Chad E. Seales
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Abstract
Within the last decade, many fans and members of the popular press
have labeled Bono, lead singer of the band U2, a “Rock ‘n’ Roll
Messiah,” because of his global humanitarian efforts and relentless
effusion of theological and political messages in song and concert. Focusing
on the relationship between religious practice and secular activism,
I argue that Bono has performed a secularized soteriology–a
public prescription of spiritual and economic salvation unbounded
by religious institutions–that conjures an imagined World Polity;
and this message has been packaged and delivered in ways that blur
distinctions between show business and modern revival techniques.
Introduction
[1] In February 2006, Bono, lead singer for the Irish Rock band U2,
presented the keynote speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in
Washington, DC, an event organized by an evangelical Christian foundation. After
admitting to a crowd of over 3,000 people, including President George
W. Bush, members of congress, and a sampling of world leaders, that, “there’s
something unnatural… something unseemly… about
rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents,” Bono
gave a homily (his term) on the virtues of aiding the sick and poor
in Africa. Making reference to a “higher law,” he
called world politicians to move beyond religion, “because
it often gets in the way of God,” and embrace the “era
of grace” that began with the new Millennium, the year of Jubilee
(Lev. 25-27).[1]
[2] Bono’s speech at the prayer breakfast is just one example
why fans and members of the popular press have labeled him a “Rock ‘n’ Roll” Messiah. While
Bono has infused theological and political messages into U2 songs
since the 1980s, he has transformed these lyrical homilies into relentless
political action within the last decade. Africa has been at
the center of this action. Toward the end of the twentieth
century, Bono joined Pope John Paul II and others in the Jubilee
2000 movement, or Drop the Debt Campaign. Invoking the Levitical
tradition of a Jubilee year, when debt was forgiven without penalty,
these religious leaders called first world nations to drop the debts
of poor third world countries. Bono has continued this movement in
the new millennium. In 2002, Bono founded DATA, a non-profit
organization that has advocated heavily for debt relief on behalf
of African nations and has been highly successful, to the surprise
of many. Since that time, Bono has frequently “mounted
the pulpit” as front man for DATA, preaching to presidents
and politicians.
[3] Although Irish, Bono has focused on the United States as his
primary media outlet. Politically, Bono has followed a path
similar to U2, which remained rooted in Ireland but traveled to America
to discover global musical success. This pattern, of course,
is not peculiar to U2. The rise of the Irish band merely illustrates
the transatlantic ties to the “American production” of
rock ‘n’ roll. But Bono adds another element to
the equation. Not only does he stand with U2 in cultural streams
of American music, he also stands with DATA in fields of American
evangelists. Bono’s methods of advocacy and his techniques
of political conversion resemble the modern revival techniques of
American evangelists perfected by Charles Finney in the nineteenth
century. And like his American evangelical counterparts after Finney,
from D.L. Moody to Billy Graham, Bono has toured both sides of the
Atlantic and traveled the globe preaching his message of debt forgiveness
for Africa. In terms of form and effect, Bono is close company
with American revivalists.
[4] Through his advocacy for Africa, Bono has fused strands of American
rock ‘n’ roll and revival into a religious politic. This
fusion, however, involves more than just music and religion; it is
also an ideological imagining of a politically and economically integrative
process. In his work with DATA, Bono advocates for the inclusion
of African nations within an emerging U.S. led World Polity. This
inclusion, in turn, is predicated on the global expansion of democracy
and capitalist markets. Bono’s promotion of World Polity
is an example of what sociologists have called “ideological
globalization from above.”[2] Further,
Bono’s attempt to integrate African nations into this polity
is part of a modern secular project. It assumes that nation-states
are sovereign (they can regulate defined borders) and that this sovereignty
is based on Enlightenment Reason, not religious tradition or practice. Jose
Casanova has argued that the modern global public sphere, or World
Polity, that emerged in the late twentieth century has exhibited
a rationalized Enlightenment impulse. In order to participate
in this polity, social actors, understood by Casanova as mainly nation
states, must adapt to the demands of modernity born out of this impulse. For
Casanova, this is especially true for religion. He argues, “that
only a religion which has incorporated as its own the central aspects
of the Enlightenment critique of religion is in a position today
to play a positive role in furthering processes of practical rationalization.”[3]
[5] If the integration of African nations into a World Polity is
understood as an example of “practical rationalization,” then
Bono plays the role of religious broker in this process. He
is an agent for African nations in global political and economic
markets and his primary methods of negotiation are religious. Bono’s
project of nation building in Africa through DATA, an explicitly
secular process, is also an implicitly religious practice. Bono’s
advocacy for Africa illustrates practically what Talal Asad has argued
theoretically about the “the concept of the secular,” that
it “cannot do without the idea of religion.”[4] Through
his advocacy for Africa, Bono has preached a “secularized soteriology,” a
public prescription of spiritual and economic salvation unbounded
by religious institutions.[5] Performing religious practice as secular activism
and secular activism as religious practice, Bono promotes a U.S.
led World Polity with evangelical flare and eschatological expectation.
