BONO: AN IRISH DAVID

by

PAUL HARRIS CANTLE

Thesis submitted to The Faculty of Theology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Theology)

Acadia University Spring Convocation 2013

© by PAUL HARRIS CANTLE, 2012

This thesis by PAUL HARRIS CANTLE was defended successfully in an oral examination on NOVEMBER 26, 2012.

The examining committee for the thesis was:

______Dr. Anna Robbins, Chair

______Dr. Kevin Whetter, External Reader

______Dr. Carol Anne Janzen, Internal Reader

______Dr. William Brackney, Supervisor

This thesis is accepted in its present form by the Division of Research and Graduate Studies as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree Master of Arts (Theology).

………………………………………….

ii"

I, PAUL HARRIS CANTLE, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright in my thesis.

______Author

______Supervisor

______Date ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! iii"

Table!of!Contents! " Abstract"...... "vi" Acknowledgements"...... "vii" Introduction"...... "1" Objective"...... "1" Bono’s"Personal"Narrative"...... "2" Chapter"I"...... "15" An"Overview"of"Bono"and"his"Music"...... "15" Personal"Connections"...... "15" Out"of"Control"...... "15" Neither"Catholic"nor"Protestant"...... "17" Bono’s"Teenage"Years"...... "18" Birth"of"a"Band"...... "19" The"Shalom"Period"...... "21" Live"Aid"(1985)"–"U2"goes"Global"...... "24" Why"Does"Bono"Sing?"(And"Why"Do"We"Sing"Along?)"...... "25" Double"Entendre"...... "27" Bono’s"Religious"Values"...... "29" Summary"...... "31" Chapter"II"...... "34" Christian"Themes"in"Bono’s"Work"...... "34" Ecclesiological"Themes"...... "34" A"Church"by"Any"Other"Name"...... "36" Themes"of"Grace,"Glory"and"the"Cross"...... "42" Soteriological"Themes"...... "44" Eschatological"Themes"...... "47" Humanitarian"Themes"...... "50" Summary"...... "53" Chapter"III"...... "54" The"Psalms"...... "54" A"Brief"History"of"the"Psalms"...... "55" What"is"Poetry?"...... "59" What"is"a"Psalm?"...... "61" The"Contemporary"Typology"of"the"Psalms"...... "64" Typologies"and"Authors"...... "65" Summary"...... "73" Chapter"IV"...... "74" Exegesis"of"a"Contemporary"Poet_Theologian"...... "74" Are"Bono’s"Lyrics"Poetry"and/or"Psalms?"...... "76" Parallelism"...... "84" iv"

Praise"and"Lament"...... "85" Exegeses"of"Bono’s"Lyrics"...... "87" With"a"Shout"(Jerusalem)"...... "89" Until"The"End"of"the"World"...... "92" Grace"...... "96" Magnificent"...... "99" Summary"...... "107" Conclusion"...... "111" Bono’s"Personal"Contribution"and"Influence"...... "111" Bono’s"Role"as"Psalmist"...... "113" Bibliography"...... "119" Books"...... "119" Articles"...... "125" Websites"...... "127" Unpublished"Works"...... "127" Music"and"Video"...... "128" Software"...... "129" Appendix"I"...... "" Appendix"II"...... ""

v"

Abstract(

Bono's credentials as a Christian have been called into question from his earliest days in the rock group, U2. Through this thesis, I will dispute those criticisms and argue that Bono is a modern day psalmist in the mold of King David. I first look at Bono’s

Celtic Sitz im Leben to examine the foundations of his Christian beliefs and then consider several religious themes evident in his songs, words and works. After reviewing the characteristics of poetry and the psalms, and how Bono’s lyrics together with U2’s music reflect these characteristics, I develop a contemporary typology, based on Walter

Brueggeman, to use as a framework for exegeting four songs written and performed by

Bono and U2 over a twenty-eight year period. Through this analysis of his music and theological orientation, and a review of his personal contribution and influence, I conclude that Bono meets the criteria of a modern-day psalmist.

(

vi"

Acknowledgements(

To Dr. William H. Brackney for truly directing me on the Celtic Way of Christianity.

To all the professors and staff at Acadia Divinity College for supporting me spiritually and academically on the journey.

To Fr. Patrick Cosgrove, Claire Pottie and all at St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church for their support and patience during the pilgrimage.

And, of course, for Lynne—"

“exaudivisti clamorem meum et eduxisti me de lacu famoso de luto caeni”

vii"

!

Introduction(

Objective(

I believe that everyone has a personal theological orientation, spoken or unspoken, developed or simplistic. Bono has no formal theological training. Yet, for the last 30 years his lyrics have tapped the rich vein of Scripture, from the Psalmist(s) and the

Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, to the writers in the New Testament. He appears to have unknowingly (or knowingly?) developed a “distinct theological outlook,” a hymn book, and a “pastorate.”

I have been a fan of Bono and his band U2 since 1979. When I commenced my studies at Acadia Divinity College in 2006, I found a kindred spirit in my colleague and friend Marion Jamer, and this ensured lively discussions on the relative merits of Bono as a psalmist and/or prophet. These discussions steered my academic choices through my studies in the Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Theology degrees, where I completed directed studies on Celtic Christianity, Religious Values in the Works of the

Contemporary Composer Bono and Bono as Contemporary Psalmist – U2ʼs Canon from

1979 to 2009, as well as papers that would provide further insight into my thesis, for example, Who Let the Dox Out? - A Survey of the Doctrine, Dogma and Doxology of

Daniel Schutte in the Roman Catholic Hymnal and Ecclesia.

I realised quite late in the writing of this thesis, due to the discerning ear of Fr.

Patrick Cosgrove, my pastor at St. Ignatius Church in Bedford, Nova Scotia, that the main impetus for writing on this topic was my desire to right a wrong; to address the criticisms laid at Bono’s understandably nomadic feet, regarding his approach to

1"

professing his faith, of being a Christian. From articles regarding his non-attendance at and non-allegiance to an established church, his self-professed drinking, his use of expletives, his opinionated statements, his egotism, his "thin ecclesiology”1—Bono's credentials as a Christian have been called into question from the earliest days of the group that would eventually be called U2. However, his misdemeanours pale in significance compared to some of the faithful characters that God has called to prophesy and proclaim. A love of alcohol and a predilection to coarse language (yes, including the

“F” word), hardly rate among Abram's treatment of Hagar and Issac, King David's adultery or Jonah's disobedience. Neither do they approach the activities of the clerical establishment in the island of Ireland and beyond. In disposing of those complaints, I will go further and argue that Bono the Irish songwriter and singer is, in fact, a modern-day

David, a psalmist whose use of language and imagery, bardic heritage of story-telling and prophecy, and citizenship in a diasporic nation, follows the great tradition of the nomadic

Abraham, the psalmic David, the diasporic nation of Israel and the Celtic tradition of the bard.

Bono’s(Personal(Narrative(

Bono's personal narrative involves a history that is influenced by the oppression of his country by a foreign power, an exodus precipitated by famine, leading to a century and a half as a diaspora searching for a home and a family in the “promised land” of

America, at least as first preference. It may have been driven more by religious fear than by religious faith, but this diaspora carried with it the Roman Catholic denomination and

1 Editorial, “Bono's Thin Ecclesiology,” Christianity Today, http://bit.ly/O9va0x (accessed September 24, 2012). 2 Bono/U2, “40,” War, Dublin: Island Records, 1983.

2"

the stories and the music of Ireland, which Bono would rediscover during his and the band’s sojourns in the United States.

Bono has always been drawn to Scripture in general and, in particular, the Book of Psalms has been a definite influence on his lyric writing. U2’s earliest and most enduring composition at concerts around the world is entitled “40,” which is based on the first two verses of Psalm 40 with the refrain from Psalm 6. The chorus of “How long to sing this song?” sung by the crowd, can be heard long after Bono and the band have “left the building.”2 In September 1992, I experienced in person this refrain being sustained all the way from the concert grounds of Exhibition Place in Toronto, onto the GoTrain and continuing to Mississauga. Bono has written the introduction to Selections from the Book of Psalms (1999), in which he says, “At age 12, I was a fan of David, he felt familiar … like a pop star could feel familiar. The words of the Psalms were as poetic as they were religious and he was a star.”3 To understand this Biblical influence on Bono’s life, song writing and activism, and how this relates to his disposition towards the role of a modern- day psalmist, I first need to examine his own Sitz im Leben.

“The Church, in the Western world, faces populations who are increasingly

‘secular’—people with no Christian memory, who don't know what we Christians are talking about.”4 This opening statement from The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How

Christianity Can Reach the West…Again (2000) by George G. Hunter III (1938-) is interesting and essentially accurate, but it misses one critical adjective. It requires the word conscious to be added to Christian memory. For although there is a decline in

2 Bono/U2, “40,” War, Dublin: Island Records, 1983. 3 Pocket Canons, Selections From the Book of Psalms With an Introduction By Bono, The Pocket Canon Series (New York: Grove Publishing, 1999), vii. 4 George G. Hunter III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000), 3.

3"

general engagement with institutional faith groups, there is an increasing interest in spirituality. This is, of course, a nebulous word and concept, but it is uttered frequently enough for it to have gained currency. Later in the same chapter, Hunter confirms this when he states that, in his opinion, “these populations are increasingly receptive— exploring worldview options from Astrology to Zen—and are often looking ‘in all the wrong places’ to make sense of their lives and find their soul's true home.”5 Beth

Maynard, an Episcopal priest and adjunct instructor in spirituality and liturgy at Gordon-

Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, confirms this realisation in her essay entitled “Where Leitourgia Has No Name: U2 Live” in which she highlights that Bono and U2 “made a commitment as young men to write music that honestly reflected their spiritual preoccupations and biblical knowledge but to perform and sell it in public, secular spaces rather than in Christian environments.”6 J. Philip Newell (1953-), formerly the Warden of Iona Abbey, in his book Christ of the Celts (2008), also opens with the comment that “there is widespread disillusionment within the Christian household today

… so many of its teachings and practices seem either irrelevant to the deepest yearnings of the human soul or flatly opposed to them.”7 As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-

1955), French philosopher and Jesuit priest, in his book The Phenomenon of Man (1955) stated, “Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them … [cf.

‘Only love unites our hearts’ from U2’s song ‘Magnificent’],8 for it alone joins them by

5 Hunter III, 3. 6 Beth Maynard, “Where Leitourgia Has No Name: U2 Live,” in Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, ed. Scott Calhoun (Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 155. 7 J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), viii. 8 Bono/U2, “Magnificent,” No Line on the Horizon (Island Records, 2009).

4"

what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.”9

There have been other cultural and cultic influences in Bono’s lyrics and activities. He comes from a nation of prolific storytellers, who themselves are the descendants of the bardic tradition of minstrels who used their sharp wit and sharper tongues to praise and chastise their leaders and the populous. He also comes from a tribe that carries with it the echoes of a very different kind of Christianity, the Celtic

Christianity of St. Columba and the island of Iona—a unified, centred and naturalistic

Christo-centric Christianity, founded on love and the oneness of God’s creation. It is with the crowd at a U2 concert that Bono taps into this spiritual, undirected hunger following a line of tradition that goes back to St. Columba, the island of Iona off the Scottish coast, and to what is now called Celtic Christianity.10

Columba (521-597) was a pupil at the Irish monastic school at Clonard Abbey, situated on the River Boyne in modern County Meath. During the sixth century, some of the most significant names in the history of Irish Christianity studied at the Clonard monastery. Twelve students, including Columba, who studied under St. Finnian became known as the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.11 Columba became a monk and was subsequently ordained a priest. During this time he is said to have founded a number of monasteries, including ones at Kells, Derry, and Swords. He was excommunicated from the church in Ireland following a hurling match and a subsequent brawl between two

9 Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (Toronto: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008), 265. 10 For further reading on Celtic Christianity see Adomnan of Iona, Life of St. Columba, Penguin Classics (New York: Penguin Classics, 1995); The Venerable Bede, Bede Historical Works. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library (Norwich: William Heinemann Ltd., 1979); Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way (London: Darton Longman & Todd Ltd, 2003) and Brendan Lehane, Early Celtic Christianity (New York: Continuum, 2005). 11 W. Gratton-Flood, “The Twelve Apostles,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907) http://bit.ly/UyTvPb (accessed October 13, 2012).

5"

kingdoms in which a prominent member of an Irish royal family was killed and whose murderer sought sanctuary with Columba. When this sanctuary was broken, Columba raised an army that eventually resulted in the deaths of three thousand. He was immediately excommunicated, a decision that was ultimately commuted. However, he showed himself no mercy, choosing self-imposed exile from the island of Ireland, with the aim of converting as many souls to Christianity as had been slain due to his actions.

His choice of punishment was supported by an old school-friend, Molaisse, whom

Columba travelled to visit on the island of Devenish in Lough Erne. Molaisse added the proviso that Columba’s exile should be permanent—he must never return again to

Ireland.12 Columba departed from the River Foyle about ten miles from his Cathedral in

Derry, with the rest of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, landing eventually on an island called Iona, on the South-east corner of Scotland. From here the monks of the island would spread the gospel in the particular form of Celtic Christianity across the whole of

Scotland and down as far as Whitby, in what is now the North of England.

Columba, as with all spiritual Celts of the period, had a constant awareness and curiosity about the elements around him. The air, the water, the sounds, the stars, were all part of a living, breathing ecosystem. Long before the arrival of Christianity in the land of the Gaels, Columba’s forebears were Druids. They were a priestly group, whose beliefs centered on triune gods who were present in the very water, the rocks, the flowers and the creatures, uniting them as a whole. Ogham, their symbolic alphabet, consisted of twenty letters represented by horizontal or slanting lines where each is named after a different

12 Katharine Scherman, The Flowering of Ireland (Toronto: Little Brown & Co, 1981), 153.

6"

tree and connected to colours, birds, stones, and musical notes.13 The Druids were learned men divided into three groups – bards (liturgists), seers (prophets) and druids (teachers).14

They believed in the immortality of the soul, an understanding that was captured by

Julius Caesar, when he wrote:

With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed. Subsidiary to the teachings of this main principle, they hold various lectures and discussions on astronomy, on the extent and geographical distribution of the globe, on the different branches of natural philosophy, and on many problems connected with religion.15

The ability to heal the sick, predict the future and determine the will of the gods were the three cornerstones of Druidic power.16 All Celtic Kings were regarded as sacred, and their accession was marked by divination, conducted by a Druidic priest. For this reason all Druids were highly respected and traveled freely between the warring Celtic tribes. The penalty for harming them was death.17

The Celts, over whom the Druids presided at special ceremonies, had a strong sense of the supernatural, the survival of the soul beyond death and the immanence of the gods. Many divinities were worshipped, often in groups of threes. They had a great sense of the sacredness of places, particularly woods, groves, rivers and springs.18 The affinity of the Druids with triune gods, their priestly hierarchy of bards, seers and druids and their

13 Belinda Whitworth, New Age Encyclopedia: A Mind Body Spirit Reference Guide (Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2003), 167. 14 Angus Konstam, Historical Atlas of the Celtic World (London: Mercury Books, 2004), 107. 15 Peter Gay, Historians At Work - Vol 1 (London: Harper & Row, 1972), 146. 16 Konstam, 96. 17 Ibid., 107. 18 Ian Bradley, The Celtic Way (London: Darton Longman & Todd Ltd, 2003), 5.

7"

belief in the immortality of the soul made the conversion of the Celts to Christianity relatively easy.

The isolation of Ireland on the Western fringes of mainland Europe ensured that the newly-minted Christian country remained relatively uninfluenced by developments in

Roman Christianity until the pan-European normalisation of the faith under Roman

Catholicism reached Ireland at the Synod of Whitby (664 AD) in the seventh century.

That isolation would continue to imbue Irish Catholicism with that same faint memory of spirituality, a penchant for mysticism that came from the Druids which is still present in the religion, art and music of Ireland today.

Fast-forwarding to the 1960s, it was not just the religion of Ireland that was in a state of isolation. The Republic of Ireland had “stagnation, high unemployment and emigration” during the tenure of Eamon De Valera (1882–1975), the former “Old IRA” leader of the War of Independence, long time/many time Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and ultimately President of Ireland.19 De Valera wanted to keep Ireland “as a sheltered arcadian utopia whose people were content to live ‘the life that God desired that men should live’.”20 For that reason, the first broadcast by Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) did not occur until 1961, two years after he had left office as Taoiseach.21 A second channel

(RTÉ 2) did not commence broadcasting until 1978.22 Although RTÉ Radio had begun transmitting in 1932, it was not until the arrival of RTÉ Radio 2 in 1979 that the youth of

Ireland had any semblance of local broadcast entertainment to call their own. It was not a cultural environment that was conducive to the continuation of a modern bardic tradition.

But spiritual memories run deep.

19 Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow (London: Arrow Books, 1995), 634. 20 John Bowman, Window and Mirror: RTÉ Television 1961-2011 (Cork: The Collins Press, 2012), 224. 21 Bowman, 1. 22 Ibid., 151.

8"

This is another facet of Bono’s Sitz im Leben that needs to be analysed to understand his approach to singing, song writing and activism. As I discussed above,

Bono was born into a country steeped in the tradition of the bard. Although now a widely used and abused term, bard originally had a very narrow definition of role and of caste. In the Greek and Roman accounts of ancient Gaul there are several references to, and meaningful anecdotes about, the professional praise poets who served Celtic chieftains.

Athenaeus paraphrases Posidonius (from the twenty-third book of his Histories,

Deipnosophistae 6.49), in which he describes that “these poets recite their praises in large companies and crowds, and before each of the listeners according to rank. Their tales are recounted by those called bards (bardoí ), poets who recite praises in song.” Diodorus

Siculus, a Greek historian of the first century BCE, drawing on Posidonius, stated that

Celts “have lyric poets called Bards, who, accompanied by instruments resembling lyres, sing both praise and satire.”23

The modern-day equivalent of the bard can be heard in the pubs of Ireland on a

Saturday night, singing out the ballads that praise the exploits and bravery of Irish heroes, some mythical, some real, from Cú Chulainn to Michael Collins and satirising the actions of the British “occupiers.” Bono himself has recognised this cultural influence in his work, one of the purest examples of the melding of, and meddling in, art and politics.

Recently, he has spent as much time under the dome of the US Capitol in the company of senators as he has under the canopy of the 360° stage—on both platforms he has praised and chastised world leaders over their actions on poverty, debt-relief and HIV-AIDs. In the now-defunct George magazine’s April 2000 issue, Bono states, “In Ireland, we have a

23 John Thomas Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005,) s.v. “bard.”; Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2012), s.v. “bard.”

9"

history of poets and painters involving themselves in politics. Poets and politicians conspired to create a mythology, a vision of Ireland that probably wasn't true. The poets created this kind of mythical Ireland that sheltered us from the sleet and hailstones of colonialism.”24 However, Bono neglects the fact that, from the earliest days of Celtic settlement, there were bards singing praises of their chieftains, becoming poet-journalists, the propagandists of their day. For that reason, Bono has become the prototypical modern bard. When it comes to talking to US Republican politicians, for example, he is unapologetic. “They want to talk the scriptures, I can talk the scriptures,” he says. Senator

Helms’ response to Bono was both unexpected and revealing. “I was deeply impressed with [Bono]. He has depth that I didn't expect. He is led by the Lord to do something about the starving people in Africa.”25 Bono also met with Bill Hybels (1951-), pastor of

Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, during the Chicago stop on his Heart of America tour. Hybels told Christianity Today about his impression of the rock star: “After a two-hour private meeting in my office, I came away convinced that

Bono's faith is genuine, his vision to relieve the tragic suffering in Africa is God- honoring, and his prophetic challenge to the U.S. church must be taken seriously.”26 In fact, as part of a triumvirate that included the actress Ashley Judd and the comedian Chris

Tucker, Bono crisscrossed churches across the US for the Heart of America Tour. “This is the defining moral issue of our time,” Bono repeatedly told church congregations during the tour, which was designed to raise people's awareness of the one-two punch of

AIDS and profound poverty that is claiming the lives of 6,500 Africans every day.

24 Hank Bordowitz, ed., The U2 Reader: a Quarter Century of Commentary, Criticism, and Reviews (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003), 161. 25 Angela Pancella, “Politics: The Art of the Possible,” @U2, http://bit.ly/x1RmRF (accessed October 13, 2012). 26 Cathleen Falsani, “Bono's American Prayer,” Christianity Today 47, no. 3 (2003), http://bit.ly/b3tOJW (accessed October 13, 2012).

10"

“[T]his generation will be remembered for three things: the Internet, the war on terror, and how we let an entire continent go up in flames while we stood around with watering cans. Or not,” he would say, sometimes pounding his fist for emphasis. “Let me share with you a conviction. God is on his knees to the church on this one. God Almighty is on his knees to us, begging us to turn around the supertanker of indifference on the subject of AIDS.”27

Bono-as-bard provides the vital role of conduit between the crowd under the U2

“tent,” for whom he articulates in verse their praises and laments, despairs and hopes, and the “chieftains” of whom he has the ear and the influence, as they have the ability to make the intellectual decisions and take the muscular actions.

Being a patriotic Irishman, I was drawn to the colourful writings of Thomas

Cahill (1940-) in his book How the Irish Saved Civilisation (1997).28 In it, Cahill posits that it was the transcription of Greek and Latin manuscripts by Irish monks and scribes during the so called Dark Ages that saved the record of Western civilization while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost, of course infusing his uniquely

Irish world-view to this endeavor. Cahill's enthusiastic writing style encouraged me to read another of his books, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (1999).29 As I navigated the book, I saw connections that highlighted unexpected commonalities and connections between the Jewish and Irish

Sitz im Leben, which may help to explain the motivations and stylistic elements of

Bono’s lyrics, writings and activism.

27 Falsani, “Bono’s American Prayer.” 28 Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilisation: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group), 1997. 29 Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, Hinges of History (New York: Anchor Books/Nan A Talese), 1999.

11"

When Abram took his first steps away from his clan, departing the safety and security, timelessness and routine of his community to follow God's call, he became the first member of a tribe that would one day grow to millions, and be called “The

Diaspora.” In its literal sense, diaspora comes from the Greek διασπορά, meaning

“scattering, dispersion.” However, for a descendant of the House of David, it is an immensely emotive word, encapsulating the struggles, wars and calamities that have befallen and fractured the Jewish nation from its Abramic inception to the Shoah of the middle of the twentieth century.

When an Irishman trudged down to the docks in Dublin to take a ship to America to escape the famine and British rule in the 1840s, he was mirroring Abram's journey. It may not have been a call from God that drove him, rather hunger and destitution, but along with his meager belongings, he carried with him the unique Irish interpretation of

“Mother Church.”35 He was travelling on and with faith that the “promised land” of

America could offer him land and an environment to raise a family. This event has also become known by the equally evocative term “the scattering” by the Irish nation, and has resulted in films and books of the same name.31 The Irish diaspora, like the Jewish

Diaspora before it, sang about its woes as a way to understand and deal with them—a hope for deliverance, a hope to one day return home. It is the very stuff that has created the songs that are still sung throughout Ireland and abroad in Irish bars displaying the

35 Tim Pat Coogan, Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (London: Hutchinson, 2000), xiii. 31 “The Scattering,” Part I, The Irish Empire, VHS, directed by Alan Gilsenan, David Roberts and Dearbhla Walsh (New York: Winstar, 2001); Sean Keane, The Irish Scattering, Circin Rua Teo, 2009; Anne Jones, and Ray Conway, The Scattering: Images of Emigrants From an Irish County (Ranelagh, IE: A&a Farmar, 2001).

12"

“Guinness” sign from Dublin to Detroit, Durban and Dubai. It is the Irish song “The

Flight of the Earls” juxtaposed with Israel’s Psalm 137.32

The notion of diaspora has been the great Irish leitmotif ever since Elizabeth I’s imposition of Anglicanism in the sixteenth century, through “The Flight of the Wild

Geese” in the late seventeenth and the departure of the Ulster Presbyterians in the eighteenth.33 However, none of these came close to the enormity of the emigration in the middle of the nineteenth century, caused by the Great Famine. Over the period 1845-

1855, it is estimated that two-and-a-half-million persons departed the island of Ireland.

As Tim Pat Coogan (1935-) succinctly writes in his book, Wherever Green is Worn: The

Story of the Irish Diaspora (2000), “they left their country and founded an empire—for

Mother Church … a true Vatican empire beyond the seas,” due to the fact that the Irish emigrants who built the Churches of the world “bred and … read what their nuns and priests told them to.”34

Sheridan Gilley, formerly at the University of Durham, in his widely cited article,

“The Roman Catholic Church and the Nineteenth-Century Irish Diaspora,” goes further, exclaiming,

Quite the most remarkable achievement of nineteenth-century Ireland was the creation of an international Catholic Church, throughout the Celtic diaspora in the British Empire and North America. A true Irish Empire beyond the seas.35

Tim Pat Coogan recalls that “the results of the great scattering of the centuries are chiefly located in North America and England.”36 I, too, made that journey and joined the

32 Liam Reilly, “The Flight of the Earls,” Greatest Hits (Emerald Records, 2006); Songlyrics, “Liam Reilly – The Flight of the Earls,” http://bit.ly/RCMwFD (accessed November 4, 2012). 33 Koch, s.v. “The Jacobite rebellion.” 34 Coogan, Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora, xii. 35 Sheridan Gilley, “The Roman Catholic Church and the Nineteenth-century Irish Diaspora,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 35, no. 2 (April 1984): 188-207.

