer, money, and affection with others who, outside the performance context, they would be unlikely to share a conversation with. Lines of class, politics, and geography (though not, notably, race) seem to dissolve within the “sacred” space and time of the concert experience…. In these songs, the story of enslavement (“the working, the working, just the working life”) and the promise of deliverance (“I believe in a promised land”) are made relevant to contemporary American experience, but at the same time are sufficiently removed from the actuality of that experience to remain available for appropriation by diverse if not competing constituencies. (McCarthy 2011: 33) We find this placement of the audience in the Wrecking Ball album as well. Several of the initial songs are “traditional” Springsteen as far as the music is concerned, as well as incorporating different styles, including Irish rock and rap. But the music as well as the lyrics (cf. “Shackled and Drawn,” “Death to ”) place us (the audience, the listeners) among the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the blue collar workers who lives have been destroyed and

8 Cited in, among others, Wagar 2012: 163. 9 Cited in, among others Arnoff 2010: 188; see also Randall 2011.

79 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1 changed by the current financial crisis. The third track of Wrecking Ball, “Shackled and Drawn,” which turns on images of slavery, ends with a kind of evangelical call to faith. A woman’s voice is heard shouting in the style of a revival meeting: “I want everybody to stand up. I want everybody to stand up and be counted tonight. You know we got to pray together. I want you to stand up.” The styles of the three songs that we are discussing here reinforce this sense of religion. Whatever our own personal background, we are drawn into this experience of the album and find ourselves aligned with those same dis- enfranchised people.

The first two, “Rocky Ground” and “Land of Hope and Dreams,” are strongly reminiscent of gospel music. The former song has the phrase “I’m a Soldier,” from the Church of God in Jesus Christ in Philadelphia, looping through it.10 It begins with a gospel choir singing “We’ve been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground.” It is also important to note that this song was originally intended to be part of a gospel record. Whitman, the writer of the review in Christianity Today, called “Land of Hope and Dreams” Springsteen’s “most blatant gospel song” (Whitman 2012). This song very much recalls Woody Guthrie’s “This Train is Bound for Glory.” Again, in this performance, a choir begins with singing “This train” and is heard throughout the track. There is a rising crescendo or desperation (Lach 2012) in the “this train” part of the song which adds to the religious feeling or fervour. Towards the end we hear a call: “People get ready, you don’t need no ticket, you just get on board, you just thank the Lord” with a gospel refrain in the background. This “Gospel” element is missing from the original version. 11

Here again, the representational space of the album and the concert, as giving a sense of a totality, leads to a certain kind of spatial practice. Through these songs and the album as a whole, we the audience, listeners, or even participa- tory listeners, are situated in the place of the disenfranchised and unemployed on the one hand and in a religious setting on the other. We identify with the unemployed, the victims of the financial crisis. But we also identify with the slaves of American history and with the Israelites journeying to Canaan, to the Promised Land, from their slavery in Egypt.12 And in that sense, also

10 “Wrecking Ball (Bruce Springsteen album),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wrecking_Ball_%28Bruce_Springsteen_album%29. 11 This song was first performed on the E Street Band’s “Reunion Tour ” in 1999 and the 1 July 2000 version was officially released on the 2001 Live in New York City album. 12 The impact is double here. As audience and listeners, we are affected both by the association with American slavery and that with the former Israelite slaves in Egypt journeying to freedom. The American slaves also viewed their situation of slavery in terms of the ancient Israelite slavery and awaited their own liberation. The story of the

80 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL reinforced by the Gospel echoes and deliberate stagings of the songs to bring gospel meetings to mind, those who have been raised within a Christian environment are also tempted to identify this with the church, to see this as Gospel. There are thus several levels of ideological placement going on in these songs, none of which is straightforwardly compatible with one iden- tification or the other. On both the level of the imagery and language and on the level of the ideological placement, there is thus uncertainty regarding the precise referent. The various levels of identification going on in this encounter between religious language and imagery and the contemporary concrete con- text of the songs defy one strict unequivocal identification with one worldview or another. Let us look at this issue more closely.