[6] In this paper, I describe the “elective affinity” between
Bono’s message of salvation for individuals and nation-states
and the “rationalized” political and economic order of
World Polity. My understanding of elective affinity and soteriology
as an explanation of “what one must do to be saved” is
indebted to Max Weber.[6] Linking Bono’s lyrical soteriology of individual
salvation to his political prescriptions for “what an African
nation-state must do to be saved,” my interpretation of Bono’s
work with DATA corresponds to three aspects of Weber’s theoretical
description of soteriology. First, Weber argued that a social agent
could not conceive of salvation or redemption without a coherent “image
of the world,” which is provided by the dominant society. But
Weber also believed that the “germ” of this theodicy,
or rationalized conception of a totalizing moral world, was found
in “the myth of the redeemer.” And finally Weber maintained
that, “almost always … some kind of theodicy of suffering
has originated from the hope for salvation.”[7]
[7] Following this three-part structure, I argue in the first section
that America is the dominant manufacturer of a soteriological “image
of the world” (of democracy and free markets within a World
Polity) and that Bono seizes upon these ideals and strives to remake
them in his own interests.[8] For
Bono, the “idea of America,” like the “idea of
religion,” is that which must be overcome. In the second
section, I examine Bono’s Messianic promotions as one “germ” of
World Polity and I compare his religious politic and his techniques
of conversion to American revivalists.[9] In
the third section, I propose that Bono’s soteriological aspirations
for Africa provide one form of theodicy for World Polity. In
other words, Bono has explained the spread of democracy and the expansion
of capitalist markets in Africa in terms of its hope for political
and economic salvation for those suffering across the continent. Finally,
I conclude by suggesting that like many American revivalists before
him, Bono has provided a religious solution to a moral and economic
dilemma.
Overcoming America: Bono Preaches Global Politics
[8] Although Bono is not native to the United States, like many of
his immigrant predecessors he has been inextricably linked with America. In
terms of his political relationship to America, Bono is somewhere
between the “Liberator” Daniel O’Connell, who sent
out an appeal from Ireland in 1841 to the Irish in America to join
the abolitionist cause, and John Riley, the Irish-American soldier
who defected to the Mexican side in the Mexican-American war.[10] Like
these Irish compatriots before him, Bono has preached against the
injustices of America both home and abroad. In U2 songs, Bono
has often juxtaposed biblical images of human struggle with God against
global examples of human struggle with America. For example, “Bullet
the Blue Sky,” one of Bono’s earliest sermons to America,
contrasts biblical allusions of human entanglement with God– “In
the locust wind, comes a rattle and hum, Jacob wrestled the Angel
and the Angel was overcome”–with images of U.S. military
involvement in Central America in the 1980s .[11] In this cacophonous song, lead guitarist, “the
Edge,” imitates the rattle and hum of fighter planes while
Bono describes them, “spraying bullets on women and children
in tin huts and city streets” across the hills of San Salvador. For
Bono, the Salvadoran disappeared have run “into the arms of
America.” Throughout “Bullet the Blue Sky,” Bono
moves across time and space: across national boundaries, from El
Salvador to the United States, across historical markers, from Jacob
to John Coltrane, and across geographic location, from rural hills
to city streets. This is an image of Bono lyrically tangled
up with America.[12]
[9] Now cut to 2001 at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, where Bono
is at work in concert.[13] The front section of the wrap-around
upper deck of the Continental Airlines arena is lined with advertisement
boards. Bono has positioned himself at the apex of the heart-shaped
walkway that extends from the stage. U2 is in the middle of “Bullet
the Blue Sky,” and Bono has grabbed a spotlight. In the
darkened arena, he shines it across the advertisement boards and
cries out against the evils of capitalism. He then chides America
for hoarding its wealth and ignoring the AIDS crisis in Africa. The
homily ends, the refrain begins, and the song climaxes. Seconds
later, Bono announces that Bill Clinton and a United Nations representative
are in the house, along with the Beastie Boys. Bono praises
them for their humanitarian work, and he calls for more funding for
AIDS research and more aid to Third World countries.[14] This
is an image of Bono politically tangled up with America.