13"

diaspora, that great “scattering,” one hundred and forty years later, when I sailed from the financially and spiritually broken island of Ireland to the UK in 1984, though in relatively more salubrious circumstance compared to those of my forebears. It was with the same fear and hope that “there’s got to be something better than this” and the faith that

“something will turn up” that drove me to take that leap. Choosing to leave one’s home and homeland for another when it is less risky and more comfortable to stay, requires a belief that there is something better, something bigger, a worldview worth the uncertainty of the road ahead.

One can easily imagine Bono sitting in the Dublin airport departure gate, looking out at the aircraft resting on the tarmac about fifteen miles from his family in his home town of Killiney, contemplating, like Columba before him, his self-imposed exile. The modern bard’s method of transport may have changed, but like his counterpart, moments are stolen to craft a lyric, to record an emotion or to preserve a memory. All to be transformed in song for when his and his fellow band members’ exilic trips take him away from his beloved Ireland for many months to preach, praise and prod 100,000 people a night to examine their souls in arenas around the globe.

As a final word for all the diasporic nations, J. Philip Newell explains that the

Garden of “Eden is [our] home,” and like the Irish diaspora past and present, and the

Israelite diaspora before that, we are a “community living in exile.”37 It is the Jewish and

Irish diasporas who wish to return to that spiritual and physical place of oneness, of relationship, of communitarianism that colours the writings of both communities.

(

36 Coogan, Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora, xi. 37 Newell, Christ of the Celts, 2.

14"

Chapter(I(

An(Overview(of(Bono(and(his(Music(

Personal(Connections(

I was born into the same world as Paul David Hewson; the gray, third-world banana republic country that was Ireland in the early nineteen-sixties. A world of divisions, both physical and psychological. A country of dole-queues and drinking, of church and state. There was civil war, societal strife and sectarian suspicion. It was a world without much hope. What separated the two of us (physically and psychologically) was that we were born “North and South of the River.”38 I was born on the Southside;

Paul was born on the Northside. Rich versus poor, middle-class versus working-class.

The Northside was the world in which Paul David Hewson was born and where he grew to become “Bono.”

Out(of(Control(

Paul David Hewson was born 10 May 1960, at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin,

Ireland, ironically just four days after the Soviet Union shot down an American U2 spy- plane overflying its territory. Paul was the second of two sons to Bobby and Iris Hewson, being born eight years after his brother Norman. Mr. and Mrs. Hewson were “Dubs.”

“Dubs” are to Dublin what “Cockneys” are to London—working-class, streetwise, communal.39 The Commitments (1991), a popular book by Roddy Doyle (1958-) and its subsequent film, captured the feeling of a time before the “Celtic Tiger” became a phrase or a phase: “Do you not get it lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe…and Dubliners

38 Bono/U2, “North and South of the River,” Staring at the Sun (Island Records, 1997). 39 Eamon Dunphy, Unforgettable Fire: The Story of U2 (Dublin, IE: Viking Press, 1987), 5.

15"

are the blacks of Ireland…and the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once. Say it loud. ‘I’m black and I’m proud.’ ”40

Bono recalls that he came into that Northside world crying and cried for three years until his first day at nursery school. That day he greeted his best friend by biting his ear and bashing his head into the school railings. It was an early indication of a rage that would drive him throughout his youth and beyond. It is a typical moment that he would capture, aged nineteen, in U2’s first single, “Out of Control”46

It was one dull morning Woke the world with bawling I was so sad (so sad) They were so glad I was of a feeling it was out of control47

Paul was also born into a divided family. It was not a division of turmoil; it was one of religion. His father was Catholic, while his mother was Church of Ireland

Protestant. In the Ireland of 1949, that was known as a “mixed-marriage.” If the priests, families, friends and neighbours did not succeed in pressuring you out of such an idea, then the permission of the Pope had to be obtained, together with “educational” classes for the partner who was “outside the church.” The couple had to make a solemn and binding declaration that the children were to be raised in the “one true church.”43 In the end, Bobby decided that a wedding in Iris’ church, with no requirement for dimmed lights and the absence of flowers to show the priest’s displeasure, would be more fitting for his bride. A mixed-marriage was one thing, but to marry outside of the Catholic

40 Roddy Doyle, The Commitments, DVD, directed by Alan Parker (New York: 20th. Century Fox, 1991), 20” 00’ - 20” 16’. 46 U2 with Neil McCormick, U2 By U2 (Hammersmith: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006), 15. 47 Bono/U2, “Out of Control,” U23, MP3 (Island Records, 1979). 43 Dunphy, 15.

16"

diocese reflected Bobby’s quietly defiant nature.44 This defiance led to the awkward situation where Iris took her sons to worship in the Protestant church, whilst the father attended the Roman Catholic Church.

Neither(Catholic(nor(Protestant((

However, there was another complication that created a further conflict for the young Hewson. As a child growing up in a Catholic area of Dublin with friends of that persuasion, Bono felt neither authentically Catholic, nor worthily Protestant. He was an outsider, both spiritually and socially. But there was a spark of spiritual awakening, a glimmer of spiritual interest with the family of one of his best friends, Derek Rowen.

Derek’s family, all thirteen of them, was an oasis of religious simplicity in a desert of dogma; they were Plymouth Brethren. Bono learned all he could about this “alien” religion from Derek’s father: the word of God was written in the Bible and that alone should be our guide; orthodox churches were obsessed with ritual; Jesus was within us all.45 Bono’s father was not impressed when his son came back to Cowperstown to discuss the Rowens’ beliefs at the dinner table. Bono would later say that one of the things that he picked up from his parents was “the sense that religion often gets in the way of God.”46

Bono’s frustration at feeling misunderstood and unheard would grow as his older brother Norman became another working man in the family, while he was still a “kid” whose questions and opinions on religion, or anything else, would not be entertained:

And I felt like a star I felt the world could go far

44 Dunphy, 17. 45 Ibid., 22. 46 Michka Assayas, Bono in Conversation With Michka Assayas (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006), 37.

17"

If they listened to what I said.47

Bono’s(Teenage(Years(

The difference was intensified when it came time for Bono to make the change from being a primary school pupil to a secondary school scholar. Norman had earned himself a scholarship to one of the better secondary schools in Dublin, The High School in Rathgar, but with no such scholarship forthcoming for Bono, his only option was to go to St. Patrick’s, part of the Protestant cathedral complex in the centre of Dublin.

However, after a year of non-attendance, boredom and disruption, Bono was moved to

Mount Temple Comprehensive School, a new progressive (for Dublin) secondary school that was pan-denominational and co-educational. It was an attempt to break the Catholic church from the state, ignore class bias and erase intellectual snobbery. It was the perfect environment for the inquisitive young man. At Mount Temple, Bono was secure physically and emotionally, with a loving mother who understood his and the other

Hewson men’s emotional requirements, giving them all stability. By 1974, Bono was a confident young man, very much at the centre of the social scene, talking music fluently, flirting and flitting monogomously from one young woman to the next. Yet, for Bono, there was something missing...spiritually. He still didn’t fit in either camp, Protestant or

Catholic. And then his mother died:

Outside, somebody's outside Somebody's knocking at the door. There's a black car parked at the side of the road Don't go to the door Don't go to the door. I'm going out. I'm going outside mother. I'm going out there. Won't you be back tomorrow,

47 Bono/U2, “The Ocean,” Boy (Island Records, 1980).

18"

Won't you be back tomorrow, Will you be back tomorrow? Can I sleep tonight? Who broke the window Who broke down the door? Who tore the curtain And who was it for? Who heals the wounds Who heals the scars? Open the door, open the door.48

Iris Hewson died after collapsing from a brain hemorrhage at the graveside of her father, who had died unexpectedly the day following his fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Suddenly, the home in Cowperstown became a house. It was a testosterone-filled environment where the three men tried their best at maintaining a semblance of tidiness, order and civility, all of which broke down regularly. Bono frequently talks about the violent undercurrent that ran through both his village and his home. It was one of the things that he remembers most from his teenage years and earlier. “Everything changed when my mother died, and our home became an empty house, with all the aggression between my father, my brother, and myself”:49

Where are we now? I've got to let you know A house still doesn't make a home Don't leave me here alone...50

Birth(of(a(Band(

48 Bono/U2, “Tomorrow,” October (Island Records, 1981). 49 Assayas, 126. 50 Bono/U2, “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own,” How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (Island Records, 2004).

19"

In 1976, Bono saw the end of his secondary school years approaching. He was preparing to enter the post-oil crisis, post-Eamon De Valera, pre-punk rock Dublin,

Ireland. He had lots of anger, optimism, energy and questions, but no positive outlet for any of them.

Fortunately, in the social experiment that was Mount Temple Comprehensive, the headmaster, Mr. Brook, ensured that music was an integral part of the school curriculum.

Bono joined Mount Temple’s Christian Union and its Music Department and Choir, the only two pursuits in which he found solace from the loss of his mother and his anger.

Brooks, himself a committed Christian, wanted his students not just to live a fruitful life but be spurred into action.51 When a notice pinned to the school’s bulletin board by a pupil called Larry Mullen Jr., a proficient drummer, asking musicians to “Join My Band” brought together a group of some of Brooks’ quirkiest characters, including Bono, he quickly supported it. He enlisted another teacher, Donald Moxham, who supervised the rehearsals of the group, known as Feedback, in a room in the school.52

Integral to this part of Bono’s life, and to Feedback, was a loose collective of like-minded souls that gathered around him called Lypton Village, or simply, The

Village. It was not a gang in the Dublin sense of the word (roaming the streets, beating up people). This was counter-cultural, the antithesis of everything that was their enforced cultural identity. Every new member received a moniker, or nick-name, and it was The

Village that named Paul Hewson “Bonavox of O’Connell Street” (later shortened to

Bono), after a hearing-aid store on that street in Dublin’s city centre. The Village met at

Bono’s house, to create an alternative reality, where you could be anything that you

51 Ace Collins, Stories Behind Men of Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 17. 52 Dunphy, 71.

20"

wanted to be—it was “a state of mind, subconscious as well as conscious rejection of the stereotypes of young Irish manhood on offer.”53

During the early gigs at Mount Temple and at various pubs in Dublin, The Village would accompany Feedback to their performances. But it was at Feedback’s first outing on stage that Bono’s underlying rage and frustration found an audience. As they took to the stage of the Mount Temple talent competition, Larry Mullen Jr., the drummer, was already an accomplished musician, but The Edge (another Village epithet for Dave

Evans) and Adam Clayton were only beginning to get to grips with their electric and bass guitars, respectively. And Bono could not sing, dance or play his guitar at all. What the audience at the show received instead was all of Bono—Catholic/Protestant

Christian/Sensitive/Ladies’ man/Hard case. And they slowly responded, unsure at first what they were seeing, hearing, feeling. The music was pretty awful, but Bono’s desperation to reach out to them, to show them what he was feeling, his intensity, captured their imagination. Bono felt the crowd’s response, that “their spirits were as alive as his.”54 For the first time he understood his art—“You put your hands in under your skin, you break your breastbone, you rip open your rib cage”55

I have a lover, a lover like no other She got soul, soul, soul, sweet soul And she teach me how to sing. Shows me colours when there's none to see Gives me hope when I can't believe That for the first time I feel love.56

The(Shalom(Period(

53 Dunphy, 75. 54 Ibid., 81. 55 Assayas, 41. 56 Bono/U2, “The First Time,” Zooropa (Island Records, 1993).

21"

Over the previous year Feedback had had two reincarnations, becoming firstly

The Hype before settling on the suitably ambiguous name of U2. In the same way that the group was looking for a name that fit the group, they were also open to influences from outside of parochial Ireland. In 1979, Dublin was a hotbed for religious sects offering their wares to a disaffected youth fed a diet of cynicism by the clerics and politicians. The

Hare Krisna were always on Grafton Street, the cultural centre of Dublin, with the

Scientologists and Moonies in the shadows. A brief meeting in a McDonalds restaurant with a preacher, Dennis Sheedy, who was the leader of the Shalom group of Charismatic

Christians, led most of The Village, and eventually Bono, The Edge and Larry, to gather twice weekly at Shalom house-meetings.57 Soon partners and friends had joined the group and the meetings, where there were gospel songs, Bible discussions and egalitarian friendship. Bono and The Edge were baptised by immersion in the sea. Charismatic

Christianity became an integral part of The Village and of U2. None of the group became bible-bashers, but morally and spiritually they had found a refuge, for a time.58 As U2 grew in stature and importance in Great Britain and Ireland, the Shalom put great pressure on The Village, U2 and another band spawned from that gang, The Virgin

Prunes, to turn their backs on the avarice of rock ‘n’ roll—how could Bono rhyme ego and fame with his love of God?59 The conflict come to a head in 1981 as they wrote and produced the album October, which is imbued with the strife and questioning that was going through all the band members’ minds. That conflict was resolved in 1982 when the band witnessed the Shalom group move slowly away from the Scriptures towards bigotry and judgmentalism. U2 left Shalom, convinced that despite their denunciation by Sheedy,

57 Dunphy, 134. 58 Ibid., 149-151. 59 Ibid.,167.

22"

they could reconcile rock ‘n’ roll and Christianity.60 While Adam Clayton, for the moment, would live the life of the rock star, the three former disciples of Sheedy each had their justifications: Larry Mullen Jr. felt that compassion and charity were the things that mattered to him, and he wasn’t going down any road otherwise signposted; The Edge decided that Christianity without life was as empty as life without Christianity; Bono wrote to his father from London, “None of it means anything, Da, except the music.

That’s a gift from God. If that is meant to be, there is nothing we can do.”61

Neil McCormick (1961-) is one of the United Kingdom’s best-known music critics and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. In his essay entitled “Boy to Man: A

Dublin-Shaped Band,” he writes,

Ireland was a poor country in the seventies, the poorest nation in Western Europe. It was also a small and insulated country. It was not culturally mixed—the population was almost 100 percent white and over 95 percent Catholic (in the southern republic at least, with the British territory of Northern Ireland being very different and very separate). And in many ways, it was a repressed country, partly because there was little separation between church and state … It meant that we were always looking to the outside, in particular to the United Kingdom, not just for work but for art, inspiration, hope. For the future, really.62

U2 would spend the next five years plying their trade in Ireland, the UK and America, travelling the well-worn route of college radio stations, small venues, working men’s clubs and as a support act to bigger bands, delivering the band’s message of honesty, warning and hope. Recognition came slowly in their home market of the British Isles

(despite the so-called “anti-British sentiment,” Ireland’s entertainment was a steady stream of BBC television and radio, the Daily Mirror and the fascination with the machinations of the Royal family) but “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home

60 Dunphy, 203. 61 Ibid., 203-204, 251. 62 Neil McCormick, “Boy to Man: A Dublin-Shaped Band,” in Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, ed. Scott Calhoun (Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 8-9.

23"

town” as in Luke 4:24. America was the first to embrace U2 as they methodically and determinedly crisscrossed the country, playing concerts and plying college radio stations with interviews. After five years of hard work, U2 became an overnight success, despite, and certainly not because, they announced over the air at each US interview, “One other thing you should know...we’re all Christians.”63

Live(Aid((1985)(–(U2(goes(Global(

In 1984, when Bob Geldolf (1951-), a fellow Dubliner, friend of Bono and front- man to the Irish punk rock band, The Boomtown Rats, saw a breaking, and heart- breaking BBC news report by Michel Buerk on a “biblical famine” in Ethiopia, he was angered into action.64 His first response was to gather together all the popular bands of the day to record a single, under the pseudonym Band Aid, called “Do They Know It’s

Christmas?” on which Bono sang the most memorable and honest lyric, “Well, tonight thank God it’s them, instead of you!”65 When Geldolf went on in 1985 to organize concerts simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, and John F. Kennedy

Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U2 were one of the first groups to volunteer for a slot at the London event. It was a graceful and fateful decision. Bono’s performance was an event with the same desperation, the same need to reach out to the audience, to feel their spirits, that he displayed to the high school crowd in Mount Temple, magnified by the 72,000 attendees at Wembley and an estimated 1.5 million viewers worldwide.66 It is arguably the one performance of many that day on the stages in the UK and the US that everyone of a certain age remembers.

63 Collins, 19. 64 Michael Buerk, “1984: Extent of Ethiopia Famine Revealed,” BBC, http://bbc.in/fuox2f (accessed October 13, 2012). 65 Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (Phonogram Columbia, 1984). 66 Bob Geldolf, “Live Aid,” bobgeldolf.com, http://bit.ly/e96NqY (accessed October 13, 2012).

24"

The Live Aid event would be the springboard that would give Bono and U2 the credibility to pursue whatever spiritual journey that they wanted to follow:

I was on the inside When they pulled the four walls down I was looking through the window I was lost, I am found. If you walk away, walk away I walk away, walk away I will follow.67

Bono’s next journey was directed by the fact that his Christian outrage would not allow the BBC television images of the famine to leave his consciousness. It would take him (and his now wife, Ali) to Ajibar in the north of Ethiopia where they would work for six weeks. They left without fanfare, without telling anyone that they were going.68 This was the journey that would convince Bono that poverty was not about charity, it was about justice, and would lead him to become a prolific agent of advocacy.69Advocacy has led Bono to make many speeches to Presidents, Prime Ministers and church leaders. He has guest edited and written op-ed pieces for newspapers like the New York Times (many times), The Globe and Mail (again with his friend Bob Geldof), The Independent (UK) and Vanity Fair—it is an obvious and effective method of promoting his causes, so why does Bono feel that he has to sing?

Why(Does(Bono(Sing?((And(Why(Do(We(Sing(Along?)(

67 U2, “I Will Follow,” Boy (Island Records, 1980). 68 Assayas, 248. 69 USA Today, “Transcript: Bono remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-02-bono-transcript_x.htm (accessed September 24, 2012).

25"

These questions can be best answered by Bono himself in the lyrics to the song

“Magnificent,” (a song of praise/prayer inspired by “The Magnificat”) where he proclaims in the second verse of the song,

I was born, I was born to sing for you I didn't have a choice but to lift you up And sing whatever song you wanted me to.70

At Super Bowl XXXVI on February 2, 2002, in New Orleans, U2 performed the half-time show, and Bono again answered the question for us, when he recited twice the prayer “O Lord, open my lips, so my mouth shall show thy praise” (cf. Ps 51:15) to an enormous back-drop list of those who had died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America.71 He continued the recitation of this prayer throughout the 2001

Elevation world tour, opening up the example of prayer to the audience.

A final hint at what drives Bono to use his voice in song appears in U2’s 2004 song “Yahweh,” which suggests that Bono wants to sing, is destined to sing, that which is in his soul:

Take this soul Stranded in some skin and bones Take this soul And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh Always pain before a child is born Yahweh, Yahweh Still I'm waiting for the dawn.

The bards of Europe taught, chastised and praised the populous through the medium of song. In her book A Royal Waste of Time, Marva Dawn (1948-), an American

70 Bono/U2, “Magnificent.” 71 Tewing170, “U2 Superbowl 36 halftime performance where the streets have no name HD,” YouTube LLC, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og0V1UtjPt4 (accessed 25 September 2012).

26"

Christian theologian, tells us, using Colossians 3:16, that through the use of song, “each one of us in the congregation can in all wisdom teach and admonish each other in the

Christian community; we engage in music that will not only enfold the congregation in the grace of God who chose us, but that will also instill in them an understanding of what it is to worship God.”72 How much can Bono and U2 achieve with a “congregation” of one hundred thousand persons each night?

Double(Entendre(

There is an aspect of the songs of Bono and U2 that has to be confronted head on—that of the dualistic nature of their lyrics. Deane Galbraith of the University of

Otago, New Zealand, writing in “Drawing Our Fish in the Sand: Secret Biblical Allusions in the Music of U2” in 2011, suggests that U2 deliberately uses allusion to create two discrete audiences for their music and message, if you will, one that has ears, one that has not. He posits that for “the popular music subculture which is predominantly antipathetic to Christianity, the charismatic-evangelical members of rock band U2 double code their lyrics in such a manner that Christian references are hidden from mainstream listeners and media while being readily recognizable to their Christian fans.”73 Bono himself has made no secret of, or indeed apology for, this approach, using allusion to make his point:

We’ve found different ways of expressing it [our belief ], and recognized the power of the media to manipulate such signs. Maybe we just have to sort of draw our fish in the sand. It’s there for people who are interested. It shouldn’t be there for people who aren’t.74 [cf. Luke 8:10b]

72 Marva J. Dawn, A Royal Waste of Time (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 15. 73 Deane Galbraith, “Drawing Our Fish in the Sand: Secret Biblical Allusions in the Music of U2,” Biblical Interpretation 19, no. 2 (April 2011): 181-222. 74 Christian Scharen, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006), 25-26.

27"

The Edge, the guitarist in the band addressed it more directly—“I’m very nervous about the Christian label. I have no trouble with Christ, but I have trouble with a lot of

Christians.”75

Galbraith’s message is that Bono and U2 explicitly and intentionally divide their audience into those who “get it” and those who do not—those who are “biblically literate” (a phrase that he uses repeatedly) and those who are not. As an example of one of U2’s earlier fans and one who did not “get it” until I had hit my, ironically, “40s,” I would argue that I was borne along by the implicit spiritual experience from the initial listening to a U2 album and the explicit spirituality experienced and shared with one hundred thousand people at a U2 concert. Being a Roman Catholic, and not someone whom anyone would define as an evangelical, I sympathise with U2’s approach of

“leading”—if you like what you see then follow me, you will get it in the end. In the time that the Psalms were written, their authors had the luxury of writing to a community whose whole existence rhymed with the presence of God. Today’s praise-song writers have to contend with a community that is essentially secular, but spiritual. In response to

Galbraith’s repeated “secret allusion” description of Bono’s lyrics, I would ask the question—which is more intrinsically valuable and memorable, the undiscovered allusion revealed through accident or research, or the fact delivered on a plate? I would suggest that the ambiguity and hiddenness that Bono brings to his lyrics are deliberate and important. Many of today’s modern Christian songs are thoughtful and full of praise, but they do not provide a depth that requires one to examine, question or interpret them for a fuller understanding. To conclude this section, and to allay any suggestions that the U2 target base is “Christians Only,” it is worth referring to a 1981 interview with Bono and

75 Bill Flanagan, U2: At the End of the World (New York: Delacorte Press, 1995), 47.

28"

The Edge at the Gaines Christian Centre in Worcester, England, organized by Laurie

Mellor as a Ghettout Music event. Bono explained that some musicians are gifted to make praise songs to God and others are gifted to make music about God for reaching out to others:

“It is very important that people don't see themselves as outreach in the music world if they are playing the Christian circuit," Bono says. "What we've got to do in the music business is destroy the image that has got through … which has [given] God almighty and Jesus Christ … an image of a weakling. A slightly effeminate image. A sort of Sunday image. A religious image. This is not the case … this is something we're trying in U2 to do something about.”76

Bono’s(Religious(Values(

Bono and U2’s catalogue is riddled with direct and indirect references to Scripture and its kerygma (the essence of Christian proclamation). Bono obviously has a knowledge of the Scriptures as does the group as a whole. One benefit that they gained from being part of the Shalom evangelical group was that it immersed them in the Word.

When asked by Rolling Stone Magazine if U2 was a revolutionary band, Bono replied, “If sitting in the back of our [tour] bus and reading the Bible makes us revolutionary, then I guess we are.”77

I will investigate later the religious values evident in Bono’s lyrics when I exegete some of Bono’s work as recorded in the studio, but it is worth noting that many U2 songs are themselves the retelling or remaking of stories from the Bible. “Until the End of the

World” is a conversation between Judas and Christ that imagines the aftermath of his betrayal of Jesus. Stephen R. Harmon, formerly at Campbell University Divinity School,

76 Scott Calhoun, @U2, “Rare Recording Featuring Three-Fourths of U2 For Sale: Message from 1981 described as 'fresh and relevant',” @U2, http://bit.ly/mTzb9K (accessed October 13, 2012). 77 Collins, 19.

29"

highlights other examples of Biblical narratives in his essay “U2: Unexpected Prophets” in the journal Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics:

“The First Time” retells the parable of the prodigal son with this interesting twist: after being welcomed home by the waiting father and receiving his gifts, the wayward son soon “left by the back door and threw away the key”; nevertheless, he is pursued by his father and continues to feel the father’s love despite his seemingly final rejection of it. “Vertigo,” the lead track from 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, is rich in allusions to Jesus’ wilderness temptations in which Bono intones, “All of this, all of this can be yours / Just give me what I want, and no one gets hurt.”78 There is also the “religious” experience of witnessing Bono and U2 live that should be acknowledged. There are numerous reviews of concerts that describe the spectacles as

“spiritual events” or “like church.” Bono and U2 have turned the recent U2 360° concert tour into a kind of in-the-round tent gathering, where Bono recites a portion of a psalm from Eugene Peterson’s The Message (2004) (Bono says it is his favorite book of all time), to introduce “Where The Streets Have No Name,” a song inspired by Revelation

22:21.79 It is a sublime summation of what Bono and U2 have been trying to achieve in their thirty-six years together:

What can I give back to God for the blessings he's poured out on me? I'll lift high the cup of salvation—A toast to God! I'll pray in the name of God; I'll complete what I promised God I'd do, And I'll do it together with his people (Ps 116:12- 14).80 Ace Collins (1953-), best-selling author, also suggests that a religious value that

Bono and U2 bring, as an adjunct to Bono’s lyrics, is the introduction of Scripture at their concerts. In Stories Behind Men of Faith (2009), he suggests that when Bono read Psalm

116 during a concert, “He surely realised … that it was the first time many in the

78 Stephen R. Harmon, “U2: Unexpected Prophets,” in Singing Our Lives, edited by Robert B. Kruschwitz (Waco, TX: Baylor University 2006), 93, 83. 79 Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Compact Burgundy Bonded Leather: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: NAVPRESS, 2004). 80 A development of Bono’s use of Ps 51:15 as an introduction to the same song during the “Elevation” tour of 2001.