A Religious Place or a Secular Place? What is this place they (and we) are going to? Can it be defined in such a way that one can speak of “Gospel,” of heaven, or a this-worldly paradise? Can one identify the religious language here as “Christian”? As “secular”? We could also ask: Is it at all meaningful to ask this question?

There are several points to make here. As a place in Springsteen’s own music, references to Canaan, “land of hope and dreams,” or the Promised Land have been present from the start, serving to describe a place that was a destination without a site, a place where the characters of his songs could find peace and happiness. It had little, on the face of it, to do with traditional conceptions of the Promised Land in Christianity. If the Promised Land in Christianity is, as traditionally conceived, either heaven or even the new earth of which the biblical book of Revelation speaks, then this is not what Springsteen is con- cerned with. Moreover, there is another reason why Springsteen’s concept of the Promised Land is identical with traditional conceptions. While Whitman calls “Land of Hope and Dreams” Springsteen’s “most blatant gospel song,” he appears to overlook a crucial fact: the song is obviously a take on Woody Guthrie’s gospel song “This Train is Bound for Glory,” but its tone is de- cidedly different. Springsteen’s song is widely inclusive: “This train carries saints and sinners / … losers and winners / … whores and gamblers / … mid- night ramblers.”

Guthrie’s is exclusive, couched in negative terms: This train is bound for glory, Don't carry nothing but the righteous and the holy. This train is bound for glory, this train. This train don’t carry no [... gamblers, liars, smokers, rustlers, etc.]

Israelites fleeing the slavery of Egypt can be found in the books Exodus through Deuteronomy in the Bible.

81 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1

If one wants to claim that Springsteen is presenting the “Gospel” here, one would have to demonstrate how Springsteen’s inclusiveness is more reflective of the Gospel than the traditional exclusivist view.

What does the notion of place tell us here? Given the album as a whole, Springsteen does not seem to be talking about a situation that involves redemption from sin, which is what the traditional presentation of the Gospel concerns. The situation that governs the album as a whole is the financial crisis that has led to so many victims. It is the situation of the man so desperate for employment, he will do anything, calling himself a “jack of all trades.” It is the situation of the individual whose desperation drives him and his girlfriend to look for easy money, imagining what the Wall Street figures have done whose actions in this regard were largely responsible for the financial crisis. If they can do that, so can he. It is the situation of the people in the Irish rock-styled song who have seen death brought to their hometown. In this respect the situation is that of “the American Dream gone bad” (Cadó and Abbruzzese 2010: 115). This sense is reinforced even more by the second bonus track on the album, “American Land,” a rousing Irish style song about the promise of America: There’s diamonds in the sidewalks, there’s gutters lined in song Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long There’s treasure for the taking, for any hard working man Who will make his home in the American land.13 Thus, if one takes all those aspects together, one is apparently speaking about America. The place in which he is singing his songs is America and reflects the American situation. It finally revolves around America. The Promised Land, the place where one will finally belong, is America. It is not America as it is now in reality, but America in an almost mythical sense as the Promised Land, “the promise stretching from sea to shining sea” (“”), the promise of America.

But is it that simple or straightforward? Scott Wagar has argued that “Springsteen’s call for faith in [Land of Hope and Dreams] is striking in that it seems to ask for worldly faith—faith not in a faraway God, but in humanity itself. McCarthy’s insight about the imagined possibility of ‘an alternative, this-worldly redemption’ … appears to hold here, too.”14 As Lack has com-

13 This song was first performed as part of the Seegers Sessions tour in 2006. 14 Springsteen cited in Wagar 2012: 168-69: “… a hope grounded in the real world of living, friendship, work, family, Saturday night. And that’s where it resides. That’s where I always found faith and spirit.” Cf. p. 169: “So faith … is most directly tied to the earthly plane, to ‘life right now’.” Cf. also p. 174: “it seems clear that one of Springsteen’s key spiritual ideals is a focus on ‘the real world’—a world that includes

82 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL mented, while “Land of Hope and Dreams” can be viewed in terms of that context, with the increasing desperation of the song underscoring the ques- tioning of the possibility of that Dream ever becoming real, it can also possibly be read as a “vision of the afterlife,”—“Isn’t this what heaven is all about?” (Lack 2012). “Rocky Ground” could be spiritual (as opposed to something ma- terial as the American Dream could be thought to be), for the disappointment in the American Dream possibly suggests something else is needed, but the questioning of faith and of the search does not bode well for the outcome of this search.