[10] Born Paul Hewson in 1960 to a Protestant mother and Catholic
father in Ireland, Bono is no stranger to religion and politics.[15] His
religious renderings are fused with political conviction. Though
Irish, Bono embraces America and more importantly, he calls on America
with religious fervor. America is Bono’s spiritual wilderness,
a land of religious promise and political possibility.[16] In
contrast to his political message, however, Bono’s spiritual
convictions are amorphous. I do not attempt a history of Bono’s
spiritual journey here.[17] Rather
I reference lyrics, concert performances, and speaking engagements,
as they relate to Bono’s current political activism, continually
emphasizing his religious imagination. In the public performance
of his religious politic, Bono often plays a role similar to public
theologians. Martin Marty, historian of American religion, has defined
public theology as “an effort to interpret the life of a people
in the light of a transcendent reference.” In the sense that
he publicly articulates moral causes–Third World debt relief
and an international fight against AIDS in Africa–in light
of transcendent references, God and America, Bono performs the role
of a public theologian.[18]
[11] Bono has called on American politicians, economists, theologians,
and religious and social activists, particularly evangelicals,[19] to help him with his causes. His political
buddies have ranged from Jesse Helms to Bill Clinton.[20] In
2002, he went on a tour of Africa with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul
O’Neill.[21] He has met frequently
with Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs.[22] He has pleaded his causes on the Oprah
Winfrey show[23] and in front of an evangelical audience at Wheaton College.[24] Pat
Robertson has voiced his support for debt relief; Franklin Graham
has helped him deliver Christmas gifts to African children;[25] and Melinda and Bill Gates have helped fund DATA, the organization
for debt relief and health funding in Africa that grew out of the
Jubilee 2000 campaign.[26] Of course, Bono has engaged public figures outside the United
States, from Pope John Paul II to Desmond Tutu to United Nations
councils, but his primary allies are American. And for Bono,
America consumes the global anyway. Bono has said, “I
live in America. Everyone lives in America.”[27] Indeed,
America is Bono’s congregation; it is his pulpit.
[12] If America is Bono’s pulpit then what is his message? Bono
draws on American symbols of the Constitution, the American “Idea,” and
the rhetoric of universal freedom, human rights, and participatory
democracy to imagine a global civil society or World Polity comprising
these values. Bono told USA Today, “America is not just
a country; it's an idea. It's like it's hardwired into America: the
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence.”[28] He then envisions social change as the integration of
social agents, from individuals to nation states, into this polity. In
his Harvard commencement address in 2001, Bono discussed America’s
responsibility to Africa and then told the graduating class, “Isn't ‘Love
thy neighbour’ in the global village so inconvenient? God writes
us these lines but we have to sing them ... take them to the top
of the charts, but its not what the radio is playing–is it?
I know.”[29] Referring
to a transcendent moral authority, Bono makes a plea for global communal
compassion on behalf of Africa. Invoking a prophetic discourse
familiar to historians of American religion, Bono calls America to
an equality that, according to him, is as yet unsung.
[13] Martin Luther King, Jr. once proclaimed to his opponents that, “We
shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to
endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul
force.”[30] In a Protestant fashion resembling
King, Bono emphasizes a spiritual freedom inside each individual
that is impossible to regulate with external control. You can
regulate bodies, but you can’t regulate souls. This is
what Bono means when, referring to the incarceration of Nelson Mandela
in South Africa, he sings, “outside are the prisoners, inside
the free.” Like the apostle Paul in his Roman cell, Mandela
remains inwardly free in spirit and mind; it is the jailers outside,
those representing apartheid that are prisoners of their own injustice. And
invoking King, who was also concerned with fair labor practices–after
all, he was involved in a workers’ strike in Memphis on the
eve of his assassination–Bono strives to “set the prisoners
free,” both inside and outside the economic “iron cage.” While
distributing his message of love on the waves of global economic
flows, Bono shakes loose change from the pockets of the world’s
bankers, brokers, and politicians. Bono hopes that the redistribution
of wealth, in the form of first world philanthropy and debt forgiveness,
will free third world countries from their economic shackles. Moving
towards an imagined horizon of economic possibility, where the world’s
poor can release their spiritual colors on a global stage, Bono promotes
a moral rendering of World Polity and transparent expansion of capitalist
markets.[31]
[14] In sum, Bono religiously promotes an emerging U.S. led World
Polity. This polity is marked by an incomplete international
civil society that emphasizes certain “shared” values
expressed in multiple human rights discourses. Further, this
World Polity is an extended imagining of U.S. civil society and exhibits
all its internal contradictions of promise and discontent. As
theological performer, Bono sees himself as a moral conscience of
this polity, labouring for the realization of globalization’s
promises. Again, Bono’s hope in the promises of globalization
is rooted in his belief that love can conquer all; this includes
God, America, and capitalist markets. For example, even on
U2’s most self-indulgent album, Pop, which took ironic
aim at the “bubble gum” marketing of globalization, Bono
sang, “You can reach, but you can’t grab it. You
can’t hold it, control it. You can’t bag it. You
can push, but you can’t direct it. Circulate, regulate,
oh no. You cannot connect it–love.”[32] For Bono, it is love and only love that
can rattle the “iron cage” of late-modern capitalism.[33] In other words, Bono, like King, hopes that the liberties of
the few will become liberty for all. And, as Bono sings in a song
dedicated to King, he also believes that the best way to spread such
liberties is through a message of love.[34]
[15] It is perhaps symbolic that his high school peers named Bono
after a hearing aid, because this is exactly the role he sees himself
performing today on the global scene; he believes he is helping first
world countries, especially the United States, hear the pleas of
the third world. And curiously, the name of the hearing aid
device, Bono Vox, is a derivative of Bona Vox, which in Latin means “good
voice.” Bono “listens” to the “cries
of the oppressed,” the voices of those suffering in Africa
that may go unheard in America, and gives “voice to these voiceless.” But
Bono, as his critics are quick to point out, also makes quite a bit
of money representing the underrepresented.[35] Bono
is a culturally concerned pragmatic and benevolent capitalist.[36] He, like his American
counterpart Oprah, who according to historian Kathryn Lofton is a
priestess of spiritual capitalism in America, has nothing against
making money.[37] Yes,
Bono advocates the redistribution of wealth to African nations, but
like Oprah this redistribution is through philanthropic gift; it
is only for the purpose of leveling the economic playing field, enabling
individuals and nation-states to become self-determining. While
lyrically and politically tangled, Bono is also economically tangled
up with America.