30"

audience had ever heard something from the book of Psalms. He also had to know that some might go home, find a Bible, and start reading it for themselves.”81 Whatever the listener at home or the concert-goer actually hears when they listen to Bono’s lyrics and

U2’s music, they can be assured that what they are hearing is scripturally-based, creatively and passionately delivered, and valuable.

Summary(

In the introduction to this thesis, I opened with my belief that everybody has a theological orientation, whether it is conscious or implied. This is an important distinction to make because, if it is not recognized, it leaves the “science of faith”

(academic theology) open only to an elite who have been formally educated in it and who have the formal language to articulate it. Although a person’s theology may not have been consciously organised in its derivation, it can be reviewed in an organised fashion.

In the case of my subject Bono, his beliefs have been trivialised in the media and I believe that he deserves a more structured approach in the examination of his faith and his works.

In telling Bono’s story and situating him in his Sitz im Leben, I have focused both on what has influenced his approach to his faith, as well as the actions that have been born of those beliefs. As a child of a “mixed-marriage” in a country where the Catholic church and the politicians—the “black and blue uniforms, Police and priests” of a

“banana republic” that his friend, Bob Geldolf, sang about—Bono has witnessed how religion can get in the way of faith, both in its attitudes and its ability to confuse and

81 Collins, 22.

31"

segregate.82 It is because of these struggles with denominations, the untimely death of his mother and the internal and external aggression with which he grew up, that he has such a strong affinity with the hope and suffering found in the Psalter.

His introduction to the world of the Plymouth Brethren and the Shalom charismatic sect broadened Bono’s outlook enough for him to realise that there had to be

“something else” than the stereotypical role laid out for a young Irishman, but even the latter proved to be too restricting, too small-minded. It was in The Village that he found his spiritual home, and in U2 that he found his voice. It was the desire of U2 and Bono to reach out and “touch the flame”83 that would lead to the memorable 1985 Live Aid concert and his awakening to the plight of the starving, the pointless suffering from AIDS and the burden of Western debt for which he would become such an advocate.

Bono’s belief that he was given his voice by God to sing his praises, expressed in the 2009 song “Magnificent,” has cast in concrete lyrics what he has previously demonstrated in concert throughout the new millennium with his introduction of spoken psalm verses and recent songs such as “Yahweh,” “Grace” and “All Because of You, I

Am.” Bono has used his medium to retell and remake popular stories from the Scriptures.

It is through the dualistic use of language in his lyrics, where they can “work” in the secular or religious domain, that Bono offers his praises for those who have ears. I believe that this is fundamental to U2 as a group to remain proactively proclaiming to the rich and continually advocating for the poor.

From the beginning of their career as rock musicians, Bono, and the members of

U2, have been steeped in their Bibles when most of their peers would have been swigging

82 The Boomtown Rats, “Banana Republic,” Mondo Bongo (Ensign Records, 1980). 83 Bono/U2, “Where The Streets Have No Name.”

32"

their beers. From the Shalom evangelical group, through Bible studies whilst travelling between gigs on coaches, to paraphrasing and quoting scripture in speech and song, Bono has worn and continues to wear his religious values on his leather jacket.( (

33"

Chapter(II(

Christian(Themes(in(Bono’s(Work(

To gain a deeper understanding of Bono’s theology, it is necessary to examine the lyrics in his songs in conjunction with the vocabulary in his interviews. Bono peppers both with words and ideas such as “karma”, “grace” and “liberation”. Editorial writers use words such as “thin ecclesiology,” “prophet” and so on.84 I will investigate various

Christian themes that flow through Bono’s lyrics and quotes, as well as those of authors and journalists who have interviewed him. It is important to note that I will not be using a strict systematic theology methodology to examine Bono’s approach to Christianity and unpack Bono’s Christian values, as this would be restrictive. Instead, I will use the term

“themes.”

Ecclesiological(Themes(

In his book, Foundations of the Church (2007), Karl Rahner (1904-1984), the eminent Catholic theologian, said,

We are aware today in a quite new and inescapable way that man is a social being, a being who can exist only within such intercommunication with others throughout all of the dimension of human existence. And from this perspective we acquire a new understanding of Christian religion as an ecclesial religion.85

Bono has never been one to promote a particular view of the church; in fact, the media chastise him for not being a congregant of any church.86 His concerns regarding the church are not just those of someone who is disaffected personally with the building,

84 Editorial, "Bono's Thin Ecclesiology.” 85 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2007), 323. 86 Editorial, "Bono's Thin Ecclesiology.”

34"

but also of one who believes that the church as institution is not performing its role. He only occasionally visits at times of spiritual necessity and he has stated often that he feels that church is an impediment to accessing God:87

Religion can be the enemy of God. It`s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship.88

Bono’s judgments of the church as an institution became more colourful during the 2000s as he railed against the ecclesial bodies’ perceived inaction in the fight against

AIDs, debt, and famine in the African continent:

If the Church does not respond to this, the Church will be made irrelevant— millions and millions of lives are being lost to greed, to bureaucracy, and to a Church that’s been asleep, and it sends me out of my mind with anger.89

Bono has rebuked the church, as the Body of Christ, for its self-centred requirements, and an ignorance of those requirements abroad, as in this interview regarding the developing AIDS epidemic in Africa in 2002. “You cannot as a Christian, walk away from Africa. America will be judged by God if, in its plenty, it crosses the road from 23 million people suffering from HIV, the leprosy of the day.” He warns that,

“Christianity itself is on trial.”90

It should be noted, however, that as quick and as sharp as Bono can be with his criticisms above, he is as speedy and gracious when acknowledging successes resulting from action, such as this op-ed piece in the New York Times on World Aids Day in 2011, regarding the same topic:

87 USA Today. 88 Assayas, 37 89 Falsani, “Bono's American Prayer.” 90 Mark Joseph, Faith, God, and Rock & Roll: How People of Faith are Transforming American Popular Music (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003), 217.

35"

For me, a fan and a pest of America, it’s a tale of strange bedfellows: the gay community, evangelicals and scruffy student activists in a weird sort of harmony; military men calling AIDS in Africa a national security issue. Activists are a funny lot. When the world suddenly starts marching in step with us, we just point out with (self-)righteous indignation all that remains to be done. But on this World AIDS Day I would like you to stop and consider what America has achieved in this war to defend lives lived far away and sacred principles held closer to home.91

The noted evangelical writer, Eugene Peterson (1932-), defends Bono’s decision not to attend church. In response to an editorial in Christianity Today attacking Bono’s ecclesiology, he wrote, “I was a little offended, to tell you the truth; they complained that he didn't go to church … and I thought, ‘Oh, c'mon now. That's not what prophets do.’

Sometimes they sneak in, but they get out so they won't be recognized.”92 When asked what his reaction was to having The Message quoted in concert arenas around the world,

Peterson said, “I am pleased, very pleased. Bono is singing to the very people I did this work for. I feel that we are allies in this. He is helping me get out the message into the company of the very people Jesus spent so much of his time with.”93

A(Church(by(Any(Other(Name(

I would like to take a detour for a moment, to discuss what is meant by the word

“church” and to see why there is such a dichotomy between those who insist that worshiping God is an action that has to be performed in a building and those who are comfortable with a gathering of two or three (or one hundred thousand).

As indicated above, Bono has never identified with any church. He is not afraid of the concept of organised church; it is the disorganised church that provokes him to anger.

91 Bono, “A Decade of Progress on AIDS,” New York: The New York Times Company, http://nyti.ms/uYm8L2 (accessed September 25, 2012). 92 Editorial, "Bono's Thin Ecclesiology.” 93 Scott Calhoun, “Bono’s Prophetic Vox,” Christianity Today Magazine, (February, 2006), http://bit.ly/I7K3Ov (accessed October 22, 2012).

36"

It is the church that does not live up to Christ’s admonitions to serve the disenfranchised that he rails against. Bono, in an interview with Cathleen Falsani (1970-), religion reporter and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, states that

Christ's example is being demeaned by the church if they ignore the new leprosy, which is AIDS. The church is the sleeping giant here. If it wakes up to what's really going on in the rest of the world, it has a real role to play. If it doesn't, it will be irrelevant … to some people the church is their ticket to respectability, a certain bourgeois point of view, a safety net for when they go to bed. My idea of Christianity is no safety net, a scathing attack on bourgeois values, and a risk to respectability … by the way, I don't set myself up as any kind of Christian. I can't live up to that. It's something I aspire to, but I don't feel comfortable with that badge. It's the badge I want to wear.94

In the U2 song “Acrobat,” Bono sings

And I'd join the movement If there was one I could believe in Yeah, I'd break bread and wine If there was a church I could receive in. 'Cause I need it now.95

I will offer some of my own conjectures for Bono’s ecclesial wariness, due to the absence of any instances that I can find of Bono explaining his own position. I will also argue, supported by other writers, that Bono has been a member of an ecclesia, a community in relationship, for the last thirty-six years and has also created ecclesia for many thousands of attendees at U2 concerts around the world, who form a similar community.

For this I need to examine the Greek root word ecclesia, commonly rendered into

English, inadequately I believe, as “church.” Our English term “ecclesiology,” the theological study of the Christian Church, is a transliteration of the Gk. ἐκκλησ� a, as found in the New Testament. It occurs one-hundred and fourteen times: sixty-two in

94 Cathleen Falsani. "Bono Issues Blunt Message for Christians," Chicago Sun-Times, December 03, 2002. 95 Bono/ U2, “Acrobat,” All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Island Records, 2000).

37"

the Pauline epistles, three in Matthew, twenty-three in Acts, twenty in Revelation and six in the remaining non-Pauline letters.96 Paul’s high percentage of usage, and his pre- dating of the other NT books (chronologically, its first use occurs in 1 Thessalonians

97 1:1) can provide a good benchmark as to the contextual meaning of ἐκκλησ�a.

Paul qualifies his use of ecclesia to avoid it being confused with a civil gathering or a synagogue assembly, with words such as “in God the Father” (1 Thes 1:1), “greet them with a holy kiss”

(1 Thes 5:26-27) and “of God in Judea” (2 Thes 2:14). Significantly, in all Paul’s examples, the use of ἐκκλησ�a refers to an actual local gathering of people, not a metaphor such as for a denomination, i.e. the church.

Likewise, in the Hebrew Scriptures, The Septuagint (LXX) Greek translation uses

ἐκκλησ�a (normally rendered qahal in Hebrew, meaning assembly, community, often of Israel assembled for religious ceremony)98 or its cognates one hundred times, but always in the sense of “assembly.”99 Insight can be gained into the pre- and contemporary

New Testament understanding of ἐκκλησ�a by studying its usage by Josephus and Philo. Josephus used it forty-eight times (eighteen direct quotations from the LXX), always in the context of gathering, though of varying kinds, from the spontaneous, through political to religious. Philo’s usage was more directed at LXX quotations, with only five of his thirty examples being non-biblical, but all in the Greek sense.100

It is useful at this point to look at scriptural references to the early Church and to

96 OakTree Software, Accordance Bible Software - Library 7 (Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 2007). 97 Gerald F. Hawthorne, P. Martin Ralph, and G. Reid Daniel, eds., Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 124. 98 OakTree Software. 99 Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I Howard Marshall, eds., Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 122. 100 Hawthorne, Ralph, and Daniel, 124.

38"

our earliest theologian, St. Paul, as outlined in the International Standard Bible

Encylopedia:

While the kingdom is still the theme of apostolic preaching, the word "church" is regularly used in Acts to denote the company of believers, more especially in the local sense. Thus we read of churches in Jerusalem (5:11), Antioch (13:1), and Caesarea (18:22), a similar usage being found in the seven letters of Revelation. The same word can also be used, however, for the sum of local churches or the totality of believers (9:31), though with no suggestion of an organized external structure. The same twofold usage occurs in the Pauline Epistles. Each individual group may be addressed as the church, e.g. "the church of God which is at Corinth" (1 Cor. 1:2). Indeed, the word is perhaps further localized in respect of the household group within the local church, though this is unusual (Rom. 16:5; I Cor. 16:19).101

Karl Rahner says essentially the same thing from a contrasting point of view:

[W]e also have to see just as clearly that the doctrine of the church and its social constitution is not the core of the ultimate truth in Christianity. Jesus Christ, faith and love, entrusting oneself to the darkness of existence and into the incomprehensibility of God in trust and in the company of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one, these are the central realities for a Christian. If he could not attain them, if he could not really realize them in the innermost depths of his existence, then basically his ecclesiality and his feeling of belonging to the concrete church would only be an empty illusion and a deceptive facade.102

I believe that for Bono, these descriptions reflect the sense of church that he carries with him; that sometimes the church is where Bono goes, and sometimes he is where the church goes. "I just go where the life is, you know? Where I feel the Holy

Spirit," Bono told Christianity Today:

If it's in the back of a Roman Catholic cathedral, in the quietness and the incense, which suggest the mystery of God, of God's presence, or in the bright lights of the revival tent, I just go where I find life. I don't see denomination. I generally think religion gets in the way of God.103

101 Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed., The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 1:693. 102 Rahner, 324. 103 Falsani, “Bono's American Prayer.”

39"

With this literal understanding of church in the pre- and post-Christian times as an assembly or gathering, the concerts performed by Bono/U2, under their metaphorical revival tent, call and gather together souls looking for a spiritual happening, a spiritual experience, a spiritual transformation. It is a time for the Spirit to move and an opportunity to gather in community and to foster hope amongst those present. Greg

Garrett (1961-), who teaches English at Baylor University and is Writer in Residence at

Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, has recognised this local and global ecclesia in his book We Get to Carry Each Other – The Gospel According to U2 (2009):

The central question for some Christians where U2 and Christianity are concerned, then, is this: How can Bono (or The Edge, or Larry) call himself a Christian when he is not part of an established church, since ecclesia is how we have always identified other Christians and practiced our faith? From the beginning of Christian practice—even before many of the new gatherings of Jesus followers had separated from the Jewish synagogues in which many of them began—there was a clear sense that people who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, God's anointed one, were to join together with other believers to worship and work and to pursue together the teachings that Jesus had left behind. And although some evangelical Christians may have an exaggerated sense of how important individual salvation might be, they still tend to gather together in small or large groups to worship and support one another in the faith … I propose that U2 might be thought of as a sort of ecclesia, a gathering of believers who support one another, who do good works as Jesus taught, and who, whenever they go out on tour, actually create an experience that—for many who join them—feels a great deal like worship. McLaren described the "worship" component many people have felt in relation to U2's performances, but his description of the qualities of many emerging Christian communities might also help us recognize those qualities in the band: these new ecclesias are virile, courageous, nurturing communities that center their theology on Jesus' revolutionary message of the kingdom and their lives on living out that radical message, and they are communities of spiritual formation whose transformed members seek social transformation. If we do envision ecclesia as a group of people rather than a building, then I think we can make a powerful case for U2 as a faithful community and, in the process, can explore some important ideas about why and how we are saved in community with others once we have begun to come to belief in God.104

104 Greg Garrett, We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 62.

40"

Brian McLaren (1956-), founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in the Baltimore-Washington region and Theologian in Residence with Life in the Trinity

Ministry in Dallas, wrote in a widely circulated, if provocative article entitled “Why

Bother with Church at All?”:

The best examples of Christians who are influencing the world can't stand the church and have found their own ways of creating community. I think of Bono of U2, who has for years lamented the irrelevance of organized religion and yet conducts praise and worship services for 25,000 people all the while creating a commercial and culturally viable perch from which he can model a compelling vision of a social gospel. This guy is the leader of the "emergent church" movement ... 105

Ironically, it is the Christian press that has objected most to Bono’s lack of conformity. Steve Stockman, Minister at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church, in Belfast,

Northern Ireland, comments in his book, Walk On – The Spiritual Journey of U2 (2005),

The vast majority of U2 interviews and reviews over the past twenty years touch or often concentrate on the Christian faith that is so much a part of what the band is. Their faith isn’t ridiculed. It has never been questioned, though how they keep it with the rock lifestyle has often been a fascination. The Christian press and Christians in general have been the doubters. There seems to have been a keen enthusiasm to denounce the band’s Christian members as lost. There has been confusion as to what they have tried to do in the nineties and condemnation on their lifestyles, which include smoking cigars, drinking Jack Daniels, and using language that is not common currency at Southern Baptist conventions. The Christian community seems to have confined its definitions of faith to various precise behavioral patterns and clichéd statements of faith. In getting caught up in the minutia of behavioral codes that have had more to do with respectable middle- class behavior than biblical guidelines, many have been so obsessed with the cigar hanging out of Bono’s mouth that they are missing the radical biblical agenda that has fired his life and work.106

With this understanding of how the idea of church has developed from its initial communal gathering at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, and supported by the commentators above, I believe that we can explain why Bono feels comfortable

105 Brian D. McLaren, “Why bother with church at all?”, http://bit.ly/QHiroj (accessed October 24, 2012). 106 Steve Stockman, Walk on: The Spiritual Journey of U2 (Orlando: Relevant Books, 2005), 3.

41"

worshiping in a variety of sacred spaces and why a U2 concert stadium can itself become a sacred space. Although some may feel that Bono’s ecclesiology is “thin,” it has a wide canvas across the globe.107 It is with the spirit of hope still ringing around our metaphorical tent, that I will now focus on Bono’s interpretation of hope, grace and the cross.

Themes(of(Grace,(Glory(and(the(Cross(

Bono’s understanding of the doctrinal concept of grace, if he were ever to talk about it in those terms, appears to be realistically and hopefully reflective. In the book, A

Conversation with Bono (2006) by Michka Assayas (1958-), writer and longtime friend of the singer, Bono outlines his overriding belief and awe in God’s grace:

You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the Universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "As you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff … That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity … But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there's a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humbled. It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven.108

It would appear on the surface that Bono has a Lutheran-influenced approach to faith and works. What is less obvious in Bono’s statements is the relation that they have

107 Editorial, “Bono's Thin Ecclesiology.” 108 Assayas, 226.

42"

to what Martin Luther (1483-1546) described in the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 as the Theology of Glory and the Theology of the Cross. In this defence of his ninety-five theses, Luther contrasted the two theologies. “A theologian of the glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.”

It is the same orientation that Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall (1928-) demonstrates—the tension between eschatology and glory, but put to song by Bono—the tension between the two extremes of cynicism and credulity. “Cynicism resolves the tension by affirming only the one side of it; suffering is real—period. Credulity… resolves the tension by taking up only the positive side: suffering has been overcome by the enduring Word.”109 In our post-modernist world, at least in the context of the First

World, suffering is an adjective that we try to medicate, obfuscate, eradicate. Bono recognises that there is suffering in the world, but like Hall, understands that it is not enough just to name it. Bono believes that in between Despair and the Glory (“the holy huddle”), in between cynicism and credulity, there is the hope—a space where Christians,

Jews and Muslims can coexist.

Christian Scharen, a theologian at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, and author of One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God (2006), summarises the two theologies thus:

• in the theology of glory, our relationship with God depends on us—it is an “if, then” relationship that is very commercial and karmic in its transaction—“if I’m good, God will be good to me” • in the theology of the cross, the relationship is an unconditional “because, therefore”—Christ died on the cross for us, therefore God forgives us 110 unconditionally.

109 Douglas John Hall, God and Human Suffering (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987), 20. 110 Scharen, 109.

43"

Bono railed at the tele-evangelists that he observed the first time that U2 toured

America, “a preacher on the old time gospel hour stealing money from the sick and the old” whom he tells “The God I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister!”111 But Bono is not unaware of the difficulties, the contradictions, in following this narrow path as an insanely wealthy rock star and contrite believer, as he confides in the lyrics to the U2 song “Acrobat,”

And I'd join the movement If there was one I could believe in Yeah I'd break bread and wine If there was a church I could receive in 'cause I need it now

To take a cup To fill it up To drink it slow I can't let you go I must be an acrobat To talk like this And act like that.112

Soteriological(Themes(

Jürgen Moltmann gives a contemporary insight into his theology of eschatological salvation in his book, Theology of Hope (1993):

It is generally recognized today that the New Testament regards the Church as the 'community of eschatological salvation', and accordingly speaks of the gathering in and sending out of the community in terms of a horizon of eschatological expectation. The risen Christ calls, sends, justifies and sanctifies men, and in so doing gathers, calls and sends them into his eschatological future for the world. The risen Lord is always the Lord expected by the Church—the Lord, moreover, expected by the Church for the world and not merely for itself. Hence the Christian community does not live from itself and for itself, but from the sovereignty of the risen Lord and for the coming sovereignty of him who has conquered death and is bringing life, righteousness and the kingdom of God.113

111 Bono/U2, “Bullet the Blue Sky (live),” Rattle & Hum (Island Records, 1988). 112 Bono/U2, “Acrobat,” All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Island Records, 2000). 113 Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 325.

44"

Bono and the U2 band members have actively avoided having their music labeled as Christian rock, or indeed of being categorised as a Christian band. As Steve Stockman, notes, again in Walk On – The Spiritual Journey of U2,

But in the very early days when the band did speak to Christian magazines, they were often misquoted and felt used and abused. The evangelical Christian world seemed to claim U2 as its property, and, therefore, U2's members found their faith defined and explained by magazines rather than by the members themselves. Aligning themselves with the Christian press would have pigeonholed their faith and their art, squeezed them into the mold of other peoples' expectations, and narrowed the focus of the band’s influence and scope. In their work, however— whether on records, on stage, on video, or in interviews—they have never denied their faith, even if at times they have questioned how that faith fits with the events of their generation. They have constantly kept spiritual issues at the heart of all they have done, whether looking at the light or the darkness around them.114

For Bono and U2 to be able to fulfill their calling, be willing to be sent and to honour their justification and sanctification, they could not allow themselves to be compromised in any way that would limit their reach. Their position has brought them into tension, particularly in America, with the Christian Right, where, together with their ambiguous lyrics, they are criticised as being self-serving. However, to be awarded the epithet Christian Rock Band is to be consigned to niche radio stations, with separate chart listings and a limited audience—preaching to the converted, if you like. It almost certainly will preclude a band from the Billboard Top 100 or a listing in the iTunes bestseller list. For example, Michael W. Smith (1957-), an artist whom Christianity

Today considers “a Bono-level celebrity within contemporary Christian music,”115 has had “dozens of No. 1 hits and fifteen million albums sold” since 1983—a sizeable number by any measure, though it should be noted that all the number 1 hits were in

114 Stockman, 3-4. 115 Falsani, “Bono’s American Prayer.”

45"

Billboard’s Christian Music chart.116 U2, who started performing four years earlier than

Michael W. Smith, have sold more than 150 million records, placing them amongst the best-selling music artists of all time with seven number one albums on the Billboard chart.117 Their 2009-2011 360° Concert Tour touched 7.2 million people globally. This is not grandstanding; U2 simply could not have reached this many people with the moniker

Christian Rock Band.

Referring again to Bono’s quote in the Christianity Today article, there is an interesting allusion to where Bono feels comfortable performing, and to how U2’s performances can feel—like “the bright lights of the revival tent.”118 In his article

“Burned Over Bono: U2’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Messiah and His Religious Politic,” Chad E.

Seales, at George Mason University, suggests that in looking for commercial and political successes in America, “Bono’s methods of advocacy and his techniques of political conversion resemble the modern revival techniques of American evangelists perfected by

Charles G. Finney (1792 –1875) in the nineteenth century.”119 Bono uses his big tent, the

360° “Claw,” in a similar fashion to that of the evangelists during the Great Awakening, where “the lights dim, Bono shines a spotlight around a packed stadium. Bono breaks out his ‘messiah headband.’”120 Bono calls out visiting politicians seated in a luxury box.

Bono runs around a heart-shaped stage. These are techniques of showmanship, yes, but

Bono rails against being labelled a preacher of the type he witnessed on U2’s inaugural trip to America—a televangelist he saw “asking his audience in TV land to put their hand

116 Michael W. Smith, “Press Biography,” http://bit.ly/wbTcFE, (accessed October 13, 2012). 117 Keith Caulfield, ed., “U2 Snags Seventh No. 1 Album,” New York: Billboard Information Group, http://bit.ly/z0pRQy (accessed October 13, 2012). 118 Falsani, “Bono's American Prayer.” 119 Chad E. Seales, “Burned Over Bono: U2’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Messiah and His Religious Politic,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture Vol. 14 (Fall 2006), http://bit.ly/wIgFqk (accessed October 13, 2012). 120 Ibid.

46"

against the screen to be healed … it broke my heart.”121 Yet it is hard not to see Bono as a modern-day, rock-singer version of the nineteenth-century preacher proclaiming from his “tent.” Bono, “coming from a long line of travelling salespeople on my mother`s side,”122 sees himself as “a preacher stealing hearts at a travelling show.”123

Eschatological(Themes(

When U2 play their song “Elevation” in concert, Bono often starts a call-and- response with the crowd, shouting “The Goal is Soul” to which they respond in unison.