We can conclude, in my view, therefore, that there is a certain ambiguity in Springsteen’s religious references. To argue that Springsteen is presenting a specific view, a specific worldview—in the sense that he is promoting Chris- tianity or an alternative worldview—seems to ignore the powerful ambiguity, to ignore the fact that he appeals to people of many different views. To argue that Springsteen is concerned to promote one worldview or vision as opposed to another, to ask if he is presenting the Gospel or proclaiming a secular morality is to view Springsteen as putting together a system, a theory of how the world fits together. I am not claiming here that Springsteen does not have a “worldview” or “vision”; rather, I am claiming that it is not his intention to present a system that resolves the ambiguity we find in his songs. But what is Springsteen then doing with his use of religious imagery language? On this point spatial analysis and narrative theory can be of mutual benefit to each oth- er.

Springsteen and Religious Language Systems and theories deal with concepts and attempt to define concepts. Thus, a Christian dogmatic system will attempt to define a term like “Promised Land” on a conceptual level, tracing its use through the Old Testament into the New, and discussing it as a concept. It becomes a theological concept to be analyzed on the conceptual level such that it fits in with a particular theological view or system. Springsteen’s use of religious language and imagery in his music is always connected with immediate, concrete experiences. He is not concerned with portraying a different view, offering an alternative vision or secular morality. Nor is he interested in presenting the Gospel in either an Evangelical or Catholic form. Springsteen’s use of religious imagery and lan- guage go far deeper. It is important to realize that Springsteen’s music can be used religiously but only because it is mythical, i.e it goes deeper than what are usually considered religious concerns. Even Greeley admits, writing about Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love album, that “It is, perhaps, not Sunday Mass guitars, rock and roll, work, family, ‘Saturday night,’ ‘whores and gamblers,’ ‘saints and sinners’—in short, ‘life right now,’whatever it may hold.”

83 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1 piety, but it is, if anything, much richer and deeper and more powerful. It is the piety of symbol rather than doctrine” (Greeley 1988). And as such it is fully loaded while remaining unspecific, somewhat open imagery from which listen- ers can derive or instill personal identity, identification, and meaning. On the one hand, Springsteen draws on elements from Christianity (and Buddhism) as well but gives them a new context that is not necessarily specifically Christian or even religious. On the other hand, those who listen to his albums or attend his concerts, experiencing them as representational spaces, can return to their respective religious communities, and make use of the insights gleaned from them.

At this point I would like to return to a quote I cited at the beginning of this paper and now quote it in full. In a 1984 interview Springsteen said about his first album Born to Run: “there’s that searchin’ thing; that record to me is like religiously based, in a funny kind of way. Not like orthodox religion, but it’s about basic things, you know? That searchin’, and faith, and the idea of hope.”15 This quote, I think, continues to give the fundamental indication of how religious language and imagery have always functioned in Springsteen’s music. He is not interested in orthodox religion as such in his music. Rather, he is interested in the “basic things” of life. What we have here is, I believe, what Henk Vroom has discussed in various works but most notably and completely in his Religions and the Truth: basic experiences, i.e. experiences that have to do with existentials, the essential characteristics of human existence (Vroom 1989: 329). These basic experiences include the finitude of human existence, human responsibility and human failing, the experience of the good and of meaning, the receiving of insight, and evil and suffering. It is with respect to this deeper aspect that Springsteen’s music is religious.