[16] So Bono wrestles the Angel, but is the Angel overcome? The
biblical allusion to Jacob in “Bullet the Blue Sky” can
be extended metaphorically to Bono. As the narrative in Genesis
suggests, Jacob wrestled a messenger of God during the night. Wrenched
together at daybreak, the messenger asked Jacob to be released. But
Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The
man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he
answered. Then the man said, “Your name will no longer
be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with
men and have overcome.”[38] Performing
Jacob, Bono struggles symbolically with God and the United States. Bono
understands both God and America as that which must be overcome. For
Bono, America is a messenger of God’s
potential goodness, God’s grace, understood here as the ability
to forgive debt. And like the messenger in the story, America
has the power to name: it has the power to grant or dispose a nation
state. Bono, through DATA, recognizes this power and calls
on it on behalf of God’s people. Wrenched at daybreak
with America, Bono demands grace. With reference to God, he
requests a new covenant of fairness at the edge of economic possibility.
Overcoming Religion: Bono Blurs the Lines Between Rock ‘n’ Roll
and Revival
[17] On U2’s “Vertigo” tour, Bono wears a headband
in concert that includes the major symbols of Islam, Judaism, and
Christianity–a Crescent, the Star of David, and the Cross–within
the word “Coexist.” Bono dons the headband, which some
have referred to as the “rock messiah bandana,” during “Love
and Peace or Else” and keeps it on for other tunes, including “Miss
Sarajevo,” a song that asks, “Is there a time for first
communion? Is there a time for synagogue? Is there a time to turn
to Mecca, beauty queen before God?” Bono concludes by
reflecting, “Is there a time for shared values … a time
for human rights?” As one fan recounted in an online
blog, during “Bullet the Blue Sky,” Bono “slips
his rock messiah bandana over his eyes and gets down on his knees
with his hands over his head.” This fan continued to
write, “I think he's trying to make a point about Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo Bay.”[39] And
in what some refer to as the “We are all children of Father
Abraham” sermon, Bono explains the significance of the headband
to the audience by pointing to each symbol while delivering in cadence, “Jesus,
Jew, Muhammad; It’s true, all sons of Abraham.”[40]
[18] As mentioned earlier, Bono’s performance of “Bullet
the Blue Sky,” was one of his earliest sermons to America. During
a break in the song, Bono would launch into a prophetic homily, as
he did in the 1980s on the “Rattle and Hum” album and
tour. Back then it was about American militarism or, in other
songs, apartheid and South Africa. Later, at the turn of the
new millennium, on the “Elevation” tour, it was the moral
dangers of materialism, the failure of the European Union, or the
AIDS crisis in Africa. And on the “Vertigo” tour, it
has been a post-9/11 message of religious transcendence. In
each case, the message is reproduced, packaged and delivered in a
rationalized fashion. The content may change, but the method
stays the same. The lights dim, Bono shines a spotlight around
a packed stadium. Bono breaks out his “messiah headband.” Bono
calls out visiting politicians seated in a luxury box. Bono
runs around a heart-shaped stage. These are techniques of show,
yes, but they also resemble the modern revival techniques perfected
by nineteenth century American evangelists.
[19] Flashback to upstate New York in 1830, to an area referred to
by American religious historians as the “burned-over district” because
of its sweeping religious fervor, where evangelist Charles Finney
declared to a captive audience of mostly middle-class Christians
that, “God has made man a moral free agent.” Finney’s
homily that November day at the Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester
was the culmination of five years of revival work. And, as Paul E.
Johnson argued, it signaled a revolution in American religious thought
and practice, a turn away from divine providence to human agency.[41] Finney-led
revivals were part of a larger cultural and theological shift, one
predicated on the premise that humans played a role in personal and
collective salvation. This is why revivals were so important
for Finney: they were necessary vehicles of Christian conversion,
regeneration, and social purification.