Bono’s poetry exhibits serious eschatological reflection, in many ways patterned after prominent theologians like Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann (1926-) and Douglas

John Hall, in its themes of despair and the hope represented by the Cross. Jürgen

Moltmann’s theology of eschatology is reflected in the not yet/already, despair/hope, on-

Earth-as-in-Heaven themes in Bono’s songs:

Christian eschatology does not speak of the future as such. It sets out from a definite reality in history and announces the future of that reality, its future possibilities and its power over the future. Christian eschatology speaks of Jesus Christ and his future. It recognizes the reality of the raising of Jesus and proclaims the future of the risen Lord. Hence the question whether all statements about the future are grounded in the person and history of Jesus Christ provides it with the touchstone by which to distinguish the spirit of eschatology from that of Utopia.124

In “U2: Unexpected Prophets,” Stephen Harmon recognises Bono and U2’s

Christian eschatology of the “already” but “not yet” dichotomy and the tension that it creates in Bono’s lyrics and performance.125 In U2’s “I Still Haven't Found What I'm

121 Assayas, 186. 122 Bono/U2, “Breathe,” No Line on the Horizon (Island Records, 2009). 123 Bono/U2, “Desire,” Rattle and Hum (Island Records, 1988). 124 Moltmann, 17. 125 Harmon, 85.

47"

Looking For,” Bono sings about the “already” dimension of Christian faith in no uncertain terms:

You broke the bonds And you loosed the chains Carried the cross of my shame Oh, my shame, you know I believe it.

This certainty is balanced in the following lines by the fact that the evidence suggests that we are not yet in the place where we ought to be, the heaven on earth that is

“a place that has to be believed to be seen”

But I still haven't found What I'm looking for.126

He is echoing the sentiments of Helmut Thielicke (1908-1986), a German

Protestant theologian in his book, Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature—With a Christian

Answer, who claims that

No man will ever come to the truth and thus to a trustworthy bridge over the abyss of Nothingness who has not faced doubt, despair and shipwreck . . . he who knows what faith is must also have stood beneath the baleful eye of that demonic power against which we fling our faith. Faith is either a struggle or it is nothing.127

A word study on the noun “hope” (Gk ἐλπίς) shows that it is not found at all in the Gospels and the verb “to hope” (Gk elpézein) is found only five times in the

Gospels—with the OT sense of “to trust” (Matt 12:21; John 5:45) or with a purely secular and nonreligious sense (Luke 6:34; 23:8; 24:21). However, the idea of hope as confidence in God “whose goodness and mercy are to be relied on and whose promises cannot fail” is everywhere presupposed in the New Testament.”128 After listening

126 Bono/U2, “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For,” The Joshua Tree (Island Records, 1987). 127 Helmut Thielicke, Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature—With a Christian Answer (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 176. 128 David Noel Freedman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday) 1997, “ hope.”; Allan Barr, “ ‘Hope’ ('ΕΛПΙ′Σ, 'ΕΛПΙ′ΖW) in the New Testament,” Scottish Journal of Theology 3, no. 1 (March 1950), 68-77.

48"

carefully to the lyrics and music of Bono and U2, there is that same presupposition of hope, an expectation that, like the Psalms, although the surface message may be one of lament or grief, the deeper substance contained within the songs is that of hope.

Bono does have an eschatological hope. In An Interview with Bono, he gives (with his typical vulgarity) some insight into his eschatological beliefs:

They’re just getting through it to the next one. It’s a favorite topic. It’s the old cliché: “Eat sh*t now, pie in the sky when you die.” But I take Christ at his word: “On Earth as it is in Heaven.”129

“Where The Streets Have No Name” is considered to be one of U2’s finest stadium anthem songs and a favourite among the crowds at concerts. It is a soaring work that dares to hope for a place, an end-time, where you are not judged by where you reside on the planet, continent, country, province, city or street. It is a song that plays on the fact that, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the side of the street where you live will indicate your creed and your income:

I wanna run, I want to hide I wanna tear down the walls That hold me inside I wanna reach out And touch the flame Where the streets have no name.130

Hope in the Lord, in his steadfastness and his love, in his salvation, is a major theme running through the writing of the prophets and the psalmist(s) in the Hebrew

Bible. Abram/Abraham’s covenant trust in the Lord gave him the strength to leave his tribe and to search for the promised land, and has led to the tribe of Israel, the Jewish nation, to become a diasporic nation for millennia.

129 Assayas, 255. 130 Bono/U2, “Where The Streets Have No Name,” The Joshua Tree (Island Records, 1987).

49"

When one studies a rock star who peppers his interviews with snippets such as

“holding out for grace” and “the resurrection” and whose lyrics repeatedly talk of “hope” and “justification,” one cannot help thinking that Bono must have tripped over the theologies of Hope and the Cross somewhere on his journey. Hope and the Cross play an important part in Bono’s implicit theology, as does his consistent rejection of the “bless me” style of Glory church.131 Bono would recognise the eschatological themes from those such as Jürgen Moltmann. In his book Theology of Hope, Moltmann quotes Joseph

Pieper’s description of hopelessness in a similar, but negative fashion. Pieper states that hopelessness can take two opposing forms: presumption, which is a premature anticipation of the fulfillment of what we hope for from God and despair, which is the premature anticipation of unfulfillment.132

Humanitarian(Themes(

In February 2006, Bono was invited to present the Keynote Address at the 54th.

National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC. The event was attended by President

George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, King Abdullah of Jordan, Hillary Rodham

Clinton, Members of Congress, and a sampling of world leaders. (Bono gave a similar speech at The British Labour Party Conference in September 2004, but by 2006 had developed a biblical narrative for his American, mainly Republican audience). In a powerful homily he congratulated the achievements of his host nation in the Jubilee 2000

“Drop the Debt” campaign, whilst, like any good psalmist or bard, calling for more. He quoted first Leviticus 25:35 before highlighting Jesus’ first public speech from Luke

4:18:

131 Scharen, 191. 132 Moltmann, 23.

50"

When he does, his first words are from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," he says, "because He has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor." And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee. I think that's Luke 4[:18]. What he was really talking about was an era of grace— and we’re still in it.144

Bono recognises that God identifies with the poor. He has studied enough to know that “in the Scripture, the word poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times,” as he preached to the three-and-a-half thousand attendees:

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.145 (format mine)

In his keynote, Bono is again balancing the eschatology with the Cross, whilst highlighting the senseless suffering being endured by millions of people on the planet. He is not letting the world’s richest nations practice what Douglas John Hall calls “cheap hope.”146 He is delivering to the ecumenical audience at the National Prayer Breakfast a prayer, or a psalm, if you like, of both hope and despair. He recognises that this is aid that the Third World countries deserve—it is not paternalistic charity:

Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market, that's not charity: That’s a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents, that's not charity: That’s a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of 147 Patents, well that's not charity. To me, that’s a justice issue.

In this message and indeed much of Bono’s song lyrics, he is highlighting what

Hall calls “disintegrative suffering.” Disintegrative suffering is that suffering which does not build up the human condition. Hall contrasts this with “becoming” suffering, that

144 USA Today. 145 Ibid. 146 Hall, 27. 147 USA Today.

51"

suffering that is required for the character development of a human.148 Disintegrative suffering can all too easily be dismissed as God’s chastisement as a result of sin but Bono is not Lutheran when it comes to justification by works. By positioning the First World’s necessary action for the Third World not as charitable, but judicial, he moves it from being a “tit-for-tat” or karmic argument, to a justification by grace.

Bono’s urgent social vision is based on the premise that we need to “wake up” to the world around us, to the injustice, suffering and loneliness, that we are able to suppress in/with our First World wealth [cf. Matt 24:42]:

I'm wide awake I'm wide awake Wide awake I'm not sleeping Oh, no, no, no.150

Bono feels that we not only need to “wake up,” but when we do rise we need to be proactive in this world:

…as much as we need to describe the kind of world we do live in, we need to dream up the kind of world we want to live in. In the case of a rock 'n' roll band that is to dream out loud, at high volume, to turn it up to eleven. Because we have fallen asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Rock 'n' roll is for some of us a kind of alarm clock.151

Jürgen Moltmann said “Those who put hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it.”152 Karl Marx (1818-1883) wrote similarly, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways to understand the world; the point is to change it.”153

148 Hall, 68. 150 Bono/U2, “Bad,” The Unforgettable Fire (Island Records, 1984). 151 Mark A. Wrathall, U2 and Philosophy: How to Decipher an Atomic Band, Popular Culture and Philosophy (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2006), 162. 152 Moltmann, 21. 153 Karl Marx and Friedric Engels, German Ideology (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 574.

52"

Summary((

In this chapter, I considered particular Christian themes that appear in Bono’s lyrics and works, and compared and contrasted them with those of various theologians, both contemporary and established.

Any discussion about Bono and Christianity in the media invariably results in a discussion about his ecclesiology and his lack of affiliation to any church. Karl Rahner believes that in our post-modern world we require a new understanding of Christian, ecclesial religion. Bono’s comments on the state of the current church both as an impediment to spiritual worship inside the building and its inaction in the fight against

AIDs, debt, and famine in the African continent, suggest that he does not feel it has reached this new understanding. As both he, and the understanding and actions of

Presidents and Prime Ministers, have matured, Bono’s stance has softened.

I have also offered some suggestions, supported by other observers, as to Bono’s ambivalence to church attendance by exploring the origin of the word ecclesia. The result of that examination, together with some enlightening comments from writers, suggest that Bono and U2 operate as their own ecclesia, and in doing so create an ecclesia when they perform in front of an audience. Karl Rahner and Brian McLaren say essentially the same thing—we do not meet God because we go to church, we see him in the faces of the community of faith that surrounds us, be that in a cathedral or at a concert.

Grace is a more recent, but now ever-present theme in Bono’s writing. He considers that it usurps our traditional view of karma as the natural state of the cosmos, turning our if/then relationship with God into one of because/therefore. Bono also recognises that suffering is real but that it can only be successfully encountered in the

53"

space between cynicism and credulity, or as Martin Luther would describe it, the

Theology of the Cross. Bono has made it clear in the past that he abhors the tele- evangelists he observed on American TV and he is no supporter of the “bless me” church, yet he recognises the acrobatics that he, the rich rock star, and we all perform everyday in our spiritually poor and materially rich world.

Bono and the other members of U2 made a conscious decision at the start of their career not to be affiliated with any faith denomination. Doing so has allowed them to become a globally popular rock group, that has been able to take the message of hope and salvation in a “big tent” environment to the millions of people who have attended their concerts. It is in this arena setting that he is unafraid to say that he feels the tension of the

“Kingdom Come,” when he sings that he still hasn’t found what he is looking for. Bono has eschatological hope. He doesn’t believe that this life has to be endured until the coming Kingdom. He saw that hope in a terrorism-free Belfast come to fruition. He knows that we all are “justified ‘til we die, you and I.”

The Christian activity that Bono is best known for is his advocacy for the relief of debt for the poorest nations because he knows that God identifies with the poor. At the highest levels of government, he will not hesitate to speak as a prophet and sing like a psalmist until they “wake up” to the justice issues surrounding the withholding of anti- viral drugs or receiving debt repayments from the poorest of the poor countries.

Chapter(III(

The(Psalms(

54"

There are two questions that have to be answered before one begins to investigate the credentials of a potential contemporary psalmist. What constitutes a psalm and what qualifies a psalmist? For this I need to revisit the Psalter. I will not be attempting to directly compare Bono’s songs with the Psalms. Nor do I expect to find similarities in the lyrics of Bono, with the structure, meter or specific language of the biblical psalms.

Throughout the centuries, secular musical styles have influenced the rhythm and rhyme of the music used to accompany the psalms, through Gregorian chant (The Divine Office,

Taizé meditative singing), the popular folk songs of the eighteenth century (“The Lord is

My Shepherd,” “We Thank Thee, Our Father”), to modern evangelical pop and rock.

These contrafacta155 are the natural outcome of worship and praise songs that should be reflective and respectful whilst still being relevant to the era—“The devil has no right to all the good tunes.”156 Therefore, the investigation here is to determine if Bono’s lyrics and U2’s music constitute works that could be considered psalmic and if so, begin to develop a useable typology to define them. However, before one can determine whether any of Bono and U2’s lyrics constitute what could be considered a modern psalm, it would be useful to define what it is that makes a Hebrew Bible psalm, a psalm. To do that, I will need to investigate the more general poetry archetype in which the Psalms sit, so that I have a basis from which to move forward. But first, as they are a very specific form of ancient middle-Eastern poetry, I will provide a brief history of the Psalms.

A"Brief"History"of"the"Psalms(

155 A “contrafactum” is, in medieval and Renaissance music, the rearrangement of a vocal composition whereby the music is retained and the words altered, as the substitution of a sacred text for a secular one, or vice versa; "contrafactum, n.". OED Online. September 2012. Oxford University Press. 156 Attributed to both William Booth and Charles Spurgeon, and possibly George Scott Railton and Martin Luther; http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/40386?redirectedFrom=contrafactum& (accessed December 8, 2012).

55"

The most recent of the compositions in the Book of Psalms was written about

2500 years ago, the oldest around 3500.157 The Psalms were composed by the Hebrew people during this period as God gradually revealed himself to them. The Book of

Psalms, or Psalter, is a gathering of individual collections of various Psalms. The formation of the current Psalter was fixed by the third century BCE.158

The Book of Psalms is considered to be the prayer book of Israel and the hymnbook of the Second Temple because many of the Psalms were prayed and sung there. The Psalter is a microcosm of the Old Testament to such an extent that without the other books of the Hebrew Bible, we would still have in the Psalms all of its basic concepts. Martin Luther, who loved music, also loved the Psalms, maintaining that the

Psalter is "the Bible in miniature," and emphasising (unlike Zwingli and to a lesser extent

Calvin) the importance of singing the Psalms.159 For Bono, “Psalms and hymns were my first taste of inspirational music.”160 For centuries, from the Book of Hours of the Middle

Ages to the current Liturgy of the Hours (or Divine Office), the Psalter has formed the

Rule for monks, nuns, priests, pastors and laypeople as they organise their life around regular and constant prayer and meditation, completing the Psalter in a cycle of months, weeks and even days.

The historic view that the author of the Psalter was King David has been brought into question by recent Biblical scholarship. As noted by Klaus Seybold (1936-2011), former Editor of Theology for The Basel Journal, “It seems that the simple picture of the writing and redacting king is not applicable to the Psalter as a book, that in reality the

157 Tremper Longman III, How to Read the Psalms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 13. 158 Mary Kathleen Glavich, The Catholic Companion to the Psalms (Skokie, IL: ACTA Publications, 2008), 10. 159 Glavich, 10; Herbert W. Bateman IV, Interpreting the Psalms for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: Chalice Press, 2010), 237. 160 Pocket Canons, viii.

56"

development of the book ran along far more complicated lines than this model of authorship would suggest.”161 Bono irreverently states that “some scholars suggest that the royals never dampened their nibs and that there was a host of Holy Ghost writers.”162

I will attempt to reconstruct the history of the text from those points that prove to be firm and reliable.

Texts from the library of the Essenes, hidden in the caves in the vicinity of

Khirhet Qumran during the Jewish uprising of the years 66-70 CE, were discovered with fragments preserved. These fragments have given a whole new insight into the textual history of the Old Testament writings. They offer a glimpse of a decisive phase in the development of the Psalms and therefore a better understanding of their formation.163 The

Qumran excavations unearthed thirty-one copies of the Psalter, all of which differed.

These showed that a central core and sequence of the Psalms already existed in the community, although “neither the final selection nor the final order of the texts, particularly of the texts in the last third of the Psalter, had been determined.”164 The various Psalters in use were all regarded by their users as Holy Scripture. It is fair to guess that if this one community could muster thirty-one “Psalters,” there was a far wider distribution in other centres of “orthodox” Judaism in the first century. In fact, it was not until approximately 100 CE, as Seybold explains, that “the Pharisaic movement established and enforced the standard form as the sole text of the Psalter, the Masoretic

Text.”165

161 Klaus Seybold, Introducing the Psalms (New York: Continuum International Publishing, 1990), 5. 162 Pocket Canons, xii. 163 Seybold, 5. 164 Ibid., 6. 165 Seybold, 8.

57"

The history of the Greek translation of the Psalms developed concurrently with the Hebrew Psalter. The discovery and publication of the Bodmer Papyrus XXIV, a second/third-century Greek Psalter manuscript, has revealed that the New Testament communities had quite similar preferences in their choice of Scripture readings with the

Psalms being the most prominent, followed by Isaiah, Deuteronomy and Exodus. The post-resurrection communities also cited the Psalms as Scripture. Peter used two texts from two different Psalms as “Scripture which the Holy Spirit prophesied through the mouth of David” (Acts 1:20, 4:25).166 For scholars researching the Lord’s/Last Supper it is interesting to notice that according to Mark 14:26 [cf. Matt 26:30], after the meal

“Jesus and his disciples 'sang a hymn' (Greek u9mnei

Pss. 114-18) in Psalmodic fashion, before they went up onto the Mount of Olives. This was no doubt their custom, familiar from temple and synagogue worship, and from their religious up-bringing.”167

There is much more that can be discussed about the authorship, development and events that shaped the Psalter, but for the purposes of this thesis, more detailed analysis is not required. What is important is that the Psalms were written either by, or in the style of, King David and were as central to ancient Jewish praise and worship as they are in

Christian and Jewish worship today. As I move forward in the study of the lyrical and musical output of Bono and U2, I will analyse it in a form that is based loosely on the methods that have been used previously in psalm form criticism. As a psalm is a form of poetry, I will begin with a definition of that genre.

166 Ibid., 10. 167 Ibid.

58"

What(is(Poetry?( ( In Reflections on the Psalms (1958), C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) states [M]ost emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licences and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than the 168 logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry.

The focus of this chapter is the contemporary psalm. But before I discuss the elements that make a psalm a psalm, I need to decide on what makes poetry poetry, which is no easy task in itself. When pressed for an answer to this question, the celebrated American poet Robert Frost is alleged to have replied, “Poetry is the kind of thing poets write.”169 William Brown (1958), Professor of Old Testament at Columbia

Theological Seminary, Georgia, describes “what makes a poem a poem is its synergy between sight and sound,” and lists the three basic features of poetry, as distinct from prose or narrative, as:170

Aesthetic Quality – The word poem is resolved from the Greek verb ποιέω

(transliterated as poieō), which is the verb “make” or “do.” A poem is literally a literary creation. Through the use of devices such as assonance, alliteration and rhythm, the texture of the poem is enriched. Visually, a poem is distinguished by short lines and distinctive uneven margins. Lines in poetry are sequential rather than paragraphic. A poem is rich in impressions, images, similes and metaphors. It uses figurative language and allusion. A poem is the result of the interaction between sense and sound.171 It is something Bono would call “vision over visibility.”172

168 C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958), 3. 169 X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Portable Edition (New York: Longman, 2005), 698. 170 William P. Brown, Psalms, Interpreting Biblical Texts (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2010), 2. 171 Brown, 2. 172 Bono/U2, “Moment of Surrender,” No Line on the Horizon (Island Records, 2009).

59"

Density of Expression - A poem typically has to communicate its message more elegantly and efficiently than its prose partner, generally being short and compact. Its terseness is its literary hallmark. According to J. P. Fokkelman (1940-), an international expert in

Semitic languages, “poetry is the most compact and concentrated form of speech possible.”173 Brown qualifies that statement by saying that modern text messaging is even briefer (if not as elegant).174 In words that Bono would appreciate, poetry exhibits a

“higher voltage,” applying “greater pressure per word.”175 Its semantic range brings with it ambiguity or duality, a technique that Bono uses frequently in his lyric writing. A poem actively resists restrictive definition.

Performative Power – The poem’s rhetoric, rhythm and rhyme stimulate the reader’s emotions and imagination by the very act of performing it. The poem has to be articulated before it can be interpreted. These performative requirements lead inevitably to a comparison with music. Both typically share a sense of rhythm. We know that many of the biblical Psalms have instructions for musical accompaniment. Bono and U2 have made a great success of casting Psalm 40 to music in their song “40.” Most importantly, as Brown notes, due to its power to inspire, “a poem transcends the poet’s own context.”

176 John Ciardi (1916-1986), an American poet, translator, and etymologist, expands these sentiments in his book How A Poem Means (1975): “It is in the poem’s own performance of itself that the larger meaning is made to emerge from the specific incident.”177 To expand the reference from poetry to song lyrics, as I will do later in this thesis, Rachel Seiler, adjunct professor at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, New

173 J. P. Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Poetry (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 15. 174 Brown, 2. 175 Laurence Perrine, Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 523- 524. 176 Brown, 4. 177 John Ciardi and Miller Williams, How Does a Poem Mean? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin College Division, 1975), 7.

60"

York, in an essay “Potent Crossroads: Where U2 and Progressive Awareness Meet,” believes that the meaning and impact of music are conditional on the listener,

Songs have no absolute meaning or value and can’t be assessed according to what the lyrics say or what the performer believes; rather, a song’s influence on a listener is a matter of what the music represents and expresses and how it is received. Only then does the music take on meaning, and only then might its social and political aspects become evident.178

What(is(a(Psalm?( ( A psalm is a poem. Probably set to music.“ ‘Psalm' and 'Psalter', the terms by which the Biblical book is known, are of Greek origin. yalmo/v, 'the playing of a stringed instrument' (from ya/llein, 'to pluck strings', 'to play'), is the equivalent of the Hebrew mizmôr, which also means a song accompanied by stringed instruments.”179 The Jewish peoples call the Psalms Tehillim, which resolves as “songs of praise.” It is the prayer book of the Old Testament and the prayer book of Israel.180 In its simplest definition, a psalm is “a sacred song or hymn.” In its most complex interpretation, to paraphrase St.

John, there are not enough pages to adequately explain its substance. Robert Alter

(1935-), an American professor of Hebrew language and comparative literature at the

University of California, Berkeley, describes all Hebrew biblical poetry, including the

Psalms, as having “elicited more contradictory and convoluted, and at times quite fantastical views.”181

As I read through the introductory remarks of texts on the Psalms, I came across insightful and poetic descriptions for their type. For Claus Westermann (1909-2000),

Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, the Psalms are

178 Rachel Seiler, “Potent Crossroads: Where U2 and Progressive Awareness Meet,” in Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, ed. Scott Calhoun (Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 40. 179 Seybold, 1. 180 Glavich, 10. 181 Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 3.

61"

songs of praise and lament, “sung prayers or prayed singing” in the days before the two activities were separated.182 James Waltner (1931-2007), a Mennonite minister at College

Mennonite Church, Goshen, agrees that the Psalms make up a “a treasured hymnbook” and “a prayer book.”183 Tremper Longman III, a Professor of Biblical Studies at

Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, describes the psalm as a way of

“entering into the sanctuary, the place where God meets men and women in a special way.”184 Walter Brueggemann (1933-), who teaches Old Testament at Columbia

Theological Seminary, believes that “the strength of the Psalms is that they are genuinely dialogical literature that expresses both sides of the conversation of faith.”185 And finally, for Bono, the Psalms feel like the blues, the music of the American South. “Man shouting, at God—‘My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me?’ (Psalm 22) ... abandonment, displacement, is the stuff of my favourite

Psalms.”186 With this understanding, one can appreciate better Bono’s catalogue of alliterative “-ations” that he wants (us) to “let go” of when he sings the song “Bad,”

If I could, you know I would If I could, I would let it go.

This desperation, dislocation Separation, condemnation Revelation, in temptation Isolation, desolation Let it go and so to find away To let it go and so to find away To let it go and so to find away187

182 Claus Westermann, The Psalms: Structure, Content & Message, trans. Keith R. Crim and Richard N. Soulen (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2002), 11. 183 James H. Waltner, Psalms, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 2006), 17. 184 Longman III, 11. 185 Walter Brueggemann, Message of the Psalms, Augsberg Old Testament Studies (Augsburg, DE: Fortress Press, 1985), 15. 186 Pocket Canons, viii. 187 Bono/U2, “Bad.”

62"

The New Catholic Encyclopedia (2002) defines the Psalms in the Psalter as “a collection of prayers, for the most part without reference to date or specific events or persons.”188 This is an important observation—the Psalms are timeless because they are not time-specific; they are all-encompassing because they are event-neutral.

In The Catholic Companion to the Psalms (2008), Mary Kathleen Glavich, a

Sister of Notre Dame and noted religious educator, indicates that Psalms were sung at the temple, sometimes as singular laments, sometimes as raucous communal praise. “Singing a psalm in a Temple liturgy was a grand production, apparently comparable to a Christian rock concert today. The Israelites sang Psalms exuberantly and loudly with cries, shouts, moans, and joyful exclamations as well as with handclapping, dancing, lifting of hands, prostrations, low bows, and kneeling.”189 Glavich goes on to explain that

The structure of the Psalms indicates that they were sung in a variety of ways. For example, a leader might alternate with all the people or a chorus might alternate with soloists. The Temple had a chorus of professional singers from a Levitical (priestly) family. According to Mishnah (Jewish writings), these were twelve male singers. Biblical scholars propose that after a singer asked God for something on behalf of a petitioner, a priest would assure the petitioner of God’s answer, and the singer would then express thanksgiving—all by using the Psalms. Psalms that we recite or sing today in a minute or so could extend for two hours in the Temple because of the petitions, musical interludes, and repetitions.190

This sounds rather like the extended call-and-response or repetition between an audience and artist at a rock concert. During a break at a U2 concert, when the group leaves the stage to refresh themselves, the crowd will often spontaneously start to sing

“How long to sing this song?”, the refrain from the song “40.” Bono will also invite them to repeat a phrase that he has sung, as if to gain affirmation or an “amen”—“The goal is soul…the goal is soul!”