This takes us back to the point mentioned earlier: ambiguity. The ambiguity in Springsteen’s religious references is based in another kind of ambiguity: the ambiguity of the world itself. A summer storm can be both a happy occurrence (bringing much needed rain) and at the same time threatening. Do we, in re- ligious terms, give thanks for the storm or seek protection from it? To use an- other example, giving money to a beggar on the street may help the beggar but deprive my own family of much needed funds. To whose need do we respond? Ideals seem be contradicted by reality. Our relationship to our bodies is also ambiguous: on the one hand, our bodies are inextricably tied to our identities and we take pleasure in physical sensations, whereas, on the other, we can also experience our body as a frustrating limitation. Still another example is the fact that we can experience our lives as both determined and as the expression of our free will.16 Conceptual systems tend to resolve this ambiguity about the

15 See note 2. 16 For a fuller discussion of these points see Jansen 2001: 13ff. The term “ambig-

84 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL world. Reality itself is ambiguous, and this ambiguity is reflected, on the one hand, in the sheer number of stories, songs, and poems written about the world, and, on the other, in tensions present within any single narrative, or song. Logically incompatible concepts can co-exist in a story or song because the story or song is intended to present or reflect reality as it is, the “formlessness” and not resolve the logical and conceptual problems that might arise.

Stories and songs and other forms that present the ambiguity of the world con- tinue to appeal to us because they capture more of the complexity and ambig- uity of life itself. This is precisely the level on which the Bible works. It is, after all, largely a collection of stories, narratives, poems (songs), and practical wisdom drawn from a close observation of life in its concreteness and reality. Even the more doctrinal sections of the Bible (such as the Pauline epistles) are responses to concrete situations in the lives of believers and grounded in their narratives.17

This is also precisely the level at which Springsteen is working. He is singing and telling stories about experiences; he is not analyzing them or attempting to place them in some kind of theory. If I may be permitted a personal note here: when I first started listening to Springsteen, the first thing that struck me was that he was singing about things that I felt—not simply things I knew about, but things I felt.

And it is also, in my view, one reason why Springsteen uses religious language and imagery so often. Springsteen grew up in this tradition and was educated at a Catholic school and ultimately found this imagery ultimately useful. As he said once, “I’ve inherited this particular landscape [of Christian imagery and I uity” here is reflective of what Iris Murdoch has called the “formlessness of the world” and “rubble” of our lives. She used these terms in an interview in 1978 with Bryan Ma- gee; cited in Dipple 1982: 277. 17 As Abraham Kuyper, the Reformed theologian and prime minister of the Netherlands, stressed at the beginning of the 20th century: “Every catechism, dog- matics, or confession is a limitation: it is taking water from the well and pouring it into a vat. Christian truth is therefore not to be equated with the confession or the Catechism, but only with God’s Word. The Confession, etc. is minted gold. We must have the goldmine. The goldmine is for all peoples, the minted gold for one nation only.…The revelation must thus be given in a form that is indeed dependent on a language but not on the narrowness of the intellectual concepts in that language. The truth of God must, in other words, show itself in pictures and images, so that every nation, every age, every group can translate it into its language—if one wants to hold fast to the redemption of the whole human race.” In: Kuyper 1907: 61. Kuyper’s College-Dictaten (Lectures Notes) have never been officially published. They have been gathered from some of his distinguished students, bound, and are in the library of the Free University, Amsterdam.

85 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1 can build it into something of my own” (Pareles 2005: 2). Yet the nature of the biblical material also lends itself easily to what Springsteen does in his music. Orel asks and answers correctly: Why does this usage of the Bible to tell a strictly secular story work so well? Where is the resonance? I suspect that it’s because everyone—even those not familiar with Bible stories in general—knows the basic story (or one similar to it), and, in some fashion, everyone has traveled that road. And, because they have been there, the story has resonance.… [S]cripture could now be trusted not just for imagery and personal resonance, but also as story source and for juxtaposition to the real world. (Orel 2012: 151) It is in that sense that Springsteen is using biblical language, and this language is at times going to resonate with the Gospel. But he is not specifically identifying it as Gospel.