[20] For Finney, the prosperity of the church depended upon revivals
and he asserted that, “no doctrine is more dangerous” than
the Calvinist notion that revivals were a miracle, and as such beyond “the
ordinary rules of cause and effect.”[42] In other words, it was not enough, as Jonathan
Edwards had done, to just preach the word and leave it to God to
sort through the sinners. Like a farmer, the revivalist must
sow his seed and, with the help of God, he should soon harvest a
crop. In contrast to miracles, Finney argued that revivals
were, “The right use of appropriate means.” Like
crops, revivals required methodical action and followed set “stages
of conviction, repentance, and reformation.” In each
revival, Finney employed a repertoire of rhetorical and material
techniques, including the famous “anxious bench,” where
seekers were called to ponder their eternal souls in full gaze of
all gathered.
[21] With his pioneering “modern revival techniques,” Finney
overcame the dominant Calvinist theology preached in the Protestant
churches of his day. Initially, Finney stood outside those
churches, rebuking them with prophetic voice. His opponents,
in turn, denounced Finney’s excessive emotional promotions
and his disregard for God’s providence. But eventually,
a number of his critics were converted, including Lyman Beecher,
a Presbyterian minister in Boston and sworn enemy of Finney. Beecher,
who had once vowed to “call out the artillerymen” if
Finney ever brought his revivals to Boston, welcomed him into his
pulpit in 1831.[43] The
impact of Finney’s preaching, felt in churches from Boston
to Rochester to Philadelphia, illustrates the institutional connections
between the revivals and congregations. As historian Donald
Mathews put it, “… one cannot have a revival without
churches.”[44] Through
revivals, Finney helped broaden the scope of a number Protestant
churches in America, expanding their membership from the elect to
the converted.
[22] I spend so much time on Finney because his revivals symbolize
a larger historical phenomenon of the Second Great Awakening, the
series of revivals from the 1780s to the 1830s that Mathews argues
was a “nationalizing” force in America. According
to Mathews, these revivals helped organize a geographically dispersed
group of people into a national body through the formation of “thousands
of [similar] local organizations that helped to create ‘a common
world of experience.’”[45] What the Second Great Awakening did
was, in the words of Nathan Hatch, “democratize” Christianity
in America. The revivals brought the principles of democracy,
individualism, and self-governance, to the people through the church. During
this time, preachers, the voices of the popular church, “fanned
the flames of religious ecstasy” from the pulpit and were accompanied
by “rousing gospel singing.” For Hatch, the revivals
of the Second Great Awakening were, “the very incarnation of
the church into popular culture.”[46]
[23] Focusing on their cultural impact, I compare the religious work
of American revivalists, like Finney, with Bono’s political
activism. Bono’s political work mirrors the religious
work of select American revivalists since the nineteenth century;
it has a similar net effect. For example, Bono’s work
with DATA, moralized in concerts and speaking engagements, promotes
the same principles–democracy, individualism, and self-governance–that
were distributed, or made “incarnate in popular culture” by
Second Great Awakening revivalists. And by comparison, Bono’s
methods of distribution and strategies of conversion, his concert
antics and rhetorical tropes, highly resemble those of Finney, as
well as later evangelists, such as D. L. Moody, Sam Jones, and Billy
Sunday, who took religious showmanship to new heights.[47] Like
these revivalists, Bono is out to make converts. In his address
at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, U.K., Bono confessed, “If
you're already converted, you don't need me preaching at you. Though
I must admit I enjoy it.”[48]
[24] Similar to Finney, Bono has his own conversion techniques. For
example, when Bono calls out visiting politicians at his concerts,
including Bill Clinton and United Nations representatives, he is
putting them on his version of the anxious bench. He is placing
them in the political gaze of his audience until they convert to
his cause. In terms of conversion tactics, Bono is comparable
to Finney, who believed that after conversion at a revival a new
believer:
… will be filled with a tender and burning love for souls. They
will be in agony for individuals whom they want to have saved;
their friends, relations, enemies. They will not only be urging
them to give their hearts to God, but they will carry them to
God in the arms of faith, and with strong crying and tears beseech
God to have mercy on them, and save their souls from endless burnings.[49]
Finney moved believers spiritually and emotionally towards conversion
and Bono has had a similar effect on his political converts, including
Jesse Helms, the long-time North Carolina Senator known for his staunch
conservatism. After attending a U2 concert and meeting Bono in person,
Helms was reportedly moved to tears and later became a strong supporter
of the fight against AIDS in Africa.[50]
[25] In each revival, Finney tried to bring his audience closer to
God, giving them a taste of heaven, to induce repentance and conversion. Finney
describes the effect of this technique:
A revival breaks the power of the world and of sin over Christians. It
brings them to such vantage ground that they get a fresh impulse
towards heaven. They have a new foretaste of heaven,
and new desires after union to God; and the charm of the world
is broken, and the power of sin overcome.[51]
After showing the purity of the divine, Finney then called Christians,
both old and new to clean themselves up, including body and soul,
and go out and convert others. If they were diligent in their
task, together they could usher in the millennium in a few short
months. Likewise, Bono attempts to “elevate” his
audience, lifting them to a place “where the streets have no
name.” For example, on the “Elevation” tour in
2001, Bono proclaimed, “The goal is soul!” and encouraged
the audience to “turn this song into a prayer.”[52] Through albums, concerts, and endless speaking tours, Bono
tries to foster social conditions that allow for salvific bodily
expressions on earth. And although Bono does not expect to
usher in the new millennium in three months, as Finney did, he does
demonstrate a similar type of dispensationalist fervor, working diligently
for the political realization of a biblical Jubilee, the “era
of grace.”