188 Carson and Cerrito, 794. 189 Glavich, 12. 190 Ibid., 13.

63"

So, let me “apply greater pressure” to these definitions. I have defined poetry as having Aesthetic Quality (the result of the interaction between sense and sound), Density of Expression (communicating its message elegantly and efficiently) and Performative

Power (stimulating through its rhetoric, metre and semantics). We have resolved that there is a strong link between music and poetry, between rhythm and rhyme. Given that that Psalms are a subset of the poetic form and that they were originally accompanied by music, this will form my bridge between the Psalms of the Hebrew Psalter and the lyrics and music of Bono and U2.

The(Contemporary(Typology(of(the(Psalms( (

Before examining Bono’s potential poetic qualities as a psalmist, one must first review how the Psalms have been measured and weighed in the past and how they are currently classified in modern scholarship. Over the millennia, there have been more typologies posited for the Psalms than there are the one hundred and fifty individual poetic works in the Psalter. Susan Gillingham, a Reader in the Old Testament at

Worcester College, Oxford, has reviewed the Reception History of the Psalms by both

Jewish and then later Christian communities, from the eleventh century BCE to the present and has traced the changes in typologies throughout that period. The twentieth century has witnessed a coalescing of agreement on Psalm genres “reconciling differences both within each faith tradition and between them.”191 Hermann Gunkel

(1862–1932), formerly Professor of Old Testament in Berlin, was responsible for refining and defining the genres of Psalms within the history of religion, giving the academic study of psalmody a new focus. His work has continued to be a seminal influence

191 Susan Gillingham, Psalms Through the Centuries, Blackwell Bible Commentaries (New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 3.

64"

throughout the twentieth century and to the present, with the publication of his An

Introduction to the Psalms, in German in 1933, and English in 1998.192 Walter

Brueggemann formulated the Orientation Typology, suggesting that we are always in either one of three general themes, or passing from one to another.

These three typologies will form the basis of this review, along with references to other scholars.

Typologies(and(Authors(

Susan&Gillingham& Gillingham’s book, Psalms Through the Centuries, is an ambitious attempt to chart the Reception History (RH) of the Psalms from the eleventh century BCE to the present. Although books on the RH of the Psalms have been written since 1900, this methodology has recently gained greater currency. However, an agreed understanding of

RH is difficult to articulate. Harold Marcuse, professor of German history at the

University of California, Santa Barbara, captures the spirit of RH when he defines it as

[T]he history of the meanings that have been imputed to historical events. This approach traces the different ways in which participants, observers, and historians and other retrospective interpreters have attempted to make sense of events, both as they unfolded, and over time since then, to make those events meaningful for the present in which they lived and live.193 Gillingham approaches the RH method “through commentary, homily, translation, liturgy, literature, music and art.”194 Although her book is divided into six

192 Hermann Gunkel and Joachim Begrich, Introduction to Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, Mercer Library of Biblical Studies, trans. James D. Nogalski (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998). 193 Harold Marcuse, “Reception History: Definition and Quotations,” http://bit.ly/eECYxY (accessed October 13, 2012). 194 Gillingham, 1.

65"

time periods, it is the chapter entitled “The Twentieth to Twenty-First Centuries:

Pluralism and Ecumenism” that is most important for my purposes.

Gillingham states that, taken as a collection over the millennia, the Psalms have served very specific purposes in different ages. The twentieth century, due to the pluralism of post-modernism, provided unexpected opportunities for the reception of psalmody to new communities and to new ways of thinking that, in part, encouraged Jews and Christians to begin to take new initiatives towards mutual collaboration and common methodologies. Collaborative initiatives in music, art and literature have been particularly evident and have resulted in the use of Psalms in more secular cultures. However, the downside to this is, uniquely in the last century where Liturgical reforms have mushroomed, with multiple translations of the Psalms, that the many alternative liturgies have become a source of confusion rather than consolidation for many denominations.

The result (as compared to previous centuries) has been a trivialising of the Psalter as a whole in worship.195 However, Gillingham concludes “whether one looks at the

Reception History of psalmody from a historical, literary or theological point of view, the rich vibrancy of the Psalms, and their capacity to offer such a wide variety of interpretations, will be recognised not as a hindrance to a reasonable faith but as a vital assistance to it.”196

Gillingham’s work interpreting the Reception History of the Psalms gives a firm basis for analysing the relevancy and benefits of the Psalms in the contemporary world.

195 Ibid., 242. 196 Gillingham, 312.

66"

Hermann&Gunkel& Hermann Gunkel was a leading member of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule

(History of Religions School), which stressed the literary values of the Old Testament by comparative study of the legends on which it draws, and the cultural milieu. He was the

“greatest champion of form-criticism.”197 Gunkel’s main argument regarding the classification of the Psalms was that he believed the first job of the scholar was to

“describe the entire type of poetry and its history … to bring light and order” to this material.198

Contemporaries of Gunkel had attempted their own classifications on the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.199 In Gunkel’s opinion, Hupfeld had come close to a suitable typology of praise, thanksgiving, complaint, petition and didactic songs; Reuß was similarly close but with a more superficial classification that did not impress his contemporaries; Baethgen’s offering was simply to rate the Psalms as happy, sad and contented. Gunkel concluded that a scholar had to understand the psalm’s full journey, its context—its Sitz im Leben—to fully understand its typology. All of this had to be done before approaching the task of separating the Psalms into genres. Gunkel’s view was that during his investigations “no specific genre research” had been attempted. He believed that typologies, such as those above, were constructed using contemporary thinking in current nineteenth-century cultural perspectives as opposed to the situation in the life of the psalmist. Gunkel made his point eloquently when he suggested that the experience of listening to the singing of “Jesus, my confidence” at a funeral in the nineteenth century

197 Ibid., 201, 268. 198 Hermann Gunkel and Joachim Begrich, 5. 199 Contemporaries include Hupfeld - Übersetzung und Auslegung der Psalmen, 1855, Reuß - Geschichte der heiligen Schriften des Alten Testaments, 1881, Fr. Baethgen – Psalmen, 1892.

67"

could not be redacted to the author’s original intent.200 Therefore, to be able to critically categorise the Psalms one must begin by understanding both the rituals and cults of antiquity of the Jewish nation and of those nations that would have influenced the

Israelites. God’s chosen people would have been aware of the cultic practices of the

Babylonians and the Assyrians, something that Gunkel recognised was not always understood or taken to heart by biblical scholars. Closer to the Israelites’ home, Gunkel’s studies took him to psalmic passages in Genesis, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy,

1 Kings and others where he discovered speech and action—a ritual (lawful) statement that is followed by a cultic action. The author cites a wife suspected of adultery in

Numbers 5:19ff. as a typical example of this, by stating that “every time that the action transpires, a speech is delivered” and vice versa in the other Psalms.201

It is in this vein that Gunkel started his classification of the Psalms. He analysed all of the Psalms and categorised each according to a genre. He attempted to place the meaning of each Psalm in this context and then used the most obvious example as being typical of the typology.202 Although he affirmed that the two most basic psalm-types were prayer and praise, he nevertheless advocated six pure genres as a development of these:

✢ the hymn (sometimes communal thanksgivings, historical Psalms)

✢ Zion hymns and Enthronement hymns

✢ the community lament

✢ the individual lament

✢ the individual thanksgiving

✢ the royal Psalms

200 Gunkel and Begrich, 8. 201 Ibid., 10. 202 Ibid., 14.

68"

✢ Other mixed typologies included the wisdom Psalms and prophetic Psalms, individual and communal Psalms of confidence, and responsorial entrance liturgies. Gunkel considered these to be later post-exilic developments..

Gunkel’s typology has had a huge influence throughout the twentieth century on many academics and theologians, including Walter Brueggemann, but before attending to his typology, there are a few others who deserve mention.

Other&Genres&and&Uses& Following Gunkel, Claus Westermann further developed the typology outlined above. What is fascinating about his book, originally published in German in 1967 as Der

Psalter, is how relevant, like the Psalms, it is today. In describing how the recitation of the Psalms is imperative in not forgetting about God [cf. Ps 103:1-2], he bemoans the tempo of life during his time. He would be aware of how the recitation of the Psalms had been reduced from a rhythm in the monasteries and convents, to the Morning and

Evening Prayers of the Divine Office, to the single weekly responsorial of a Sunday service. He explains that we have to develop an ability to forget the majority of what we see, hear and do, just to manage the input to our daily lives, which includes, as a result, neglecting God—and this was written over forty years ago.203

Klaus Seybold takes an extremely technical approach to the Psalter in his book,

Introducing the Psalms (1990) (not to be confused with Gunkel), expounding on its construction of five books that mirrors the Pentateuch for symbolic and not practical reasons.204 He even feels it necessary to correct Gunkel’s famous terminology, preferring the more grammatically correct Sitz im Volksleben.205 However, Seybold holds to

203 Westermann, 7. 204 Seybold, 16. 205 Ibid., 81.

69"

Gunkel’s contextual approach to the Psalms whilst expanding on the issue of the Psalms

(ψαλτ�ριον) as musical, ψαλτ�ριον referring to a stringed instrument. The corresponding word in Hebrew translates as lyre and harp. He also speaks to the fact that collections of the Psalms are referred to using musical references, suggesting that that may have been the preferred method of delivery.206 This is obviously a very frustrating situation as currently we have no idea how the Psalms would have sounded accompanied by their original music. This is one of the reasons that, below, I cite a contemporary songwriter, and the attempts made by an author to apply a typology to his lyrics.

Tremper Longman III is another contemporary scholar who continues the legacy of Gunkel’s typology. However, in his book, How to Read the Psalms (1988), he warns that “the genres are not written in stone; they are flexible.”207 He also comments that it is amazing that although the Psalms were the direct result of personal experiences, “their content is remarkably devoid of any references to particular events which brought them into being,”208 as opposed to Exodus’ Hymn of Deliverance in verse fifteen of that book.

Walter&Brueggemann& Walter Brueggemann opens his book, The Message of the Psalms (1985), with the same respect for the Psalter offered by Gunkel: “The Psalms continue to nourish and nurture long after our interpretation has run its course. We are aware that the claims of the literature have not been exhausted.”209

206 Ibid., 1. 207 Longman III, 35. 208 Ibid., 42. 209 Brueggemann, 9.

70"

Brueggemann’s work is very much influenced by both Gunkel and Claus

Westermann, employing the former’s Formalist approach and the latter’s belief in the lament as the basic psalmic expression. He wishes, without wanting to appear reductionist, to present the Psalms within a “pastoral” framework that may help us to understand the ebbs and flows of our lives, the waxing and waning of our spiritual strength. The author suggests that the Psalms fall into one of just three categories:

✢ orientation - reliability, gratitude of God’s blessing, law and creation ✢ disorientation - hurt, anger and resentment over betrayal, death, suffering and pain ✢ reorientation - surprise after the reaffirmation of God’s gifts, a new start that is possible210 By way of initial explanation, Brueggemann uses Philippians 2:5-11

Though he was in the form of God - orientation [He] emptied himself - disorientation Therefore God highly exalted him - reorientation

This is interesting because although Brueggemann stresses that the Psalms are wholly Jewish in nature, he uses a New Testament example and views Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as having passed (sequentially) through all three orientations. I highlight this because Brueggemann introduces another important aspect to his understanding of the Orientation Typology, that of the Jewishness of the Psalms, the Christian desire to spiritualise them and of the theodicy that that introduces. He states that “if spirituality is a concern for communion with God, theodicy is concern for a fair deal” [cf. Mt 5:23-24].211

This is significant in Brueggemann’s genre as it is fundamental to understanding the

210 Ibid., 19. 211 Brueggemann, 169.

71"

nature of lament in the Psalms. It is apparent in the classic “why-do-bad-things-happen- to-good-people” scenario because it questions God’s abilities and/or God’s love. When analysing any Psalm, one needs to be cognisant of whether the Psalmist is complaining about and rejecting the social system and/or God.212

In the article “The Dynamic Cycle of Praise and Prayer in the Psalms” written by

John Goldingay (1942-), Professor of Old Testament in the School of Theology of Fuller

Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, one can see the ongoing debate on any declarative statement on the genre of the Psalms. The Psalms seem to defy attempts to be pigeon-holed within human conventions. Goldingay takes issue with the “certain ambivalence” Brueggemann expresses in The Message of the Psalms about the orientation Psalms. Goldingay quotes Brueggemann stating that “[the orientation Psalms] express a confident assurance in God's providential care and in the security of this good world; but they are not the most interesting of the Psalms, they can be rather unimaginative, and they may at times stand in need of the radical criticism of suspicion.”213 Goldingay argues that whereas Brueggeman believes that they are purely

“descriptive” Psalms of praise for God’s actions in general and consisting only of address and praise to God, Goldingay contends that “petition can lead to praise or praise can lead to petition. Either way, the two are linked closely together.”214

212 Ibid., 173. 213 John Goldingay, “The Dynamic Cycle of Praise and Prayer in the Psalms,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, no. 20 (July 1, 1981), http://bit.ly/fMdRcM (accessed October 13, 2012), 85. 214 Goldingay, 85-86.

72"

Summary( To summarise, the twentieth century has witnessed major and considered developments in the study of the Psalms. It is evident that there is still a manifest desire, like a visitor to an art gallery, to approach the Psalms from different angles, to see what more understanding can be gleaned. These theses might appear to be conflicting and contradictory. However, I believe that these developments represent a maturing of the discipline of understanding the Psalms, to the point where they can be examined for their scholarly development by academics as in Gunkel’s genres and as typologies that can be used in pastoral ministry with the sick, bereaved or troubled with Brueggemann’s orientations. As I will demonstrate in the next chapter, Canadian Robert Vagacs (1973-), an alumnus of Wycliffe College, Toronto, has implemented Bruggemann’s Orientation

Typology to analyse popular music for its adherence to and imitation of the Psalms. As witnessed from the works of Gillingham, Gunkel and Brueggeman, the Psalms are timeless and timely and it is these very qualities that allow a modern songwriter to write psalmody for a contemporary audience.

(

73"

Chapter(IV(

Exegesis(of(a(Contemporary(PoetYTheologian(

In this chapter, I will use the elements of Bono’s Sitz im Leben, the Christian themes that he displays in his lyrics and the definitions of poetry and the Psalms, to exegete a selection of the songs from the Bono and U2 canon. As this analysis is contemporary in nature, relative to its subject manner, it is appropriate to introduce a recent interpretation of one of the typologies to the modern music medium of Rock and

Roll. Although the Psalms are timeless, this does not suggest that typologies used to describe them must remain static. On the contrary, they should be contiguous to the Sitz im Leben of the community using them. Accordingly, it is fitting and timely that a

Canadian author, Robert Vagacs has chosen to explore the lyrics and music of Bono and

U2 in his book, Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective (2009).

Vagacs uses Walter Brueggemann’s Orientation Typology to categorise the rock group’s thirty-year, twelve-album output. He examines “the themes of hope amidst despair, social justice and eschatological anticipation, exile in a scorched land and, lastly, grace and resurrection” and successfully, if not completely, argues for a definite chronological adherence to Brueggemann’s orientations through one cycle of U2’s complete works. 215

In the lyrics of Bono’s songs from the very earliest, one finds songs of lament (“Peace on

Earth”), hope (“Rejoice”), despair (“Wake Up Dead Man”), narrative praise (“Gloria”) and creation (“Fast Cars”). But mainly, and infuriatingly, when performing an exegesis using Bruggemann’s typology, Bono’s lyrics invariably contain the message of hope.

215 Robert Vagacs, Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2005), 3.

74"

This is the value that I believe Bono brings to the believer, skeptic and non-believer alike.

Bono sings of a “New Year’s Day” when “I will be with you again,” encourages us to

“Walk On” while “You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been, a place that has to be believed to be seen,” and reminds us in “Magnificent” that we are “Justified till we die, you and I will magnify, The Magnificent.”216

As I was attempting to discover whether the lyrics and music of Bono and U2 could be measured by a similar typological framework, I performed a thorough analysis of U2’s canon. I commenced this work by listing all of the tracks from the studio and live albums that the band has recorded over the period from 1979-2009. I have omitted special edition records, B-sides, free U2 club offerings and other miscellaneous recordings. I have not included any recordings from filmed concerts. From there, I started with broad headings that I believed would cover the typologies of Bono’s lyrics, using those of Gunkel, Brueggemann and my own experience of listening to U2’s songs. When

I had completed this exercise, I found that some of the descriptors I had initially used were either redundant, or could be merged with others and additional genres were needed. The result of this analysis can be found in Appendix I. The headings and typologies are as follows:

H – Hymn

R – Rejoice

L – Lament

T – Thanksgiving

C – Confidence

216 Bono/U2, “New Year’s Day,” War (Island Records, 1983); Bono/U2, “Walk On,” No Line On The Horizon (Island Records, 2009; Bono/U2, “Magnificent.”

75"

W – Wisdom

Ba – Biblical Allusion

Ho – Hope

Uh – Urban Hopelessness

Hl – Healing

Q – Questioning

A – Anger

T – Temptation

I – Irony

An – Anthemic

The final column in Appendix I contains notes and highlights regarding the individual songs. One of the most interesting typologies that did not appear on my original list, that I added later, was that of Urban Hopelessness, a recurring theme which I shall discuss below. Equipped with this analysis, I will review whether a sample of Bono’s lyrics, together with U2’s music, qualify as both poetry and Psalms.

Are(Bono’s(Lyrics(Poetry(and/or(Psalms?(

Using the three qualities of poetry, Aesthetic Quality, Density of Expression and

Performative Power, suggested by William P. Brown in his book, Psalms,217 I will look at three examples of Bono’s lyrics for signs of poetic style and, in doing so, see if there are any echoes of the Psalms in that poetry.

The first example I will look at is Bono’s reaction to “The Troubles” in Northern

Ireland, the thirty-year period of civil war/terrorism that blighted the island of Ireland and

217 Brown, 2.

76"

occasionally, Great Britain and mainland Europe. The song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is taken from the 1983 album War, and it references an infamous event that occurred in

Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland on 30 January 1972, in which twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

I can't believe the news today I can't close my eyes and make it go away. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long, how long?

'Cos tonight We can be as one, tonight.

Broken bottles under children's feet Bodies strewn across the dead-end street. But I won't heed the battle call It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall.

Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday.

Oh, let's go. And the battle's just begun There's many lost, but tell me who has won? The trenches dug within our hearts And mothers, children, brothers, sisters Torn apart.

Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long, how long?

'Cos tonight We can be as one, tonight.

Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday.

77"

Wipe the tears from your eyes Wipe your tears away. I'll wipe your tears away. I'll wipe your tears away. I'll wipe your bloodshot eyes.

Sunday, bloody Sunday. Sunday, bloody Sunday.

And it's true we are immune When fact is fiction and TV reality. And today the millions cry We eat and drink while tomorrow they die.

The real battle just begun To claim the victory Jesus won On... Sunday, bloody Sunday Sunday, bloody Sunday.218

With this song in particular, but with all of U2’s output in general, the percussive rhythm and chiming guitars are as important as, and complementary to, the semantic.

Always described as a protest song, despite the fact that Bono often introduced it in concert with the words, “This is not a rebel song…this is Sunday Bloody Sunday ” the song is sung to a strong “military” rhythm from Adam Clayton’s staccato bass line. The drummer Larry Mullen Jr.’s involvement in a Dublin marching band called the Artane

Boys Band also brings a martial beat, and adds a driving aesthetic to the words. The use of figurative language in “the trenches dug within our hearts” suggests stalemate as was found in the last two World Wars—the construction of these wartime trenches acknowledged the reality that the opposing armies were not going to be able to advance from their current, entrenched, positions. However, there are many allusions in this song that reflect an eschatological piece of poetry. For example, in the next line there is an

218 Bono/U2, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” War (Island Records, 1983).

78"

allusion to Matthew 10:35, “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,” suggesting that this is not a battle for turf today but a battle for hearts and minds at the

End Times. This is further reinforced with Bono’s line "Wipe the tears from your eyes" lifted from Revelation 21:4. Finally, there is an ironic rendering of 1 Corinthians 15:32

"If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Throughout we, and God, hear the refrain, the question, “How long, how long must we sing this song?”

[cf. Ps 6:3, Ps 94:3 and U2’s 40].219 “Broken bottles,” “bodies strewn” and “fact is fiction and TV reality” are street theatre for anyone who has experienced pitched battles in the streets of a city—the resultant shards of glass from Molotov cocktails, the effects of the resultant retaliatory fire and the ensuing inflammatory twenty-four hour news coverage.

However, “the real battle just begun, to claim the victory Jesus won” articulates where the real battle lines are drawn.

The performative power is instantaneous when listening to “Sunday Bloody

Sunday” in the same way that it would be in listening to a Psalm sung in the temple. It is the lyric matching the rhythm and rhyme, the relentless beat, and the repeat refrain of

“How long?” that gives this song its power and longevity, and its popularity when performed live in front of one hundred thousand people (160 times since 1995).

I quoted Bono earlier as saying that abandonment and displacement are the stuff of his favourite Psalms. I think in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” he has captured the mood on that day and in the North of Ireland in general. It is a specific displacement that I have labeled

Urban hopelessness in my typology and this is a fine example of its use by Bono. There

219 Angela Pancella, “Bible References in U2 Lyrics – Drawing Their Fish in the Sand,” @U2, http://bit.ly/ju4HZl (accessed October 13, 2012).

79"

is lament here for sure but there is also the hope of Revelation, where God "will wipe every tear from their eyes" in the battle “to claim the victory Jesus won.” “Sunday

Bloody Sunday” takes the voice of the psalmist in the despairing cry, “How long must we sing this song?”220

Wake Up Dead Man

Jesus, Jesus help me I'm alone in this world And a f**ked-up world it is too.

Tell me, tell me the story The one about eternity And the way it's all gonna be.

Wake up, wake up dead man Wake up, wake up dead man.

Jesus, I'm waiting here, boss I know you're looking out for us But maybe your hands aren't free.

Your Father, He made the world in seven He's in charge of heaven. Will you put a word in for me?

Wake up, wake up dead man Wake up, wake up dead man.

Listen to the words they'll tell you what to do Listen over the rhythm that's confusing you Listen to the reed in the saxophone Listen over the hum of the radio Listen over the sound of blades in rotation Listen through the traffic and circulation Listen as hope and peace try to rhyme Listen over marching bands playing out their time.

Wake up, wake up dead man

220 Stockman, 135.

80"

Wake up, wake up dead man.

Jesus, were you just around the corner? Did you think to try and warn her? Were you working on something new? If there's an order in all of this disorder Is it like a tape recorder? Can we rewind it just once more?

Wake up, wake up dead man Wake up, wake up dead man. Wake up, wake up dead man.221

“Wake Up Dead Man” is biblical poetry for the post-resurrection audience.

Whereas a Psalm of lament would have been directed to God, “Wake Up Dead Man” is directed towards Jesus. It is another song that I classify as Urban Hopelessness poetry where the narrator is living in a messed-up world and is in need of help, with its opening line of “Jesus, help me.” Bono justified the song in an interview:

It’s the end of the century, and it’s a century when God is supposed to be dead. Seeing the world in two dimensions doesn’t have the appeal that it had for a lot of people. People want to believe, but they’re angry, and I picked up on that anger. If God is not dead, there are some questions we want to ask him. I’m a believer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get angry about these things.222

“Wake Up Dead Man” appears to echo Psalm 44, which is also a Psalm of lament (and therefore also a Psalm of Disorientation, as per Brueggemann):

Rouse yourself Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off for ever Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

Psalm 44:23-26

221 Bono/U2, “Wake Up Dead Man,” Pop (Island Records, 1997). 222 Stockman, 134-135.

81"

“Wake Up Dead Man” also admonishes a person of the Holy Trinity to wake and ends with a plea, this time using the modern metaphor of a tape recorder, to try and help us “just once more.” It also ends in silence.223 The full effect of this lament can only be appreciated by listening to the track, with its slow back-beat and distant wailing.

Magnificent

Magnificent Magnificent

I was born I was born to be with you In this space and time After that and ever after I haven't had a clue Only to break rhyme This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue

Only love, only love can leave such a mark But only love, only love can heal such a scar

I was born I was born to sing for you I didn't have a choice but to lift you up And sing whatever song you wanted me to I give you back my voice From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise ...

Only love, only love can leave such a mark But only love, only love can heal such a scar.

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify The Magnificent Magnificent

Only love, only love can leave such a mark But only love, only love unites our hearts

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify The Magnificent Magnificent Magnificent224

223 Vagacs, 58. 224 Bono/U2, “Magnificent.”

82"

Since the release of the U2 album, No Line on the Horizon, one track has received more discussion on websites and learned papers than any other since “Sunday Bloody

Sunday,” even warranting praise in L’Osservatore Romano, the "semi-official" newspaper of the Holy See.225 For Deane Galbraith’s “biblically literate,” and particularly for a Catholic ear, the song’s title “Magnificent” is just too close to “The Magnificat,”

Mary’s praise hymn to God, not to require closer inspection. Although I will later exegete the lyrics of “Magnificent” in the form of a Psalm, I will look at it briefly as a piece of poetry in its own right.