I am reminded here of what my former teacher in Old Testament theology, John Stek, stated once more than 25 years ago in a course on the Psalms. In dis- cussing one of the psalms in which the psalmist is lamenting his many enemies and the dangers of the flood closing in on him, Stek pointed out that he was not talking about spiritual or psychological problems. He was writing about a con- crete situation in which his actual life was threatened. It takes some exegetical work to get from this to applying it to Christians’ struggle with temptation or with spiritual forces. It is significant that Peter J. Fields draws a connection be- tween Springsteen’s songs and the Psalmic de profundis.18 It is such real, con- crete actual problems and concerns that Springsteen expresses in his songs, and that is what makes his music impossible to pin down to one theory or sys- tem. It is both Gospel and not Gospel. It is secular, but not only so. It is an al- ternative vision, but it is also not. It is both/and because it is inseparably con- nected with concrete situations. The audience and the (participatory) listeners identify with the religious imagery and language on this level and not on the level of conceptual systems.

It is also this kind of comparison between Springsteen and the psalmist(s) that leads to another effect of this place of meeting between Springsteen’s music and religious language. Because Springsteen uses this language so skilfully we as listeners begin to look at the religious language in a different or a renewed way. Because of his use of this language in concrete situations and narratives, we begin to see again the concrete nature of such language in the Bible itself. From a personal point of view, I can attest that listening to his music reinforced

18 Fields 2010: 215. “Admittedly, while Springsteen’s song are deeply anchored, at one end, in the Psalmic profundis, it cannot be denied that at the other end their most immediate impact is effervescent, a frisson driven by two irresistable dynamics: the hope of personal transformation and the hope of ‘kingdom come’.”

86 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL my awareness of certain emphases in life that the vision/worldview in which I was raised (Reformed Christianity) did not seem to account for completely. Springsteen’s songs give a new impetus to the notion of salvation in this world, to the concrete connection between the “already” and the “not yet” of the Gospel as I was taught it. When Christ dealt with people, when he spoke, he did not speak in abstractions; he did not use theological terminology. His references to the “kingdom of God,” for instance, were not references to an abstraction but to the life people experienced now. His anger at the money changers in the temple was not based on the notion of their practice en- dangering their chances of salvation but at the injustice they were conducting towards the poor. Jesus healed people in the here and now. Sin in the Bible is not just an abstract “spiritual” state but one that affects every aspect of people’s lives—which is why the solutions to sin (grace, redemption) could also affect every aspect of people’s lives. Even Paul’s language is connected much more to concrete experiences than often thought. Redemption comes in the midst of feeling like one is a “slave” to sin; the breaking down of the wall between Jew and Gentile is not something abstract, an application of the Gospel. It is the Gospel itself, as real as it is frightening because of the reor- dering of one’s world it demands.

Springsteen’s music may not have been the ultimate source that clarified such aspects of the Gospel for me, but it did remind me of them once again in a deep and powerful way. It reminds all of us that whatever the Promised Land may be in the end, it can never be fully and completely separated from our experience of reality as it is. The Promised Land—or at least indications of it—will always be something we search for on earth in meaningful work or relaxation, in relationships as they are experienced, in the moment of recognition while having a couple of beers after work, or in the sense of belonging. It reminds us that salvation is also tied to material things, things of this earth: with jobs and economic security and a sense of well-being. It reminds all of us that the search for salvation is also, and perhaps primarily, a search for wholeness—not only in the next life but also in this.

Concluding Remarks The use of religious language in Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball is very well served by a spatial analysis in determining how he uses religious language and to what end. As we saw, the topic of place and space here can be divided into two distinct discussions. On the one hand, there is the use of religious spatial imagery which suggests identification with traditional Christianity (the “Gospel”). But the way in which both this language and imagery are used do not fit that view completely. On the other hand, the performative aspect of the music on the album and in concerts suggests various placements: both a re- ligious placement and a wider secular placement of the audience and listeners in the concrete world of today. Springsteen invokes a religious sense at his

87 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 23 (2013) 1 concerts, by proclaiming a religious quality to his work. His style of music also places the audience in a situation of the homeless, the disenfranchised. It is too simplistic to say his use of religious imagery is straightforwardly “Gospel” or an “alternate vision,” or even “spirituality.” This meeting of religious language and imagery on the one hand and the secular context of the studio album and the concert on the other does not allow one conclusion exclusively over the other. They exist simultaneously and share the space of ambiguous “place.”

