Paul David Hewson had the brightest spotlight on the planet, and he was going to use it for good.
As 86 million people watched the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show, the singer, known as Bono of U2, gave a joyful rendition of “Beautiful Day.” Then, as the sweet lament of “MLK” flowed into the opening guitar riff of “Where the Streets Have No Name,” he softly whispered a prayer based on Psalm 51: “Father, open my lips, so my mouth shall pour out praise.” Then he spoke the name “America” and let loose an exuberant, almost unending shout.
It was a few months after the 9⁄11 terrorist attack on America that claimed 3,000 lives, and the Irish rock band wanted not only to comfort a brokenhearted people, but remind them there’s a light that shines in the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome.
It was a fine example of what old-time believers call “witnessing,” though it was by some unlikely witnesses.
Guitarist David Evans (the Edge) and drummer Larry Mullins Jr., like Bono, are Christians. Bass guitarist Adam Clayton says he isn’t, but is respectful of the others and accepts the importance of religion in U2’s message.
None of them, however, would ever call U2 a Christian rock band.
You won’t hear their songs on K‑LOVE Christian radio stations. That isn’t who they are.
They are sexagenarian post-punk rockers who drink Guinness, casually use the f‑word, admire Johnny Cash and Andy Warhol, and live out their faith in words and actions.
Having grown up in Ireland during the sectarian strife of the Troubles, they want no part of using faith as a cudgel in the culture wars.
Bono’s religious formation was different from that of most Dublin boys of the 1970s. His father was Catholic, and his mother was Protestant, and they attended different churches with the same name, St. Canice’s. His mother died when he was 14, leaving an emptiness his father and older brother couldn’t fill. His father eventually lost his faith, but toward the end of his life told his youngest son not to lose his because it was the most interesting thing about him.
The same year he lost his mum, Bono fell in love with Alison Stewart, or Ali, who is his wife and the mother of his three children. It was also during high school at Temple Mount in Dublin that he and the friends who became U2 found each other, and together they discovered a group of charismatic young Christians, Shalom, who lived a life of radical simplicity and deeply influenced the future rock stars. But when some leaders of Shalom insisted they had to choose between their nascent musical careers and their worship group, the boys chose U2.
Bono, the vocalist, has been the most vocal about his devotion.
In his memoir, Surrender, he writes, “If I was in a café right now and someone said, ‘Stand up if you’re ready to give your life to Jesus, Id be the first on my feet.’”
Yet at the end of the book, he admits that “spiritual maturity” feels far out of reach for him, and he is skeptical of organized religion.
“I’ve never found a church I could call home, and I tell the kids to be wary of religion, that what the human spirit longs for may not be corralled by any sect or denomination,” he said. In his view, “church is not a place but a practice.”
Bono has long practiced “church” by being an advocate for the most marginalized. He has worked with Bobby Shriver of the Kennedy family and Microsoft’s Bill Gates to create sustainable development for those in extreme poverty, advocated for debt relief for poor nations as a leader of Jubilee 2000, and helped persuade President George W. Bush to provide low-cost antiviral drugs for those affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa, thus saving 25 million lives. It’s possibly the largest humanitarian effort in the history of the world.
“Fame is currency,” Bono explains, and he wants to use his for good things.
Because of his activism and his art, Bono got to be the keynote speaker at the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast and was blessed by Pope John Paul II.
That’s currency.
He has befriended Mikhail Gorbachev, Pavarotti, Billy Graham, Barack Obama, and Bob Dylan.
His passion and intensity, however, can be off-putting, even to those who like him.
Once Bush had to interrupt him in the middle of a harangue.
“Can I speak? I am the president,” he reminded Bono.
Forty years after U2 rose to fame with their third LP, War in 1983, they are still one of the world’s greatest rock bands. They have sold more than 150 million records, earned 22 Grammy Awards, and have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
After the pinnacle of their success with The Joshua Tree in 1987 and a movie about its American tour, U2 went through a glam phase with their Zoo TV extravaganza, then faded into relative obscurity in the late 90s.
In October 2000, though, they made a comeback with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, arguably their best effort, and their most spiritual album since October.
I first heard its track “Beautiful Day” while walking outside a record store in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, about the time it was released, and I was bowled over by its clean, energetic sound and optimistic tone, which permeated the whole album.
One of the songs I like best is “Grace,” which closes the album. Like many U2 songs, it has a double meaning. It’s the name of a girl, but it’s also about God’s unmerited favor, which is central to Christian belief about forgiveness and salvation:
Grace, she takes the blame
Covers the shame
Removes the stain
What left a mark no longer stings,
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things.
In an interview with Parisian journalist Michka Assayas in 2004, Bono said other religions are based on karma, the belief that, good or bad, you get what you’ve got coming to you. Grace is its opposite.
“I’d be in big trouble if karma was going to be my final judge,” he said. “I’m holding out for grace.”
That LP was soon followed by another masterful production, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, with its hit single, “Vertigo,” which was featured in an Apple iPod TV ad.
U2 has had some highs and lows since then, but this year is one of their high points. Bono published his best-selling memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, in October and began a book tour in New York City in November. Last month the band released Songs of Surrender, an album of old material redone in a new way, and they’ve announced plans for a concert residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas this summer. Also in March, Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with Dave Letterman, was streamed on Disney+. And Bono has given interviews to Christianity Today for a cover story and to David Brooks of Atlantic Monthly. In both, he talks about his faith.
There was a time when many evangelical Christians shunned U2 because its members drank and swore and didn’t fit the stereotype of the devout. Some believed their hit single, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was a confession that they had not found God after all. Or yet. But Bono calls it “a gospel song for a restless spirit” and believes that faith is a journey, not an arrival.
These days, many younger evangelicals, as well as Catholics and other Christians, are more accepting of U2’s unconventional Christianity.
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I don’t think Bono is a prophet, and I differ with his idea that “There is no promised land, only the promised journey, the pilgrimage.”
But I do believe he is close to the mark with his emphasis on love as the heart of the Christian faith.
“Love cares more for others than for self,” the Apostle Paul says in Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message.
Like St. Paul, Paul Hewson believes love for those Jesus called “the least of these” is particularly important.
I’ll let him have the last word: “Where is God?” He is in “the slums and the cardboard boxes where the poor have to play house. In the doorways as we step over the divine on our way to work. In the silence of a mother who has unknowingly infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives,” he writes in Surrender. “God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war, in the bare hands digging for air. God is with the terrorized. At sea with the desperate, clinging onto drowning dreams. God is with the refugee. I hear his son was one. God is with the poor and the vulnerable, and God is with us if we are with them.”