The song introduces itself like a heartbeat, before jangling guitars, an Eastern musical motif (the album was recorded in Fez, Morocco), and Bono’s praiseful, prayerful voice introduces the word “Magnificent.” Bono’s cries of “Ohhh…” coupled with The

Edge’s guitar-playing crescendos, create an aesthetic which qualifies this as a joyous, glorifying song. The song’s emphasis on the narrator/singer’s birth and his belief in the reasons for it (“to be with you, to sing for you”), coupled with “justified until we die,” presents us with a full life filled with faith. The repeated refrain of “Only love, only love can leave such a mark/ but only love, only love can heal such a scar/only love unites our hearts” provides the imagery of John 3:16 (the most preferred gospel writer in Bono’s lyrics).226

Bono manages great “density of expression” in the couplet toward the end of the song, “Justified till we die, you and I, will magnify/The Magnificent” with delicate use of assonance and alliteration of “i’s and “m’s” and in doing so manages to compact a

225 Gaetano Vallini, “Bono and the rock group U2: King David? A pop star.” L'Osservatore Romano, http://bit.ly/STTY1A (accessed November 8, 2012). 226 J. Philip Newell, Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1997).

83"

(Protestant) theology of justification into just eleven words. Great “pressure per word” indeed.

Without using the catch-all definition of poetry being anything that is not prose or narrative, and rather using William Brown’s qualities of Aesthetic Quality, Density of

Expression and Performative Power, I believe that I have made a convincing argument that Bono’s lyrics can very much be described as poetry. As Psalms are a subset of poetry, a psalmist must be a poet, but a poet is not necessarily a psalmist. To further support the argument that Bono is a contemporary psalmist, there are two additional

Psalmic characteristics evident in his work that need to be addressed—parallelism, and praise and lament.

Parallelism(

Parallelism can be defined as “the correspondence that occurs between the phrases of a poetic line.”227 It is one of the defining characteristics of the Hebrew poetry known as the Psalms and can be found throughout Bono’s lyrics. Below are three examples:

Did I ask too much? More than a lot. You gave me nothing, Now it's all I got. One – Achtung Baby (1991)

I disappeared in you You disappeared from me. I gave you everything you ever wanted It wasn't what you wanted. So Cruel – Achtung Baby (1991)

227 Longman III, 95.

84"

At the moment of surrender I folded to my knees I did not notice the passers-by And they did not notice me. Moment of Surrender – No Line on the Horizon (2009)

The first pericope in “One” offers an example of stair-step parallelism (ABCD), where the suggestion of “too much” reduces through “more than a lot,” to “nothing” and “all I got.” In the second stanza from “So Cruel”, there are two examples of antithetic parallelism (A -AB -B). The first opposite idea is “disappeared in you” and “from me,” with the second as “everything you ever wanted” and “it wasn't what you wanted.”

Finally, the example from “Moment of Surrender” shows synonymous parallelism

(AABB). The action of falling to one’s knees indicates surrender and the single action of not noticing each other is split into two more expressive lines.

Praise(and(Lament(

Psalms are typically divided into Praise and/or Lament typologies. In Appendix I,

I have found it useful to employ the terms of Thanksgiving (T) and Rejoice (R) for the former, and Lament (L) and Urban Hopelessness (Uh) for the latter. Urban Hopelessness has featured frequently in Bono’s lyrics from the second U2 album (the first being predominantly about adolescence), finding form in the urban decay and resultant drug usage in Dublin city. As illustrations of these two typologies from U2’s canon, here follow three examples of praise followed by three of lament.

85"

Praise

And what am I to do? What in the world am I to say? There's nothing else to do. He says he'll change the world some day I rejoice. Rejoice – Boy (1980)

I'm alive I'm being born I just arrived, I'm at the door Of the place I started out from And I want back inside

All because of you All because of you All because of you I am. All Because of You – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Take these hands Teach them what to carry Take these hands Don't make a fist Take this mouth So quick to criticise Take this mouth Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh Always pain before a child is born Yahweh, Yahweh Still I'm waiting for the dawn. Yahweh-How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Lament

Oh, the city's afire A passionate flame that knows me by name. Oh, the city's desire to take me for more and more. It's in the street gettin' under my feet It's in the air, it's everywhere I look for you. It's in the things that I do and say

86"

And if I wanna live I gotta die to myself someday. Surrender – War (1983)

Sweet the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth. I see seven towers, but I only see one way out. You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking Scream without raising your voice. You know I took the poison, from the poison stream Then I floated out of here. Running to Stand Still – Joshua Tree (1987)

Where I grew up There weren't many trees Where there was we'd tear them down And use them on our enemies They say that what you mock Will surely overtake you And you become a monster So the monster will not break you. Peace on Earth–All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)

In raising the question of whether Bono is a “Contemporary Psalmist,” I have used the approach of firstly identifying Bono’s lyrics, complemented by U2’s music, as having the Aesthetic Quality, Density of Expression and Performative Power required of poetry. I have established his writings as having characteristics of parallelism typical of the biblical Psalms, as well as examining the qualities of praise and lament to God that are present. Based on my findings so far, I have laid the groundwork for further investigating Bono as a contemporary psalmist.

Exegeses(of(Bono’s(Lyrics(

As discussed earlier, Robert Vagacs uses Walter Brueggemann’s Psalm classification of orientation, disorientation and reorientation to look at U2 from a

87"

theological perspective.228 Vagacs applies Brueggemann’s themes to the U2 catalogue of records (see Appendix I for a complete discography), as follows:

Fig.1 - U2’s Recorded Albums to 2012, divided as per Brueggeman’s Orientation Typology.

I will analyse four songs, each one from a different album, to examine their orientation, religious values and psalmic qualities. These are informal exegeses, suitable for a wider audience than biblical scholars.

We mourn the reality that we do not know the tunes to which the Psalms were sung—how much better we could understand them. “The Psalms were not first written down and then sung, but vice versa,” Claus Westermann explains in The Psalms:

Structure, Content & Message.229 Bono’s lyrics and U2’s music develop in the same way, initially as musical, and later as lyrical, reactions to moods and events in the studio, the hotel room, the stage, on the tour plane. For that reason, an analysis of any of Bono’s lyrics has the advantage, and the requirement, to be heard with their music. An audio CD accompanies this thesis and should be used in conjunction with it.

228 Vagacs. 229 Westermann, 12.

88"

With(a(Shout((Jerusalem)(

Oh, where do we go, Where do we go from here? Where to go? To the side of a hill Blood was spilt We were still looking at each other. But we're going back there?

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Shout, shout, with a shout Shout it out, shout Shout it out.

I want to go, to the foot of Mount Zion To the foot of He who made me see To the side of a hill where we were still We were filled with a love And we're going to be there again

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Shout, shout, with a shout Shout, with a shout.230

From its first introductory drum roll, this song is a fast-paced celebration— another example where the knowledge of the tune and the tempo enhance the meaning of praise. The drum roll includes a tom-tom and crashing cymbals as part of its composition, an “older,” more primitive and biblical sound. In parallel, one can almost see David of

Israel spinning and cavorting in joy in front of the People of God during an ascent to the temple. “With a Shout (Jerusalem)” is an early U2 song from the 1981 album October.

To a biblical scholar the imagery is quite clear—“Jerusalem,” “side of a hill,” capitalised

230 Bono/U2, “With A Shout (Jerusalem),” October (Dublin: Island Records, 1981).

89"

“He”. However, this was written by a bunch of Dublin lads in their early twenties, with an audience of a similar or younger age. Jerusalem to them could mean a location mentioned in a Bible or a reference to that great William Blake hymn heard every year on

BBC television at the Last Night of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, London.

The Psalmist tells us that “God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet” (Ps 47:5). The middle-eight of this song, before the expanded “Jerusalem” chorus, features echoing trumpets, reflecting the celebratory nature of the event. The lyrics open not so much with a word, as an expression of hopelessness, a heavy sigh...

“Oh.” Who is the “we” that is wondering “where to go”? And does “where do we go from here?” mean that that they are in trouble, reached a point where they are stuck?

There is a contrast of tenses in the first verse, from present to past. Perhaps we are talking about two different tenses and senses—are we travelling back in time “to the side of a hill” where “blood was spilt,” to Calvary where Christ was crucified? Or are “we” all the same people across time, looking at each other, questioning but not understanding what the crucifixion of our Lord meant/means to us all? The written lyrics pose the last line of the first verse as a question, but Bono does not obviously phrase it that way when he sings it. Is it a rhetorical question or is it “I’m going back to the Cross. Are you coming with me?”—Calvary hill in Jerusalem as the metaphorical destination, the Cross as the prize. Bono’s experiences growing up in a mixed-denominational marriage have led him to be very nervous, until recently, of approaching or affiliating himself to any particular

Christian group.231 He does not want to go to church; he wants to go back to the start, a

231 Collins, 20.

90"

theology of the Cross, perhaps. Here we have an attempt to achieve a truly radical theology.232

We then have confirmation that Bono understands what the Cross and resurrection means—he understands the prophecy in the Psalms! “(God has gone up) with a shout, (the Lord with the sound of a trumpet)” (Ps 47:5). Christ’s resurrection is an occasion for celebration! Shout it out!

The second verse immediately confirms two things—that Bono wants to go there and that the location is definitely, metaphorically speaking, “the foot of Mount Zion.” But is there confusion here? Is Bono confusing Zion and Calvary? Zion itself became the city of David when the King captured it (1 Kgs 8:1), and it became “the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God” (Heb 12:22), so it may be connecting the line of David from the hill at Zion to Jesus at the hill of Calvary. But in the next line Bono makes the distinction that he wants to go “to the foot of He who made me see.” The psalmist says to

God that “you who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again”

(Ps 71:20), perhaps answering the initial question posed by Bono—“where do we go from here?” Or is the simpler interpretation that Jesus made Bono “see,” gave him insight like he gave it to the blind man at Bethsaida and to his disciples (Mk 8:22-26)? Bono returns to the side of a hill where they “were [being] still” with God (Ps 46:10) and

“being filled with a love,” being poured into their hearts by God through the Holy Spirit

(Rom 5:5). Then Bono finishes confidently, triumphantly, not with a “BUT” as in the previous verse’s question, rather with “AND we’re going to be there again”—there is the hope, there is the love, to be followed by trumpets of praise.

232 On the "radical" theme in Christianity, see William H. Brackney, Historical Dictionary of Radical Christianity (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2012), xv-xvi.

91"

I would disagree with Robert Vagac’s assertion that this is an orientation song. It borrows its refrain from Psalm 47 which itself is an orientation Psalm but it is celebrating

Bono’s joy for the Lord after being lost (“where do we go from here?”) and finding God again (“we’re going back there”). Therefore, using Bruggemann’s classification, I would consider this a song of reorientation.

Until(The(End(of(the(World(

Haven't seen you in quite a while I was down the hold, just passing time. Last time we met it was a low-lit room We were as close together as a bride and groom. We ate the food, we drank the wine Everybody having a good time except you. You were talking about the end of the world.

I took the money, I spiked your drink You miss too much these days if you stop to think. You led me on with those innocent eyes And you know I love the element of surprise. In the garden I was playing the tart I kissed your lips and broke your heart. You, you were acting like it was the end of the world.

Love love love, love love, love love love Love love love, love love, love love

In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows But my sorrows they'd learned to swim Surrounding me, going down on me Spilling over the brim Waves of regret and waves of joy. I reached out for the one I tried to destroy. You, you said you'd wait till the end of the world.233

The opening notes to this song set the tone. Distorted cries coming from somewhere distant—the wail of the banshee and muffled funeral cadence.234 Are they

233 Bono/U2, “Until The End Of The World, ”Achtung Baby (Island Records, 1991). 234 Stephen Catanzarite, U2’s Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall (London: Continuum, 2007), 30.

92"

cries of distress or success, hell or heaven? Replacing the cries are congas and a bass line that introduces an underground, almost sleezy atmosphere. Part of the ongoing popularity of U2 has been Bono’s duality in his writing. A song like “Until the End of the World” can have its lead character singing about a lover or the Lover, and be equally as effective in getting its message across. The message in this song is about betrayal, and possibly about forgiveness.

After an examination of the text we can gather some of the context of this lyric.

Its three verses all conclude with the line “the end of the world” preceded by “talking about,” “acting like it was” and “you said you’d wait” respectively. “End of the World” could be a figure of speech for everything in life having fallen apart, or it could allude to the end times for which it is another term. The “narrator” is in conversation with someone, a one-sided dialogue with a person he has not seen for some time, because he has been “down the hold” doing nothing. He has gone somewhere dark, as Jonah “had gone down into the hold of the ship” in which he was attempting to escape from God (Jon

1:5). In fact, this is an allusion to Sheol.235 This is Judas Iscariot, Jesus’ betrayer and

Jesus has come to visit. Bono wants to continue the discussion over the role and consequence of Judas’ actions leading up to, and after Jesus’ crucifixion. This song was probably influenced in part by The Book of Judas by Brendan Kennelly (1936 -), a popular Irish poet and novelist and former Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity

College, Dublin.236 The poem itself is an epic that stretches across four hundred pages.

We are now informed that the last time they met was in a “low lit room,” where they were “as close together as a bride and groom,” invoking the biblical analogy of

235 Vagacs, 23. 236 Brendan Kennelly, The Book of Judas: A Poem By Brendan Kennelly (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe Books, 1991).

93"

God/Christ as the bridegroom and the individuals (and the church as a whole) as the bride

(Jer 3:14, Mt 25:1-13, Jn 3:28-29, Rom 7:4). Together they “ate the food” and “drank the wine” of the “agape” meal that Jesus constituted as the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The disciples still did not understand the implications of what Jesus had been telling them during the meal, that he was to suffer, be crucified and rise again—so “everybody [was] having a good time” except him. Both Jesus and the Judasvoice knew and were talking about the “end of their world” that was coming.

In the second verse, the narrator “took the money” (in the sense of taking money for somebody else’s loss) and “spiked your drink.” Both of these statements, in any relationship, are betrayals of trust. Judas’ role as the only Judean disciple was to look after the disciples’ funds. He was fastidious—it was he who chastised Mary for anointing

Jesus’ feet with three hundred dinarii worth of perfume—though St. John believed that he stole from the group purse (Jn 12:1-8). It was Judas who received the thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus (Mt 26:14-16). Here we start to encounter the nihilism that colours the overall tone of the Achtung Baby album—the nihilism of the 1990s and the short- sighted gain that Judas aimed to make from the short-term vision that “you miss too much these days if you stop to think.” This is followed by a line that takes on a totally different slant, depending on which point of view you are observing. To be “led on” by a crafty erotic partner with “innocent” (not) eyes is to contrive, betray, but to be “led on” by a friend and leader whose eyes display innocence is quite a different matter, especially if you are going to use the “element of surprise “ on them. Bono then continues with an

Anglo-Irish colloquialism, that of “playing the tart.” The word tart in this context is used to suggest flirtatiousness, tart being a derogatory slang word for a promiscuous

94"

woman.237 When this is used with reference to a man, it suggests “flirting” or “teasing,” not being serious. In the eros sense in this song one partner is kissing another on the lips, when there is no emotion behind it. In the agape sense, with Jesus and Judas, it is the same. The betrayal by the loveless kiss “[breaks] your heart.” And with both the betrayed, they “were acting like it was the end of the world.”

The Gospel of St. John, with its mystical language and focus on love, resonates with the Druidic tradition of the Celts. The Celtic Christians were inspired by the image of St. John leaning against Christ at the Last Supper “listening for the heartbeat of

God.”238 It would appear that Bono shares in that inspiration. The “middle eight” in this lyric is the repeated refrain of “love” which continues underneath the following verse.

Because of this latter point, one can argue that these are the silent partner’s words, Jesus’ words, breaking silence for the first time. The partner has only one thing on his mind— love—that was all that the partner was looking for. This simple refrain seems to break down the bravado of the Judas figure. The figure of speech “drowning one’s sorrows” normally means literally to drink away one’s pain, drown it in alcohol, a common reaction to remorse. People in this emotional state can no longer escape the sorrow they feel for their actions—it overwhelms them and even invades their dreams. The waves of regret and the waves of joy in equal measure allude to the fact that they are meeting

“down the hold.” Could they be cleansing waters, waters of forgiveness, offered by the one Judas “reached out for” that he had “tried to destroy”? Daniel T. Kline, Professor of

English at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, in his essay “Playing the Tart: Contexts and Intertexts for ‘Until the End of the World’, agrees that the song “Until the End of the

237 John Ayto, The Oxford Dictionary of Slang, Oxford Paperback Reference (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1999), s.v. “tart.” 238 Newell, Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality.

95"

World” “suggests the impossible: that even Judas is redeemed in a moment of fathomless mystery. Judas and Jesus can never be separated. The judasvoice reminds the Redeemer that ‘you, you said you would wait until the end of the world.’ ” The opportunity seems to be present. The betrayed is willing to “wait until the end of the world.”239

Judas displayed what would later be called nihilistic tendencies in this version of the Gethsemane story (“I took the money, I spiked your drink, You miss too much these days if you stop to think”) and is now filled with self-pity and hatred (“In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows they'd learned to swim”). He is also in disarray (“Waves of regret and waves of joy, I reached out for the one I tried to destroy”).

Under Bruggemann’s classification, I believe that this is a song of disorientation.

Grace(

Grace, she takes the blame She covers the shame Removes the stain It could be her name

Grace, it's the name for a girl It's also a thought that changed the world And when she walks on the street You can hear the strings Grace finds goodness in everything

Grace, she's got the walk Not on a ramp or on chalk She's got the time to talk She travels outside of karma, She travels outside of karma When she goes to work You can hear her strings Grace finds beauty in everything

Grace, she carries a world on her hips No champagne flute for her lips

239 Daniel T. Kline, “Playing the Tart: Texts and Intertexts for ‘Until the End of the World’,” in Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, ed. Scott Calhoun (Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 146-147.

96"

No twirls or skips between her fingertips She carries a pearl in perfect condition

What once was hurt What once was friction What left a mark No longer stings Because Grace makes beauty Out of ugly things

Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.240

Bono has admitted to his favourite religious song being “Amazing Grace.”241 It is the only suitable adjective for the noun. Bono says,

It's a powerful idea, grace. It really is. And, you know, we hear so much of karma and so little of grace. Every religion teaches us about karma and, well, what you put out you will receive. And even Christianity, which is supposed to be about grace, has turned, you know, redemption into good manners, or the right accent, or, you know, good works or whatever it is. I just can't get over grace—(it's) so hard to find.242

We may not always find the grace that God offers, but Bono makes a poetic attempt to define her, to personify her. It is that which I shall exegete. Bono gives grace the form of a woman and he describes her in the first stanza with a loose monorhyme dealing with “blame,” “shame,” and “stain” and then turns her name back onto herself as an attribute, a blessing, just as the Lord says “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Is 1:18).

Bono introduces his customary duality of grace as both personification and concept which continues through the rest of the song.

He confirms this in the next verse, stating that Grace is not only the name of a girl but also something much bigger than that. In the letters attributed to St. Paul we are

240 Bono/U2, “Grace,” All That You Can't Leave Behind (Island Records, 2000). 241 Assayas, 144. 242 U2.com, “Finding Beauty in Everything - 19 October 2001,” u2.com, http://bit.ly/hLO8wi (accessed October 13, 2012).

97"

informed that by God’s grace Christ died for us, we are saved, and we live our life in this world:

…but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone (Heb 2:9) [cf. Eph 2:4-5, 2 Cor 1:12].

Grace has a “sound”—when you are in the presence of Grace “on the street” it’s like a tune drifting behind her and towards you—it’s catchy and catching. For Grace, it’s impossible for her to finding anything but good—in anything. Grace also walks-the-walk

(1 Cor 15-10), but not by parading herself like a self-obsessed model of physical beauty on a “ramp” or catwalk. Neither is she an immature child with “chalk” in hand, playing hopscotch on a sidewalk—rather Grace wants to have a dialogue with you, with everyone. She goes beyond our visceral state of karma (“an eye for an eye,” “what goes around, comes around”). The “sound” of Grace is inescapable. Grace is maternal, mature and wise, offering an unconditional forgiveness only a mother can. She has the weight of the world “on her hips” and she carries a “pearl in perfect condition”; she brings with her the kingdom of heaven (Mt 13:45-46).

Bono then describes the characteristics of a pearl—a priceless object that is formed out of pain and irritation which makes “beauty out of ugly things”—which, as an allusion to the Kingdom of God, suggests that we should be willing to give everything else away, just to possess it. Then we suddenly return to the message of the first verse but this time we talk about a “sting” not a “stain.” The Grace of the Kingdom of God can take all the pain, animosity and history (“hurt,” “friction,” “mark”) and wrap it up in something beautiful, to remove that which hurts (“stings”). The ugliness of waiting for karma is replaced by grace.

98"

“Grace” is a form of individual narrative praise, in which Bono is describing the wonders of the gift of grace given to us all, unconditionally and without merit. It speaks of someone who has made the discovery that grace is bigger than karma and “a thought that changed the world.” As this is a song promoting the discovery for oneself of grace, I classify this as a song of reorientation.

Magnificent(

Magnificent Magnificent

I was born I was born to be with you In this space and time After that and ever after I haven't had a clue Only to break rhyme This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue

Only love, only love can leave such a mark But only love, only love can heal such a scar

I was born I was born to sing for you I didn't have a choice but to lift you up And sing whatever song you wanted me to I give you back my voice From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise...

Only love, only love can leave such a mark But only love, only love can heal such a scar

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify The Magnificent Magnificent Only love, only love can leave such a mark But only love, only love unites our hearts

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify The Magnificent Magnificent

99"

Magnificent.243

This is a song that is clearly cut from the same cloth as earlier U2 songs such as

“Yahweh,” and “Grace” (previously exegeted), which are outright praise and worship songs. I must admit, when I saw the song title “Magnificent” on purchasing the CD, I felt immediately that this had to be a play-on-words of “The Magnificat,” the ancient

Christian hymn—but then again, I am a Roman Catholic whose confirmation name is

Mary. “The Magnificat,” the canticle of Mary, comes from the New Testament Gospel of

Luke, and it commences with “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Latin: Magnificat anima mea dominum). It is Mary’s response to Elizabeth's greeting and her son John's reaction whilst still in her womb. It is a joyful, spontaneous out-pouring of praise, full of humility for her own situation and glorifying of God's power. Like its inspiration, “Magnificent” is a full-throated praise song, written in the form of a hymn. For once, Bono's usual ambiguity that allows his lyrics to do double-duty as secular love songs does not appear to be present.

However, these lyrics do not portray solely Christian influences. Bono is presenting his “Coexist” credentials of one Abrahamic family of Islam, Judaism and

Christianity.244 In the Islamic tradition, the 99 attributes of Allah are the names of God revealed to man in the Qur'an. Al 'Azim (456789) translates as The Magnificent, the

Infinite, which Máire Byrne, Lecturer and Researcher in Biblical Studies at St. Patrick's

College, Maynooth, Ireland and author of The Names of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: A Basis for Interfaith Dialogue (2011), suggests “is superlative in form and

243 Bono/U2, “Magnificent.” 244 The Coexist Foundation is a charity that works to promote understanding of Jews, Christians and Muslims through education, dialogue and research. See http://bit.ly/pyBFPr (accessed October 13, 2012).

100 "

can be simply translated as ‘The Greatest One’ (‘Al-Majid’) (‘the magnificent one’).245

The adjective does not suggest that Allah can be made greater than anyone or anything on earth, or, indeed, anything that has been created. Rather, the incomparability of Allah is reiterated with this name; the ‘greatness’ of Allah is so immense and vast that it does not conform to any limits, and in fact cannot be comprehended by a human.”246 Later in this thesis, I will reference Bono quoting the Qur'an so it is quite possible that he is aware of his use of the title “Magnificent”. This is clearly not a song aimed purely at a Christian audience.

To confirm my original hypothesis, in a 2009 Rolling Stone magazine interview with Brian Hiatt, after the launch of No Line on the Horizon, Bono told Hiatt that

“Magnificent” was inspired by “The Magnificat,” a passage from the Gospel of Luke (in the voice of the Virgin Mary) that was previously set to music by Bach. “There’s this theme running through the album of surrender and devotion and all the things I find really difficult.” Bono said. “All music for me is worship of one kind or another.” 247

The song “Magnificent” opens with a steady beat of overdriven, distorted guitar and a throbbing drum roll, always the trademark of an impending U2 anthemic song [cf.

“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “Gloria,” “Mofo”]. Hidden in the background of a traditional drum and guitar introduction, however, we hear the sounds of the Middle East, Fez in

Morocco to be exact, the location for the writing and the recording of the song. A different rhythm but still in rhyme—East meets West, North meets South, traditional meets modern. The band had travelled to Fez, the on/off capital of Morocco in North

Africa since the thirteenth century, to attend the annual World Sacred Music Festival.

245 Máire Byrne, The Names of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: A Basis for Interfaith Dialogue (New York: Continuum, 2011), 84. 246 Ibid., 110. 247 Brian Hiatt, “U2 Hymns for the Future,” Rolling Stone, March 19, 2009, 55-56.