[26] Bono’s delivery of religious messages and symbols in concerts
also resembles the methods of revivalists like Dwight L. Moody, who
incorporated gospel singing into his revivals. Song leader
Ira D. Sankey almost always accompanied Moody on his itinerant tours,
first in Great Britain and later throughout the United States. Sankey
worked from his own songbook, the “Moody and Sankey Hymn-book,” which
a New York Times reporter, who attended a Moody revival in
1875, described as, “… the best for congregational use
ever printed. Its words are full of the Gospel, its tunes express
the thoughts they are allied to, and are so simple and yet positive
in character that any one can sing them after once hearing them.”[53] Of
course, not all of U2’s songs are “positive,” but
many are straightforward and simple. Some are even gospel-like,
such as the anthem dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., “Pride
(In the Name of Love),” or the version of “I Still Haven’t
Found What I’m Looking For,” recorded with the Harlem
Gospel Choir. And few would dispute that almost the entire audience
can, and does, sing along with Bono in concert. Although Bono distances
his music from contemporary Christian “praise and worship” songs,
what he calls “happy clappy,” that are more direct descendents
of the “Moody and Sankey Hymn-book,” he does admit that
his songs “proclaim Christ.” Referencing the biblical
description of creation as a natural reflection of the divine, Bono
asserts that U2’s music has its “own proclamations” of
God.[54] In concert then, Bono often performs the dual
role of gospel song leader and evangelist; in a way, he is a rock ‘n’ roll
Moody and Sankey in one.
[27] In addition to musical and rhetorical techniques, one of the
most striking similarities between Bono and American revivalists
is his continued attempts to “overcome religion.” As
I mentioned earlier, Bono expressed at the 2006 prayer breakfast
that he felt like “religion often gets in the way of God.”[55] Bono
interprets his resistance to “religion” as a lesson learned
from growing up in an Irish home with a Protestant father and a Catholic
mother. So on one level, Bono’s attitudes towards “organized
religion” are shaped by his Irish context. In the battles
between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, Bono refused to take
sides. But on another level, Bono’s determination to
work outside religious institutions is related to his evangelical
disposition. With the exception of bassist Adam Clayton, U2
members were actively involved in evangelical Christian groups in
their early years. They were so involved, in fact, that it
became an issue for the band. At one point, Bono, Larry Mullen,
Jr. and the Edge contemplated whether to continue in rock ‘n’ roll
or take on more overtly Christian pursuits.[56] They, of course, chose
the former. But it is clear that their evangelical impulse
did not die with that decision. Bono, in particular, has continually
privileged the “religious” individual over corporate “religion” in
his Messianic rock ‘n’ roll work.[57]
[28] Bono’s emphasis on the individual relationship with the
divine as the proper religious model of salvation is what makes his
work so similar to Protestant revivalists in America. Like
these revivalists, Bono preaches a message of individual faith over
institutional sacraments. In Protestant fashion, Bono “protests” against
clergy, those “staring at the sun.”[58] His suspicion of organized religion
echoes the words of Billy Sunday, “faith in Jesus saves you,
not faith in the Church.”[59] For
Sunday, Jesus is the only way. For Bono, Jesus is his way but
not the only way; it is up to the individual to find a personal path
for the soul. Bono’s soteriological prescriptions are
secular because, for him, religious individuals, and not church institutions,
are sites of salvation.
[29] In other words, in the Roman Catholic Church the Eucharist is
a vehicle of salvation; it is made sacred as “real presence” through
the charisma of the office, not the individual.[60] The
priest has power because of a relationship to the church, through
apostolic succession. Bono protests the priestly authority
of the church, opting for individual choice over institutional obligation. In
the song “Acrobat,” recorded on Achtung Baby, Bono
quips, “Yeah, I would break bread and wine if there was a church
I could receive in.”[61] Bono’s lyrical insistence on the
primacy of soul-freedom, of individual sovereignty or self-determination,
harkens Finney’s assessment that “man is a moral free
agent.”
[30] Remarkably, Bono’s attitude towards the Eucharist resembles
even the likes of Sam Jones. In a revival sermon, Jones once
asked rhetorically, “What must I do to be saved?” As
part of his answer Jones said:
I might advise a man to take the sacrament of the Lord’s-supper. This
is one of the sacraments of the Church of God … yet
I see how a man may take communion regularly, may partake of
the sacrament once a month, and die and be lost at last.[62]
For Jones, only individual belief in God’s grace can save a
person from being “lost” and in danger of the fires of
hell, not the sacraments of the Church. While Bono may not
share Jones’ opinion that salvation “is not a song” but
simply “deliverance from sin,” he does share an evangelical
rejection of sacramental salvation.[63] This
rejection, along with his emphasis on individual moral freedom, is
what makes Bono’s message a “secularized soteriology.” Like
American revivalists from Finney to Jones, Bono has preached a message
of individual salvation without church mediation and has distributed
this message using similar revival techniques.