It is Springsteen’s use of religious language in concrete situations that allows this sharing of the ambiguous place. It is also on this level that his music is appropriated and enjoyed by the listener, not on the level of theory. What he sings finds an echo in the listener’s own life, and this will have an effect on one’s own view of what the Gospel is. This is one of the points on which Springsteen’s music will always be valued (aside from the fact that it is, in itself, great music): the changes the encounter with Springsteen’s music may bring to a Christian’s understanding of the Gospel. We cannot and do not claim that Springsteen is the only artist or only contemporary rock musician who does this. Many do so, but Springsteen is certainly one of the most gifted.

LITERATURE Arnoff, Stephen Hazan, “A Covenant Reversed: Bruce Springsteen and the Promised Land.” In: Roxanne Harede and Irwin Streight (eds.). Reading the Boss: In- terdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen. Plymouth: Lex- ington Books. Pp. 177-200. Cadó, Mike, and Teresa V. Abbruzzese. (2010). “Tracking Place and Identity in Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks.” In: Roxanne Harede and Irwin Streight (eds.). Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Pp. 95-118. Dipple, Elizabeth (1982). Iris Murdoch: Work for the Spirit. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. Fields, Peter J. (2010). “Ironic Revelation in Bruce Springsteen.” In: Roxanne Harede and Irwin Streight (eds.). Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Pp. .201-22. Greeley, Andrew. (1988). “The Catholic Imagination of Bruce Springsteen.” America: The National Catholic Weekly (February) http://americamagazine.org/issue/100/ catholic-imagination-bruce-springsteen. Jansen, Henry. (2001). Laughter among the Ruins: Postmodern Comic Approaches to Suffering.Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Keuss, Jeffrey Keuss, “Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Wrecking Ball’: Faith vs. Evangelical Certainty.” http://www.rockandtheology.com/?p+5164. Knott, Kim. (2005). The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis. London/Oakville: Equinox. Kuyper, Abraham. (1907). Locus de Sacra Scriptura: College-Dictaat van Onder- scheidene Studenten . Unpublished. Lack, Jonathan R. (2012). “First Impressions of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Wrecking Ball’— Track #10—‘Land of Hope and Dreams’—Stream this reborn Springsteen classic

88 THE LOCATION OF RELIGION IN SPRINGSTEEN’S WRECKING BALL

on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon!” Fade to Lack, http://www.jonathanlack. com/2012/03/first-impressions-of-bruce-springsteens.html. Lefebvre, Henri. (1991). The Production of Space. Transl. Donand Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Masur, Louis P. (2009). Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen’s Amer- ican Vision. New York/Berlin/London: Bloomsbury Press. McCarthy, Kate. (2011). “Deliver Me from Nowhere: Bruce Springsteen and the Myth of the American Promised Land.” In: Eric Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy (eds.). God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture. Oxon/New York: Routledge. Pp. 20-40. Orel, Matthew. (2012). “From Adam to Jesus: Springsteen’s Use of Scripture,” In: Kenneth Womack, Jerry Zolten, and Mark Bernhard (eds.). Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream. Farnham/Burlington: Ash- gate Publishing. Pp. 145-62. Pareles, Jon. (2005). “Bruce Almighty.” The New York Times (24 April). http://www. nytimes.com/2005/04/24/arts/music/24pare.html?_r=0. Randall, Linda K. (2011). Finding Grace in the Concert Hall: Community and Meaning among Springsteen’s Fans. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 2011. Symynkywicz, Jeffrey B. (2008). The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Redemption from Asbury Park to Magic. Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox Press. Vroom, H.M. (1989). Religions and the Truth: Philosophical Reflections and Perspectives, Currents of Encounter 2. Amsterdam/Grand Rapids: Rodopi/ Eerd- mans. Wagar, Scott. (2012). “Life Right Now: Springsteen and Spirituality.” In: Kenneth Womack, Jerry Zolten, and Mark Bernhard (eds.). Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream. Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate Pub- lishing. Pp. 163-74. Whitman, Andy. “Bruce Springsteen: The Stations of the Boss.” http://www. christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/marchweb-only/stationsofboss.html. “Wrecking Ball (Bruce Springsteen album),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_ Ball_%28Bruce_Springsteen_album%29.

89