101"

They chose this location because they did not “feel confined by the standard formats of contemporary music” as it was a place “where music doesn't lend itself to harmony, but rather a melodic idea, sometimes a very involved melodic idea, is really the centerpiece of the whole thing, unlike a lot of songs founded on the principles of western harmony.”248 Out of the Medina, the old Arab quarter in the dusty town of Fez, erupt the words “Magnificent!”

The song essentially breaks down into the recognisable style of a contemporary song—verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle eight, to be followed by an instrumental guitar break and return to the middle eight. The song opens (as it will end), with the cry of

“Magnificent!” and then proceeds to the opening lines of the first verse:

I was born I was born to be with you

Considering the allusion to “The Magnificat,” we can infer the “you” to be God.

Bono is sure about that, “in this space and time,” but he has no idea beyond the here and now, after the “Be still, and know that I am God ” (Ps 46:10) moment of “after that and ever after.” Bono uses “haven't had,” the present perfect tense, rather than the more throw-away “I haven't a clue,” suggesting this is not just a current concern, but one that has been troubling him and causing him to reflect for some time, and will continue so to do. The following line is classic Bono. He has a penchant for using the verb “rhyme” where others might employ “gel” or “support.” An example of this occurs in the song

“Peace on Earth,” where Bono voices his despair:

Jesus this song you wrote The words are sticking in my throat Peace on Earth

248 Angela Pancella, “Songwriting In Morocco, Pt. 4: The Songwriting Seam,” @U2, http://bit.ly/QuPCvj (accessed October 13, 2012).

102 "

Hear it every Christmas time But hope and history won't rhyme So what's it worth? This peace on Earth.249

In an interview for ASCAP Playback in 2001, when asked why he did not write more songs about the work that he was doing for Africa regarding debt cancellation, he said that his usual response was “I rather tritely reply, ‘statistics just don't rhyme.’ ”250

But then, of course, Bono stole the line from a play by Seamus Heaney (1939-), an Irish poet, playwright and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. The play, The Cure at Troy, is an adaptation of Sophocles' play Philoctetes, and is well known for the lines

History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.251

When two people “break rhyme” it jars, it causes, or is caused by, a friction and or a tension. In this case, Bono is using the turn of phrase “break rhyme” both metaphorically and literally. He is referring both to the temporal tension and friction that is encountered in the faith that there is something after, something better, something simple, and also to the intellectual friction he finds when writing about his faith. As in the

Psalms, one needs to contrast the praise and positivity in “Magnificent” with the negative and despairing tone of “Wake Up, Dead Man.”

In a similar way, when Mary proclaims in the New Testament Gospel of Matthew that her “soul magnifies the Lord,” she is not suggesting that her exultations make God any greater but rather she is ascribing greatness to God. In the Hebrew Scriptures,

249 Bono/ U2, “Peace on Earth,” All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Island Records, 2000). 250 Eric Philbrook, “Keeping the Peace,” ASCAP Playback, 28 November 2001. 251 Seamus Heaney, The Cure At Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux), 1991.

103"

Hannah's song of exultation in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, with which “The Magnificat” carries many similarities, opens with the parallel “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God.”

Bono's use of the very specific word “Magnificent,” found in the three Abrahamic texts—the Hebrew Scriptures, The Qur’an and the Christian Bible—together with his vociferous promotion of the ideals of “Coexist” during the U2 360∘ tour, indicate immediately that the lyrics are designed to highlight similarities and build bridges between the three Abrahamic traditions.252 Bono has a strange relationship with Judaism.

Urban legend has Bono stating to a New York City street vendor that he was "half Jewish on account of his Jewish mother.” Now obviously this is untrue, as seen from his biography above. However, he did go on to say later that he thought that his mother’s side of the family might be of Jewish descent, so there is obviously an affinity that Bono feels toward the Jewish faith. Apparently, he did buy a yarmulke from the aforementioned vendor.253

Bono then moves on to a short chorus of “Only love, only love can leave such a mark. But only love, only love can leave such a scar.” I believe this refrain, which is repeated three times, with a slight change in the last, has two possible interpretations.

This is likely an allusion to Jesus’ passion. Bono’s choice of the contrasting words regarding what “only love” can do, “mark” and “scar,” mirrors the variation in choice by the bible translators of Galatians 6:17, “From now on, let no one make trouble for me; for

I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.” Both the New International Version and the King James Version render this as “marks,” whereas the New Living Translation and

252 Coexist. 253 Tom Gross, “Bono Says He’s Jewish,” Mideast Media Analysis, http://bit.ly/VrVHx9 (accessed November 4, 2012).

104 "

the International Standard Version translate it as “scars.” It is a contrasting parallelism that neatly sums up the “becoming” suffering to which theologian Douglas John Hall refers, the character-developing suffering that only faith and hope and love can endure.

As Mary observed her Son during his passion, she would have had to endure the scars of what she observed as well as the healing that would have happened after grieving, all sustained by love.

An alternative possibility is that it could suggest that it is “only love,” a secular love, when one really cherishes and cares about another, love that has the power both to hurt and to heal. As “Magnificent” is so influenced by “The Magnificat,” the former interpretation is the more likely.

As discussed earlier, Bono has no doubt about his raison d'être, his mission and vocation—he was born to sing for God and here he is proclaiming it in unvarnished terms—“I was born to sing for you.” More importantly, Bono is suggesting that it was not a pious decision on his part, he simply “didn’t have a choice but to lift you up”—lift you up, raise you up, exalt you, all forms of praise for God throughout the Hebrew and

Christian Testaments. In a time when a much more popular, Grammy Music Award- nominated gospel-esque song, “You Raise Me Up,” declares what God does for me, 254

Bono’s version is refreshing in its direction of what I can do, I must do, for God. It also, if it were needed, confirms that this is no secular ballad. Bono goes further—not only does he realise that he does not have a choice in singing; he also does not have a choice in what he sings. From the beginning he has sung “whatever song you wanted me to.”

This is not new ground for Bono. Early in U2’s career, the song “Gloria” contains the

254 Secret Garden, “You Raise Me Up,” Once in a Red Moon (Decca Records, 2002).

105"

lyric, “Oh, Lord, if I had anything, anything at all, I’d give it to you.”255 Gloria In te domine” (Glory to You, Lord). More recently, Bono has penned the lyrics to a song called “Yahweh” in which he makes successive offerings to God—“take these shoes,”

“shirt,” “soul,” “hands,” “mouth,” “city,” “heart.”256 But now, Bono is offering to God the ultimate gift that God has given to him—“I give you back my voice.” Bono knows that it is the voice that God gave him, because the first sound, the first cry that he made upon being born was “a joyful noise,” a phrase filled with the rhyme and the hopes of the

Psalms!

The song continues into the second chorus (a repeat of the first) before entering a middle-eight section that echoes Bono’s comments earlier about karma and grace. In a powerful triplet he sings “Justified—you and I—will magnify.” Bono knows that he is already justified by grace and so, like Mary before him, he and you (the listener, or the crowd) will “magnify the Lord,” will “magnify The Magnificent.”

We return to the chorus, but this time with a change, where the second line now finishes “only love unites our hearts.” Bono has spoken previously about a possible recording in the future entitled “The Songs of Ascent,” an obvious play on words of the group of Psalms gathered under the title “Song of Ascents.”257 One of those “Song of

Ascents,” Psalm 133, which opens with “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” seems to be echoed in this modified version of the chorus. It changes its focus from the spiritual healing ability of love for the individual to its capacity for uniting a group, a community, the world. Bono also recognises that unity requires a recognition of the individual, as he has demonstrated in a past interview, "To

255 Bono/U2, “Gloria,” October (Island Records, 1981). 256 Bono/U2, “Yahweh,” How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (Island Records, 2004). 257 Matt McGee, “Bono Says Songs Of Ascent Isn’t Dead,” @U2, http://bit.ly/yq5C7v (accessed October 13, 2012).

106 "

be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater," and in a previous song, “We’re one, but we’re not the same, we get to carry each other.”258

The song finishes with a repetition of the middle-eight “justified” section, allowing the song to finish where it began—“Magnificent.”

Summary(

I commenced this chapter by suggesting that the Psalms are both timeless and timely and in exegeting Bono’s lyrics/poetry, it has to be with reference to his Sitz im

Leben. My approach was influenced by Robert Vagacs, and his book Religious Nuts,

Political Fanatics. He used Walter Brueggmann’s Orientation Typology in his analysis of a selection of Bono’s lyrics. I used this approach as a base from which to expand my thesis to compare Bono’s style of lyric writing with those of the Psalmist(s). To help to orientate myself with regard to Bono’s lyrics, I created a table of themes against which I placed all the songs from the studio and live recordings of U2, not as an exhaustive record, but as an aid to exegesis.

The next task was to decide whether Bono’s lyrics constituted poetry qualified as

Psalms, using William P. Brown’s Psalms and his criteria of Aesthetic Quality, Density of

Expression and Performative Power that a work has to embody to be considered poetry.

By examining three songs from U2’s canon containing Bono’s lyrics, “Sunday Bloody

Sunday” (1983), “Wake Up Dead Man” (1997) and “Magnificent” (2009) against the above criteria, I believe that I have proved that Bono’s lyrics at least constitute poetry.

258 David Kootnikoff, U2: A Musical Biography, Greenwood Biographies (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2012), xi; Bono/U2, “One,” Achtung Baby (Island Records, 1991).

107"

The final consideration was whether Bono’s lyrics met the additional requirements necessary for a Psalm—parallelism, praise or lament. Using three pericopes from three songs in each of these categories, nine extracts in all, I demonstrated that his poetry could be considered psalmic. With this supporting evidence, I exegeted four U2 songs, with lyrics written by Bono. The songs covered the timespan from 1981 to 2009 at nine to ten year intervals, over which time Bono grew from an enthusiastic twenty-one year old to an equally passionate forty-nine years of age.

The second U2 album provides the song “With A Shout (Jerusalem).” It is a song of questioning—“where do we go from here?”—and a belief in the power of the Cross and Resurrection, where he wants to go “to the foot of He who made me see.” It has an allusion to Psalm 47:5 with its pre-title and with the sound of trumpets during an instrumental break before the end of the last chorus. In spite of the opening line of “Oh, where do we go, where do we go from here?” it ends confidently with “We were filled with a love, and we're going to be there again, Jerusalem.” I classified this as a song of reorientation.

Moving forward a decade to 1991, the song “Until The End Of The World” from the album Achtung Baby, continues the question about the role and consequence of Judas’ actions leading up to, and after Jesus’ crucifixion, a question mirrored by another Irish poet, Brendan Kennelly, the author of the epic poem, The Book of Judas. The song is a predominantly one-sided conversation featuring the judasvoice, with brief glimpses of another voice, that of Jesus, in the form of the repeated word “love” that arrives just after halfway through. This is a lyric that is full of betrayal, guilt, remorse, and the possibility

108 "

of redemption, because Jesus promised Judas that he “would wait until the end of the world.” I classified this as a song of disorientation.

Nine years later, the 2000 release of the album All That You Can’t Leave Behind contained the song “Grace.” Bono has stated that “Amazing Grace” is his favourite religious song. In his lyric, he says that “Grace, it's the name for a girl, it's also a thought that changed the world.” Bono uses Biblical allusions throughout the song to personify

Grace, and describe her actions—“She covers the shame, removes the stain … when she walks on the street, you can hear the strings, Grace finds goodness in everything.” Grace is the “pearl in perfect condition” and “she carries the world on her hips.” Bono’s most radical message is that Grace “travels outside of karma”; Grace is bigger than karma and she operates outside and above the eye-for-an-eye reality of our earthly existence. I classified this as a song of reorientation.

Finally, we reach the year 2009 and U2’s album No Line On The Horizon which contains the song “Magnificent,” a song that is heavily influenced by “The Magnificat,” the ancient Christian hymn of exultation in the Lord, from the Gospel of Luke. This is an out-and-out song of praise in which Bono admits that he was given a voice to raise up

God, and to sing praises to the Lord. The use of the term “The Magnificent” also suggests an intentional inclusivity by using one of the 99 attributes of Allah used in the religion of

Islam. In both “The Magnificat” and “Magnificent” neither party is suggesting that their jubilations make God any more divine but rather they attribute greatness to God by their actions. Bono also alludes to the salvific results of the passion of Jesus, Mary’s son, when he writes “only love, only love can leave such a mark, but only love, only love can leave

109"

such a scar.” Bono knows that he is already “justified—you and I—will magnify,” justified by Grace. I classified this as a song of reorientation.

110 "

Conclusion( ( Bono’s"Personal"Contribution"and"Influence(

Bono’s credentials, or perhaps his lack of them, have enabled him to connect with an incredibly wide range of people, disparate in denomination, radical in politics and incompatible in cultures. Secular heads and religious leaders listen to him and he praises and chastises them in equal measure, as a good psalmist should. Jesse Helms, U.S.

Senator from North Carolina and a Conservative evangelical Christian, said of Bono after seeing U2 in concert in 2002, "People were moving back and forth like corn in the breeze

… when Bono shook his hips, the crowd shook their hips … [It] was the noisiest thing I ever heard.” He was taken with Bono.259

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in his 2010 memoirs wrote, “Bono could have been a president or prime minister standing on his head. He had an absolutely natural gift for politicking, was great with people, very smart and an inspirational speaker

… he is motivated by an abundant desire to carry on improving, never really content or relaxed.”260

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu performs “live” every night during the current U2 360° concert tour (He quipped ‘I think I look like Bono’ about the stage mic that he had to wear along his cheek at the Beyond Sport Summit in 2009).261

As U2’s popularity has grown globally, so has Bono’s spiritual reach and influence. He has been quick to capitalise on his access to politicians, religious leaders

259 Madeleine Bunting and Oliver Burkeman, “Pro Bono,” globaldevelopment, guardian.co.uk, Guardian News and Media Limited, http://bit.ly/h83QGU (accessed October 13, 2012). 260 Tony Blair, A Journey: My Political Life (Toronto: Knopf, 2010), 549. 261 David Coethica, “Beyond Sport Summit – Desmond Tutu Impersonates Bono - July 9, 2009,” http://bit.ly/fEtYjK (accessed October 1, 2012).

111"

and the public to champion causes that he believes to be vital to effect change. Bono and

U2 have had an active relationship with Amnesty International that started with the activists’ 1996 “Conspiracy of Hope” tour. In the latest initiative by U2, Archbishop

Tutu, and (at the time) Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi both appeared on a

54-ton cylindrical video screen throughout the 2009-2011 U2 360° tour, promoting

Amnesty’s vision that every person should enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights and encouraging membership in the organisation.

Bono’s spiritual influence was also evident in his being the keynote speaker at the

54th. National Prayer Breakfast in 2006, which is organised every year by The Fellowship

Foundation, a conservative Christian evangelical organisation, hosted in that year by

President George W. Bush. Bush, after meeting Bono at the Breakfast said, “He's a doer…the thing about this good citizen of the world is he's used his position to get things done.”262 President Barack Obama used U2’s “City of Blinding Lights” as his campaign song for his 2008 Presidential campaign, recognizing that the song’s message rhymed with his focus on “hope.”

During an audience with Pope John Paul II in 1999, during the Jubilee 2000 campaign the pontiff and Bono exchanged gifts—the pope was enthralled by the rock singer’s trademark “fly glasses” which he gave His Holiness in reciprocation for the rosary beads that he had received. The Pope put on the glasses and gave a cheeky grin. In a diary entry about the meeting, Bono wrote, “He is close to God who makes his friends laugh—Koran.”263 This action was not just showmanship—the meeting led to Pope John

Paul issuing a Message of Gratitude and Encouragement in September 1999, stating “I

262 PR Newswire, “Remarks by President Bush at the National Prayer Breakfast,” New York: PR Newswire Association LLC http://prn.to/PPLGZl (accessed November 4, 2012). 263 Bono, “We’re One but We’re Not the Same: Bono’s Jubilee 2000 Diary for Dazed and Confused,” @U2, http://bit.ly/wuzAbq (accessed October 13, 2012).

112 "

appeal to all those involved, especially the most powerful nations, not to let this opportunity of the Jubilee Year pass, without taking a decisive step towards definitively resolving the debt crisis.”264

The abiding attribute that Bono possesses in all his theatres of operation— songwriting, showmanship, lecturing, politicking—is that of optimism: optimism in his lyrics, his performance, his rhetoric and in his dealings with situations and people that are apparently insurmountable and immoveable. A sense of humour, determination and faith are always present.

Bono’s(Role(as(Psalmist(

I began my thesis “Bono: An Irish David” by stating that I believe that everyone has a particular theological attitude, spoken or unspoken. In my research, I have not come across Bono using the word “theology” in the thirty-six years that he has been in the public eye. He doesn’t profess to be an evangelist, a prophet or a pastor. He and his three friends who form the rock group U2 had a plainly stated aim of being the biggest rock- and-roll band in the world; this has made him and U2 very, very rich indeed. Yet, for these past thirty-six years, through his Scriptural lyrics, his advocacy and his and U2’s performances, he has developed a theological outlook, a hymn book and a pastorate. The fact that he and the band deliver this message in sometimes veiled terms for those who will listen is often maligned. For this, he is regularly chastised for the dichotomy of being a rock star and a preacher, for the contradiction of being both rich and being Christian, and worse, for daring to spread the good news.

264 Pope John Paul II, “Jubilee Year Calls for Urgent Debt Relief,” EWTN, http://bit.ly/yGZKv2 (accessed October 1, 2012).

113"

Bono is comparable to another popular American media Christian, Joel Osteen.

Osteen (1963-) is Pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, whose ministry reaches over one hundred million homes weekly in the US and in over one hundred nations around the world.265 His church is influenced by prosperity theology, sometimes described as the “health and wealth church,” which asserts that wealth and power are rewards for faithful Christians. Operating out of a converted basketball stadium, it is now

America’s largest church with a capacity crowd of sixteen thousand. Joel Osteen

Ministries is a registered charity in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

He has authored numerous books, audio and music CDs and has recently branched out into greeting cards. Pastor Joel’s estimated net worth is $40 million. In common with

Bono he has never attended seminary. In their own fields, they are considered “rock stars.” They are both performers and they both touch millions of people. As Bono has said, “Celebrity is currency, so I wanted to use mine effectively.” So, the question becomes, if it is seen as beneficial for a rich preacher to become a “rock star,” is it not just as advantageous for a rich “rock star” to become a preacher?

From the exegeses I have performed on Bono’s lyrics, I have demonstrated them to be scripturally-worded, subtle and demonstrating what leading theologians such as

Moltmann and Hall would describe as a Theology of the Cross. The lyrics, combined with the unique sound and atmosphere that U2 generates when experienced live, creates an allusion to a revival tent ambience. There are numerous reviews of concerts that describe the spectacles as “spiritual events” or “church.” Tim Adams, a contributor to

Ethicsdaily.com, wrote in a column entitled “U2 Concert What Church Should Be:”

265 Joel Osteen Ministries, “Our Ministries,” Houston: www.joelosteen.com, http://bit.ly/go54Y3 (accessed October 10, 2012).

114 "

Grammy-winning record producer T-Bone Burnett said it best back in 1987: “A U2 concert is what church should be.” The passion, celebration and thoughtful reflection that U2's live shows draw the audience toward is certainly what a church service aspires to be. A friend recently described a U2 concert as a “transcendent Holy Ghost-filled ring of Jesus fire.” When was the last time you hit the Sunday buffet line feeling like that?

But Burnett's observation still rings true not only because of U2's music, the message of hope it often communicates or Bono's occasional impromptu sermons from the stage. “A U2 concert is also what church should be because of whom it attracts.”266

But U2 concerts contain more than just a bunch of songs. The songs are poetry and they deal, through the lens of Walter Bruggemann’s Orientation Method, with suffering, joy, change, praise and hope. But when does the poet become the psalmist, for that is the question that I posited at the beginning of this thesis. Quite simply, by knowingly or unknowingly constructing his poetry in a way that would be recognised by a Jewish psalmist(s). By addressing the issues of suffering, joy, change, disorientation, praise and hope in a way that the psalmist(s) would understand. By admonishing the leaders and the congregation to act in a way that is God-honouring and of which the psalmist(s) would approve. Only a psalmist could write the following, not about Aung

San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar opposition politician who at the time was being detained under house arrest, but about her husband. Once it is realized that all of Bono’s writing is because he “was born to sing” for God, the presence, if not the naming of God, is always implied:

And if the darkness is to keep us apart And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off And if your glass heart should crack And for a second you turn back Oh no, be strong

266 Tim Adams, “U2 Concert What Church Should Be,” EthicsDaily.com, http://bit.ly/QKoFFU (accessed October 13, 2012).

115"

Walk on, walk on What you got they can't steal it No they can't even feel it Walk on, walk on... Stay safe tonight.267

Only someone with a psalmist’s cries for freedom could have played an active part in gaining Aung San Suu Kyi’s release in the Spring of 2012, both in his highlighting of her incarceration through high-profile segments during U2 concerts and through activism with Amnesty International. Only a psalmist’s joyful praise could have uttered that "It's so rare to see grace trump military might, and when it happens we should make the most joyful noise we can" upon presenting her with Amnesty International’s highest award, Ambassador of Conscience.268

I have examined the technical aspects of Bono’s song writing and measured them by the analyses of the great psalm form-critics of the twentieth century, and have not found them wanting. Bono’s use of allusion, parallelism, repetition, comparison, contrast and cause-and-effect show all the craft, care and lyricism that one would expect from a neo-psalmist. The focus in his lyrics is on suffering (both “becoming” and

“disintegrative”), combined with praise and critique but ultimately with hope and with love. His writings, as noted by Robert Vagacs, can be categorized under the Orientation

Typology of Bruggemann, as I have shown above. Through exegesis I have identified an extended list of attributes against which to measure a modern Bono-penned and U2- perfomed praise song for psalmic qualities—Hymn, Rejoice, Lament, Thanksgiving,

267 Bono/U2, “Walk On.” 268 Rolling Stone, “Bono Will Present Amnesty International Honor to Aung San Suu Kyi: U2 frontman will meet Burmese freedom fighter for first time after years of support,” Rolling Stone Music, http://bit.ly/LKvEXQ (accessed October 13, 2012).

116 "

Confidence, Wisdom, Biblical Allusion, Hope, Urban Hopelessness, Healing,

Questioning, Anger, Temptation, Irony, Anthemic.

In Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog (2003), Beth Maynard, in her piece entitled “Pursuing God with U2: An Adult Study,” commented, that as part of her six-week course, when a group is playing the recordings and videos from her recommended U2 material, they are “urged not to cut the opening, closing, and background music … the course cannot be put on by handing out lyric sheets.” This highlights the importance of the combined effect of Bono’s lyrics, U2’s musical performance and the theatrics of the stage, or tent on the audience of today.269 However, the qualities of these modern Psalms are not reliant upon the instruments of a rock group to perform or enjoy them. They can be transformed into gospel classics (“I Still Haven’t

Found What I’m Looking For”), as acoustic renditions (“Stuck In A Moment You Can’t

Get Out Of,” “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own,” “One”) and as a capella versions (a search on YouTube provides numerous examples). The ability of these songs and Bono’s lyrics to stand on their own, bodes well for their longevity. Their ambiguity and the abstract pictures that they paint, as I have discussed earlier, far from being an example of commercial timidity, will only aid their psalmic relevance in the future.

Bono has proven his technical credentials as a psalmist by writing in a form of poetry that is recognisable as psalmic through exegesis and critical analysis, based on the work of Hermann Gunkel and Walter Bruggemann. He has echoed the Jewish Davidic purpose of the Psalms (and the Irish bardic forms that followed them) by addressing the issues of lament and suffering, praise and supplication, orientation, disorientation, and

269 Raewynne J.Whiteley and Beth Maynard, Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2003), 178.

117"

reorientation to produce a body of work that, when combined with the expansive and emotive music his band members of more than thirty years have created, generates the kind of crowd reaction that one can only imagine occurring when an Israelite individual’s private prayer at a gathering in town square became the crowd’s prayer and psalm.

When does the writer of “Elvis: An American David,” a poem penned by Bono, a life-long Elvis fan, in 1995, become transformed into “Bono: An Irish David”? In this stream of consciousness poem, Bono contrasts the historic lyre-playing King to the contemporary guitar-playing Elvis:

elvis the psalmist, elvis the genius, elvis the generous.

elvis forgive us.

elvis pray for us270

When I read this, it struck me that, perhaps subconsciously, Bono sees himself in the same mold as Elvis Presley, an Irish version of David. Like the psalmist of old,

Bono’s admonition to love and hope is not just empty lyrics. They are followed with muscular action that ensures everyone—American Presidents, Canadian Prime Ministers, the World Bank—takes his call, and that makes campaigns such as Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and the Fight Against Aids so high profile and successful. It is the combination of faith and works, hope amid despair, sermon and song that justifies Bono as a contemporary psalmist.

270 John Sutherland, “Bono's poem Elvis: American David, annotated,” The Guardian, http://bit.ly/lwchE (accessed October 10, 2012).

118 "

Bibliography(

Books(

Adomnan of Iona. Life of St. Columba. Penguin Classics. New York: Penguin Classics, 1995.

Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books, 1985.

Anderson, Bernhard W. Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.

Assayas, Michka. Bono on Bono: Conversations With Michka Assayas. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006.

Ayto, John. The Oxford Dictionary of Slang. Oxford Paperback Reference. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1999.

Bateman IV, Herbert W. Interpreting the Psalms for Teaching and Preaching. Atlanta: Chalice Press, 2010.