Overcoming Globalization: Bono Prays for Africa
[31] In “Bullet the Blue Sky,” Bono dealt with the dark
side of America, but not all of his sermons linger there. Others
are much more optimistic about America’s latent goodness. Bono
may uncover the sins, but he quickly recovers the sinners with grace. U2’s
album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, is perhaps the
band’s most optimistic and straightforward work.[64] Songs titled “Peace on Earth,” “Grace,” and “Beautiful
Day” paint a portrait of human reconciliation and possibility. While “Peace
on Earth” is Bono’s utopian prayer, “Grace” is
his moral mantra; it is his prescription for proper disposition for
the faithful while they await utopian arrival. Bono sings, “Grace
finds goodness in everything … Grace finds beauty in everything … Grace
makes beauty out of ugly things.”[65]
[32] In “Beautiful Day,” Bono infuses this notion of
grace with global images of economic progress:
See the canyons broken by cloud, See the tuna fleets clearing the
sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night, See the oil fields at first light
See the bird with a leaf in her mouth, After the flood all the colors came
out.[66]
These are contrasting images: the environmental costs of economic
progress set against a romantic spiritual optimism. The last
line, a reference to the story of Noah and the flood in Hebrew Scriptures,
implies a new world washed clean by grace and a new covenant of hope
for God’s people. As evidenced by his political activism,
this line also signals Bono’s hope that the utopian potential
of globalization will soon overcome its discontents. Grace
makes beauty out of everything.
[33] Bono’s formula for social change is clearly revealed in
the goals of DATA. According to the DATA website, which has
a photo of Bono pointing at the viewer, “DATA is a new organization
which aims to raise awareness about the crisis swamping Africa: (DATA
stands for) unpayable DEBTS, uncontrolled spread of AIDS, and unfair
TRADE rules which keep AFRICANS poor.”[67] Bono,
via DATA, is “asking that the governments of the world's wealthy
nations–the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan–to
respond quickly and generously to this emergency.” In
order for African nations to receive this funding (and this is key)
African leaders are required to adhere to the other meaning of the
DATA acronym. They are asked to practice “DEMOCRACY,
ACCOUNTABILITY and TRANSPARENCY–to make sure that help for
African people goes where it's intended and makes a real difference.”[68] Thus, in order to receive
foreign monetary aid, African nations must shape themselves in the
image of America.
[34] United States foreign aid, though, is not just a humanitarian
gesture; it is also a political tool.[69] U.S.
foreign spending on world poverty was at its highest during the Cold
War when the U.S. saw fighting poverty as preventing communism. Foreign
aid fell sharply after the Cold War in the 1990s but has picked up
again after September 11. Economists Lael Brainard and Robert Litan
argue:
The campaign against terrorism has provided a potentially powerful
political rationale for foreign assistance–namely, that by
strengthening foreign economies, aid may help weaken incentives for
their residents to turn to terrorism … (September 11) reinforced
the direct interest of the wealthier nations in strengthening the
trading system by rectifying the perceived inequities that prevent
millions of the world’s poor from reaping the potential
benefits of globalization.[70]
U.S. foreign spending in the form of developmental aid is one mechanism
for expanding global markets and is justified by the rhetoric of
a war on terrorism. President George W. Bush has vowed that “The
terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and we will defeat them
by expanding and encouraging world trade.”[71]
[35] Bono uses similar anti-terrorist rhetoric to gain support for
DATA. He claims there are “potentially another 10 Afghanistans
in Africa” and that the U.S. should “prevent the fires
rather than putting them out.”[72] He likens the U.S. to
a brand that has lost its shine and links this image to the war on
terror. Bono:
If the United States is a brand–and all countries in a certain
way are brands–when was the brand of the USA the most
sparkling? The answer is, of course, after the second World
War. My father looked to America like Ireland was a part of
it; he was so proud. Europeans were. That was after the Marshall
Plan, which was not just about liberating Europe, of course,
but about rebuilding Europe. Again, not just out of mercy,
but as a bulwark against the Soviets in the Cold War. Well,
this is a bulwark against Islamic extremism in the hot war.