Bede, The Venerable. Bede Historical Works. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library. Norwich, UK: William Heinemann Ltd., 1979.

Blair, Tony. A Journey: My Political Life. Toronto: Knopf, 2010.

Bordowitz, Hank, ed. The U2 Reader: A Quarter Century of Commentary, Criticism, and Reviews. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003.

Bowman, John. Window and Mirror: RTÉ Television 1961-2011. Cork, IE: The Collins Press, 2012.

Brackney, William H. A Capsule History of Baptist Principles. Atlanta, GA: History and Heritage Society, 1996.

——— Historical Dictionary of Radical Christianity. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2012.

Bradley, Ian. The Celtic Way. London: Darton Longman & Todd Ltd, 2003.

——— Columba: Pilgrim and Penitent. Glasgow, GB: Wild Goose Publications, 1996.

Bromiley, Geoffrey W., ed. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Vol 1. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995.

119"

Brown, William P. Psalms. Interpreting Biblical Texts. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2010.

Brueggemann, Walter. Message of the Psalms. Augsberg Old Testament Studies. Augsburg, DE: Fortress Press, 1985.

Byrne, Máire. The Names of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: A Basis for Interfaith Dialogue. New York: Continuum, 2011.

Cahill, Thomas. The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Hinges of History. New York: Anchor Books/Nan A. Talese, 1999.

——— How the Irish Saved Civilisation: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1995.

Calhoun, Scott, ed. Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2. Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

Carson, Thomas, and Joann Cerrito, eds. The New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. 2nd ed. Detroit, MI: Thomson Gale, 2002.

Catanzarite, Stephen. U2’s Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall. 33 1/3. London: Continuum, 2007.

Ciardi, John, and Miller Williams. How Does a Poem Mean? Boston: Houghton Mifflin College Division, 1975.

Cogan, Višnja. U2: An Irish Phenomenon. New York: Pegasus Books, 2008.

Collins, Ace. Stories Behind Men of Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009.

Coogan, Tim Pat. De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow. London: Arrow Books, 1995.

——— Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora. London: Hutchinson, 2000.

Craigie, Peter C. and Marvin E. Tate. Word Biblical Commentary Psalms 1-50. 2nd ed. Waco, TX: Thomas Nelson, 2005.

Dawn, Marva J. A Royal Waste of Time. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999.

Dunphy, Eamon. Unforgettable Fire: The Story of U2. Dublin, IE: Viking Press, 1987.

Flanagan, Bill. U2: At the End of the World. New York: Delacorte Press, 1995.

120 "

Fokkelman, J. P. Reading Biblical Poetry. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Freedman, David Noel., ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday, 1997.

Freire, Paulo. The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1985.

Gaebelein, Frank E. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary With the New International Version of the Holy Bible. Vol. 5. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991.

Garrett, Greg. We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Gay, Peter. Historians At Work - Volume 1. London: Harper & Row, 1972.

Gillingham, Susan. Psalms Through the Centuries. Blackwell Bible Commentaries. New York: T & T Clark, 2008.

Glavich, Mary Kathleen. The Catholic Companion to the Psalms. Skokie, IL: ACTA Publications, 2008.

Green, Joel B., Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall, eds. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992.

Gunkel, Hermann, and Joachim Begrich. Introduction to Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel. Mercer Library of Biblical Studies, Translated by James D. Nogalski. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998.

Hall, Douglas John. God and Human Suffering. Minneapolis, MI: Fortress Press, 1987.

Harmon, Stephen R. “U2: Unexpected Prophets.” In Singing Our Lives, edited by Robert B. Kruschwitz. Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2006.

Hawthorne, Gerald F., Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid, eds. Dictionary of Paul and His Letters. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Heaney, Seamus. The Cure At Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991.

Hunter III, George G. The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000.

The Jewish Publication Society. The Jewish Bible: Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures—the New Jps Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text: Torah * Nevi’Im * Kethuvim. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985.

121"

Jones, Anne, and Ray Conway. The Scattering: Images of Emigrants From an Irish County. Ranelagh, IE: A&a Farmar, 2001.

Joseph, Mark. Faith, God, and Rock & Roll: How People of Faith are Transforming American Popular Music. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003.

Kee, Robert. Ireland: A History. London: Abacus Books, 2003.

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Portable Edition. New York: Longman, 2005.

Kennelly, Brendan. The Book of Judas: A Poem By Brendan Kennelly. Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe Books, 1991.

Kline, Daniel T. “Playing the Tart: Texts and Intertexts for ‘Until the End of the World’.” In Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, edited by Scott Calhoun, 3-22. Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

Koch, John Thomas. Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.

Konstam, Angus. Historical Atlas of the Celtic World. London: Mercury Books, 2004.

Kootnikoff, David. Bono: A Biography. Greenwood Biographies. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2012.

——— U2: A Musical Biography (The Story of the Band). Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2009.

Lehane, Brendan. Early Celtic Christianity. New York: Continuum, 2005.

Lewis, C.S. Reflections on the Psalms. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958.

Longman, Tremper III. How to Read the Psalms. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

Mahoney, Blair. Poetry Reloaded. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Marx, Karl and Friedric Engels. German Ideology. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Maynard, Beth. “Where Leitourgia Has No Name: U2 Live.” In Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, edited by Scott Calhoun, 151-164. Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

McNeill, John. The Celtic Churches: A History AD 200 to 1200. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

122 "

McCormick, Neil. “Boy to Man: A Dublin-Shaped Band.” In Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, edited by Scott Calhoun, 3-22. Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Hope. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993.

Newell, J. Philip. Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

——— Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1997.

Perrine, Laurence. Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.

Peterson, Eugene H. The Message Compact Burgundy Bonded Leather: The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, CO: NAVPRESS, 2004.

Pocket Canons. Selections From the Book of Psalms With an Introduction By Bono. The Pocket Canon Series, New York: Grove Publishing, 1999.

Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas. The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901.

Rahner, Karl. Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2007.

Robinson, Martin. Rediscovering the Celts: The True Witness from Western Shores. London: Harper Collins, 2000.

Schaefer, Konrad, and David W. Cotter. Psalms. Berit Olam Series. Collegeville, PA: Liturgical Press, 2001.

Scharen, Christian. One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006.

Scherman, Katharine. The Flowering of Ireland. Toronto: Little Brown & Co, 1981.

Seiler, Rachel. “Potent Crossroads: Where U2 and Progressive Awareness Meet.” In Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘N’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2, edited by Scott Calhoun, 38-53. Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

Seybold, Klaus. Introducing the Psalms. New York: Continuum International Publishing, 1990.

Simpson, Ray. Exploring Celtic Christianity. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995.

123"

Somerville, Margaret A. Death Talk: The Case Against Euthanasia and Physician- Assisted Suicide. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.

Stockman, Steve. Walk on: The Spiritual Journey of U2. Orlando, FL: Relevant Books, 2005.

Teilhard De Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man. Toronto: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008.

Tertullion of Carthage. Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2006.

Thielicke, Helmut. Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature—With a Christian Answer. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Trowell, Edwin S. The Saints of Scotland. Edinburgh: T and T Clarke, 1993.

U2 with Neil McCormick. U2 By U2, Hammersmith, UK: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006.

Vagacs, Robert. Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2005.

Waltner, James H. Psalms. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 2006.

Wells, Jonathan. Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll. New York: MTV, 2007.

Westermann, Claus. The Psalms: Structure, Content & Message. Translated by Keith R. Crim and Richard N. Soulen. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2002.

Whiteley, Raewynne J., and Beth Maynard. Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2003.

Whitworth, Belinda. New Age Encyclopedia: A Mind Body Spirit Reference Guide, Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2003.

Wrathall, Mark A. U2 and Philosophy: How to Decipher an Atomic Band. Popular Culture and Philosophy. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2006.

124 "

Articles(

Adams, Tim. “U2 Concert What Church Should Be.” EthicsDaily.com. http://bit.ly/QKoFFU (accessed October 13, 2012).

Barr, Allan. “ ‘Hope’ ('ΕΛПΙ′Σ, 'ΕΛПΙ′ΖW) in the New Testament.” Scottish Journal of Theology 3, no.1 (March 1950): 68-77.

Bono. “A Decade of Progress on AIDS.” New York: The New York Times Company, http://nyti.ms/uYm8L2 (accessed October 13, 2012).

——— “We’re One but We’re Not the Same: Bono’s Jubilee 2000 Diary for Dazed and Confused.” @U2, http://bit.ly/wuzAbq (accessed October 13, 2012).

Bunting, Madeleine and Oliver Burkeman. “Pro Bono.” globaldevelopment, guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media Limited. http://bit.ly/h83QGU (accessed October 13, 2012).

Calhoun, Scott. “Bono’s Prophetic Vox.” Christianity Today (February, 2006). http://bit.ly/I7K3Ov (accessed October 22, 2012).

——— “Rare Recording Featuring Three-Fourths of U2 For Sale: Message from 1981 described as 'fresh and relevant'.” @U2. http://bit.ly/mTzb9K (accessed October 13, 2012).

Caulfield, Keith, ed. “U2 Snags Seventh No. 1 Album.” Billboard Information Group. http://bit.ly/z0pRQy (accessed October 13, 2012).

Coethica, David. “Beyond Sport Summit – Desmond Tutu Impersonates Bono - July 9, 2009.” http://bit.ly/fEtYjK (accessed October 1, 2012).

Editorial. “Bono's Thin Ecclesiology.” Christianity Today (March, 2003). http://bit.ly/gdXjYb (accessed October 13, 2012)

Falsani, Cathleen. “Bono's American Prayer.” Christianity Today 47, no. 3 (2003). http://bit.ly/b3tOJW (accessed October 13, 2012).

——— “Bono Issues Blunt Message for Christians.” Chicago Sun-Times, December 03, 2002.

Galbraith, Deane. “Drawing Our Fish in the Sand: Secret Biblical Allusions in the Music of U2.” Biblical Interpretation 19, no. 2 (April 2011): 181-122.

Geldolf, Bob. “Live Aid.” bobgeldolf.com. http://bit.ly/e96NqY (accessed October 13, 2012).

125"

Gerstenberger, Erhard S. “Psalm 40 Und Der Gottesknecht.” Journal of Biblical Literature 96, no. 2 (June 1977): 297-298.

Gilley, Sheridan. “The Roman Catholic Church and the Nineteenth-century Irish Diaspora.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35, no. 2 (April 1984): 188-207.

Goldingay, John. “The Dynamic Cycle of Praise and Prayer in the Psalms.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, no. 20 (July 1, 1981). http://bit.ly/fMdRcM (accessed October 13, 2012).

Gratton-Flood, W. “The Twelve Apostles.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907 http://bit.ly/UyTvPb (accessed October 13, 2012).

Gross, Tom. “Bono Says He’s Jewish.” Mideast Media Analysis. http://bit.ly/VrVHx9 (accessed November 4, 2012).

Hiatt, Brian. “U2 Hymns for the Future,” Rolling Stone, March 19, 2009.

Marcuse, Harold. “Reception History: Definition and Quotations.” http://bit.ly/eECYxY (accessed October 13, 2012).

McGee, Matt. “Bono Says Songs Of Ascent Isn’t Dead.” @U2. http://bit.ly/yq5C7v (accessed October 13, 2012).

McLaren, Brian D. “Why bother with church at all?” http://bit.ly/QHiroj (accessed October 24, 2012).

Pancella, Angela. “Bible References in U2 Lyrics – Drawing Their Fish in the Sand.” @U2. http://bit.ly/ju4HZl (accessed October 13, 2012).

——— “Politics: The Art of the Possible.” @U2. http://bit.ly/x1RmRF (accessed October 13, 2012).

——— “Songwriting In Morocco, Pt. 4: The Songwriting Seam.” @U2. http://bit.ly/QuPCvj (accessed October 13, 2012).

Philbrook, Eric. “Keeping the Peace.” ASCAP Playback, November 28, 2001.

Pope John Paul II. “Jubilee Year Calls for Urgent Debt Relief.” EWTN. http://bit.ly/yGZKv2 (accessed October 1, 2012).

PR Newswire. “Remarks by President Bush at the National Prayer Breakfast.” PR Newswire Association LLC. http://prn.to/PPLGZl (accessed November 4, 2012).

Songlyrics. “Liam Reilly – The Flight of the Earls.” http://bit.ly/RCMwFD (accessed November 4, 2012).

126 "

Rolling Stone. “Bono Will Present Amnesty International Honor to Aung San Suu Kyi: U2 frontman will meet Burmese freedom fighter for first time after years of support.” Rolling Stone Music. http://bit.ly/LKvEXQ (accessed October 13, 2012).

Seales, Chad E. “Burned Over Bono: U2’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Messiah and His Religious Politic.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture Vol. 14 (Fall 2006). http://bit.ly/wIgFqk (accessed October 13, 2012).

Sutherland, John. “Bono's poem Elvis: American David, annotated.” The Guardian. http://bit.ly/lwchE (accessed October 10, 2012).

U2.com. “Finding Beauty in Everything - 19 October 2001.” u2.com. http://bit.ly/hLO8wi (accessed October 13, 2012).

USA Today. “Transcript: Bono remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.” USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-02-bono-transcript_x.htm (accessed September 24, 2012).

Vallini, Gaetano. “Bono and the rock group U2: King David? A pop star.” L'Osservatore Romano, http://bit.ly/iWjbjT (accessed October 5, 2012).

Websites(

Coexist. The Coexist Foundation. http://bit.ly/pyBFPr (accessed October 13, 2012).

Joel Osteen Ministries. “Our Ministries.” www.joelosteen.com. http://bit.ly/go54Y3 (accessed October 10, 2012).

Smith, Michael W. “Press Biography.” http://bit.ly/wbTcFE, (accessed October 13, 2012).

Unpublished(Works(

Andersson, Jonas. “Pop-culture icons as agents of change? The roles and functions of celebrity activists in peace- and development related global issues.” Master’s thesis in peace- and development work, Växjö universitet, Teleborg, Sweden, 2007. http://lnu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:205555/FULLTEXT01 (accessed November 7, 2012).

Kuehl, Rebecca A. “ ‘We Get to Carry Each Other’: An Analysis of Agency Within the Political Rhetoric of U2's Bono.” Thesis (M.A.), University of Georgia, 2007, http://bit.ly/TxZrIS (accessed November 8, 2012).

127"

Leinonen, Eeva. “Christian spirituality in the lyrics of the rock group U2.” A Pro Gradu Thesis, University of Jyväskylä, 2003. In Jyväskylä University Digital Archive, https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/7432, (accessed November 8, 2012).

Music(and(Video(

Bono/U2. “40.” War. Island Records. 1983.

——— “Acrobat.” All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Island Records. 2000.

——— “Bad.” The Unforgettable Fire. Island Records. 1984.

——— “Breathe.” No Line on the Horizon. Island Records. 2009.

——— “Bullet the Blue Sky (live).” Rattle & Hum. Island Records. 1988.

——— “Desire.” Rattle and Hum. Island Records. 1988.

——— “The First Time.” Zooropa. Island Records. 1993.

——— “Grace.” All That You Can't Leave Behind. Island Records. 2000.

——— “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.” The Joshua Tree. Island Records. 1987.

——— “I Will Follow.” Boy. Island Records. 1980.

——— “Magnificent.” No Line on the Horizon. Island Records. 2009.

——— “Moment of Surrender.” No Line on the Horizon. Island Records. 2009.

——— “North and South of the River.” Staring at the Sun. Island Records. 1997.

——— “The Ocean.” Boy. Island Records. 1980.

——— “One.” Achtung Baby. Island Records. 1991.

——— “Out of Control.” U23. Island Records. 1979.

——— “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own.” How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Island Records. 2004.

——— “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” War. Island Records. 1983.

128 "

——— “Tomorrow.” October. Island Records. 1981.

——— “Until The End Of The World.” Achtung Baby. Island Records. 1991.

——— “Wake Up Dead Man.” Pop. Island Records. 1997.

——— “Walk On.” All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Island Records. 2000.

——— “Where The Streets Have No Name.” The Joshua Tree. Island Records. 1987.

——— “With A Shout (Jerusalem).” October. Island Records. 1981.

The Boomtown Rats. “Banana Republic.” Mondo Bongo. Ensign Records.1980.

Buerk, Michael. “1984: Extent of Ethiopia Famine Revealed.” (1984): http://bbc.in/fuox2f (accessed October 13, 2012).

Doyle, Roddy. The Commitments. DVD. Directed by Alan Parker. New York: 20th. Century Fox, 1991.

Geldof, Bob, and Midge Ure. “Do They Know It's Christmas?” Phonogram Columbia. 1984.

Keane, Sean. The Irish Scattering. Circin Rua Teo. 2009.

Reilly, Liam. “The Flight of the Earls.” Greatest Hits. Emerald Records. 2006.

“The Scattering.” Part I, The Irish Empire, VHS. Directed by Alan Gilsenan, David Roberts and Dearbhla Walsh. New York: Winstar, 2001.

Secret Garden. “You Raise Me Up.” Once in a Red Moon. Decca Records. 2002.

Tewing170. “U2 Superbowl 36 halftime performance where the streets have no name HD.” YouTube LLC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og0V1UtjPt4 (accessed 25 September 2012).

Software(

Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2012.

OakTree Software. Accordance Bible Software - Library 7. Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 2007.

129"

Appendix I U2 Lyric Typology Analysis

Song Year Genre Notes H R L T C W Ba H Uh Hl Q A T I An Boy I Will Follow Twilight 1980 An Cat Dubh 1980 Into the Heart 1980 Out of Control 1980 Stories for Boys 1980 The Ocean 1980 A Day Without Me 1980 Another Time, Another1980 Place The Electric Co. 1980 Shadows and Tall Trees1980

October Gloria X X X X X Quotes the psalms I Fall Down 1981 I Threw a Brick Through1981 a Window X X Rejoice 1981 X X X X X Fire 1981 X X Revelation Tomorrow 1981 X X October 1981 X X With a Shout (Jerusalem)1981 X X X X Stranger in a Strange 1981Land Scarlet 1981 X X X X Is That All? 1981 X X

War Sunday Bloody Sunday1983 X X X X How long to sing this song Seconds 1983 X Apocolyptic-Like a thief in the night New Year's Day 1983 X X X Confidence in righteous struggle Like a Song... 1983 X X A new heart is what I need. Oh, God make it bleed. Drowning Man 1983 X X Psalm, from the POV of God The Refugee (produced1983 by Bill Whelan) X Two Hearts Beat as One1983 Love song. 1 Cor 3:18, 1 Cor 4:10 Red Light 1983 X X Surrender 1983 X X Luke 9:24-25 "40" 1983 X X X X X X X Pss. 40, 6

(i) Appendix I U2 Lyric Typology Analysis

Song Year Genre Notes H R L T C W Ba H Uh Hl Q A T I An Unforgettable Fire A Sort of Homecoming1984 X Searching Pride (In the Name of1984 Love) X X X X One man betrayed with a kiss Wire 1984 X X Drugs/heroine The Unforgettable Fire1984 Love song Promenade 1984 Love song 4th of July 1984 Instrumental Bad 1984 X X Indian Summer Sky 1984 Elvis Presley and America1984 "MLK" 1984 X X The Joshua Tree Where the Streets Have1987 No Name X X X A place high on a desert plain (Ethiopia? Belfast?) I Still Haven't Found What1987 I'm Looking For X X X X X With or Without You 1987 X X X X Agape/eros love song Bullet the Blue Sky 1987 X X X Running to Stand Still1987 X X Red Hill Mining Town 1987 X X In God's Country 1987 X X Trip Through Your Wires1987 X X X One Tree Hill 1987 X X X Redemption/rebirth/paganI don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts Exit 1987 X X X So hands that build Mothers of the Disappeared1987 X X X Nicaragua Inexplicable Rattle and Hum Helter Skelter (live) 1988 Van Diemen's Land 1988 X Desire 1988 X X Contradiction - Bono becomes preacher Hawkmoon 269 1988 X sexual frustration All Along the Watchtower1988 (live) I Still Haven't Found What1988 I'm LookingAppears For on (live) previous album Freedom for My People1988 Silver and Gold (live) 1988 X X X Ironic Preaching "Am I buggin' you?" Pride (In the Name of1988 Love) (live)Appears on previous album Angel of Harlem 1988 Tribute to Billy Holiday Love Rescue Me 1988 X X X X X I have cursed thy rodRecorded and staff with Bob Dylan When Love Comes to 1988Town X X X X I was there when they crucified my LordB.B. King Heartland 1988 X X Poetic homage to America God Part II 1988 X X X X More contradictions The Star Spangled Banner1988 Bullet the Blue Sky (live)1988 Appears on previous album All I Want Is You 1988 Love song for Ali (i i ) Appendix I U2 Lyric Typology Analysis

Song Year Genre Notes H R L T C W Ba H Uh Hl Q A T I An Achtung Baby Zoo Station 1991 Even Better Than the 1991Real Thing X X One 1991 X X X X X X Until the End of the World1991 X X X Who's Gonna Ride Your1991 Wild Horses Song about jealousy So Cruel 1991 More jealousy, obsession The Fly 1991 X Mysterious Ways 1991 Tryin' to Throw Your Arms1991 Around the World Lost soul, drunk Ultraviolet (Light My Way)1991 Love song Acrobat 1991 X X X Yeah, I'd break bread and wine Love Is Blindness 1991 X X Zooropa Love song Zooropa 1993 X X Gibson motif Babyface 1993 X X Reflection on fashion and fame Numb (The Edge) 1993 X Don't Lemon 1993 Voyeurism A man makes a picture, a moving picture; Stay (Faraway, So Close!)1993 Daddy's Gonna Pay for1993 Your Crashed Car X X X Daddy=God? Stokes 114 Some Days Are Better1993 Than Others X Life, moodiness The First Time 1993 X X X Loss of faith Play on the parable of the two sons Dirty Day (Bono and The1993 Edge) X Advice for a son See Bukowski The Wanderer 1993 X X X X Allusion to a PreacherJohnny Cash Pop Discothèque 1997 Hedonism Do You Feel Loved 1997 Love song Mofo 1997 X X X X Demons Rushdie/Yeats If God Will Send His Angels1997 X X X Crisis of faith "So where is the hope and Where is the faith and the love? Staring at the Sun 1997 Personal Last Night on Earth 1997 Hedonism, freedom Gone 1997 X X X Materialism, contradictionSuit of Lights Miami 1997 Road-trip song The Playboy Mansion 1997 X X X X X White-trash If You Wear That Velvet1997 Dress Please 1997 X X X X X Peace Get up off your need Wake Up Dead Man 1997 X X X X Ecclesiastes? If there's an order in all of this disorder…

(iii) Appendix I U2 Lyric Typology Analysis

Song Year Genre Notes H R L T C W Ba H Uh Hl Q A T I An All That You Can't Leave Behind Beautiful Day 2000 X X X Hope I know I'm not a hopeless case Stuck in a Moment You2000 Can't Get OutX Of X X Suicide of friends This time will pass Elevation 2000 Mush… Walk On 2000 X X X X Aung San Suu Kyi Home is where the hurt is Kite 2000 Father/child relationship In a Little While 2000 X? In a little while Wild Honey 2000 X John the Baptist? Peace on Earth 2000 X X X X X X NI Peace Process Jesus could you take the time To throw a drowning man a line When I Look at the World2000 X X/? X X X Ali/God New York 2000 X A modern take on "New York, New York" Grace 2000 X X X X X Grace personified She carries a pearl in perfect condition The Ground Beneath Her Feet Lyrics by Salman Rushdie How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Vertigo 2004 X X X X All of this, all of this can be yours Miracle Drug 2004 X X Christy Nolan?AIDS Sometimes You Can't 2004Make It on Your Own X X Relationship song/father Love and Peace or Else2004 X X X X End of the world Here's my heart you can break it City of Blinding Lights2004 X/? More New York What happened to the beauty I had inside of me All Because of You 2004 X X X X X X Out-and-out Praise songAll Because of you, I AM A Man and a Woman 2004 Love song No I could never take a chance On losing love to find romance Crumbs from Your Table2004 X X X X Protest Where you live should not decide Whether you live or whether you die One Step Closer 2004 Song about death Well the heart that hurts Is a heart that beats Original of the Species2004 X X X X "Be who you are" I want the lot of what you got-I want nothing that you're not Yahweh 2004 X X X ME Peace Process A city should be shining on a hill Take this heart And make it break Fast Cars 2004 X You should worry about the day That the pain it goes away No Line on the Horizon No Line on the Horizon2009 Love song to Ali Magnificent 2009 X X X X Take on "The Magnificat" my first cry, it was a joyful noise … Moment of Surrender 2009 X X X Vision over VisibilityAn insistence on looking past what you can see in favor of what could be. Unknown Caller 2009 X X X X Jer 33:3 Conversation with God I'll Go Crazy If I Don't2009 Go Crazy Tonight X Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear - 1 John 4 Get on Your Boots 2009 X X X Pop love song Stand Up Comedy 2009 I can stand up for hope, faith, love - 1 Corinthians 13:13; "God is love" - 1 John 4:16 Fez – Being Born 2009 Symphonic piece of Rebirth White as Snow (traditional)2009 X X X About invasions/frontlines - Where might we find the lamb as white as snow Breathe 2009 X X X 909 St. Jn Divine 16 June - Bloomsday - James Joyce Cedars of Lebanon 2009 X Where are you in the Cedars of Lebanon? (i v)