They are analogous.[73]
Bono’s reference to the Marshall Plan is telling because it
reveals a great deal about his religious politic.[74] Using the Marshall Plan as
a model, Bono’s formula for social change draws on a tradition
that envisions America as a beacon of peace and democracy to the
world. It is a tradition that interprets America’s political
and economic errands as religious ones. Though America may
stray at times, it is still called to protect the world from all
threats to freedom, democracy, and the market, whatever form these
threats may take, whether communism, atheism, or Islamic extremism.[75]
[36] Over a half-century before Bono preached his message of “love
thy neighbour in the global village” at a Harvard commencement,
U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall outlined his own American
errand to the Harvard class of 1947. In his commencement address,
Marshall famously advocated for U.S. political and economic involvement
in the post-war reconstruction of Europe. Justifying involvement
with reference to the economic benefits to America and the world,
Marshall told the Harvard students that:
… the consequences to the economy of the United States
should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States
should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of
normal economic health in the world, without which there can be
no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed
not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty,
desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a
working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of
political and social conditions in which free institutions can
exist.[76]
Marshall’s strategies for creating global stability by expanding
American economic markets and promoting political consensus after
World Ware II have been renewed in the late twentieth century by
proponents of a “Global Marshall Plan,” including Bono
and Jeffrey Sachs, who served as an advisor for Jubilee 2000.[77] Both Bono and Sachs believe that the same model of political
and economic integration applied to Europe in the mid-twentieth century
should be applied to Africa in the new millennium. Gesturing
to their predecessor, Bono and Sachs believe that the best way to
assure stability at home and abroad is for the U.S. to fight global
poverty with aid and ideology, not to police other nations with military
might.
[37] As a component of the Global Marshall Plan, DATA is a vehicle
of democratization and the expansion of capitalist markets. In
his promotions of this plan, Bono has employed a religious rhetoric
of universal human rights and economic responsibility. Overlooked
in Bono’s celebrations of a Global Marshall Plan and his visions
of an emerging World Polity or global village, however, are problems
of missionary endeavour, problems of political and economic occupation,
problems of bureaucratic overlay, and problems of totalizing eschatology. And
all of these problems are tied to a history of European and American
colonization of Africa. Elevating Africa today is not the same
as reconstructing Europe yesterday. Some scholars may feel,
as I do, that the “stuck in a moment” myth of economic
transparency ignores legacies of wealth and their material histories;
it forgets earlier extractions of African labor and resources by
American and European powers. Bono, though, would not deny
this historical memory loss. In fact, he promotes it. Bono
hopes that the political and economic integration of Africa into “transparent” global
markets will not only eliminate poverty, it will also erase history.
Bono, like Tutu in South Africa with the reconciliation committee,
preaches a policy of forgive and forget–to ‘forgive our
debts as we forgive our debtors’–in order to move forward. In
other words, Bono truly believes in spiritual and economic rebirth,
that history can be removed from history by God’s grace and
America’s gift. After the flood all the colours come out[m1] .
[38] Many in Africa have embraced Bono’s pragmatic optimism,
calling on him as their spokesman and employing a similar rhetoric
in the interest of progress. For example, Bono has been referred
to in the Africa News Service as “a passionate champion
of Africa.”[78] Some
Africans even see Bono as a vehicle of nationalist progress. In
a letter to the editor, Hamid Sirdar, a citizen of Zimbabwe wrote:
We must be able to hold the Zimbabwe flag with pride. We must
seek to know the national anthem and sing it when appropriate. … We
cannot have selective acceptance of citizenship. I pray for
the future of our country and hope that God will give us the courage
to do what is right to improve the lives of all our people. We
need the likes of Bono here, although he is fighting an international
battle on our behalf.[79]
As advocate and mediator for African citizens like Sirdar, Bono has
manufactured his own “myth of the redeemer” and this
myth has been bought and sold throughout Africa to justify the integration
of nation-states into imagined international political spheres and
expanding economic markets across the continent. Bono hopes
that the diffusion of his message of love within the networks of
political and economic integration can open doors of global opportunity
and elevate African nation-states and their citizens, enabling sovereignty
and self-determination.
[39] In his global prescriptions for spiritual salvation through
economic integration, Bono conjures an imagined World Polity, or
global civil society, where nations are collectively judged by the
standards of a universal human rights discourse. Saskia Sassen has
described how this global civil society is potentially empowering
for wage-labour women:
The ascendance of an international human rights regime and of a large
variety of nonstate actors in the international arena signals the
expansion of an international civil society. This
is clearly a contested space, particularly when we consider
the logic of the capital market–profitability at all costs–against
that of the human rights regime. But it does represent
a space where women can gain visibility as individuals and
as collective actors, and come out of the invisibility of aggregate
membership in a nation-state exclusively represented by the
sovereign.[80]
While Bono does not theoretically replicate Sassen’s more Marxian
feminist position–where the material conditions of labour and
not the ideal interests of love are the real movers of history–he
does preach a message of sovereignty, of self-determination for both
individuals and nation-states that mirrors Sassen’s description. In
the context of World Polity, the individual is universally sacred
and the nation-state is the proper mediator between the most sacred
of personal acts, the ability to sell one’s labour at the altar
of the global market.
[40] According to Sassen, the nation-state is still an important
actor in a global market economy, even if transnational networks
and flows, which have produced shifting coalitions of interested
social actors in globalized systems, have reconfigured it. Sassen
defines sovereignty as the ability to regulate a defined region of
power in accordance to an agent’s will or self-interests. The
nation-state has usually been a good example of this type of sovereignty. A
national government can exercise its will (whether self-defined or
representative of the will of “the people”) upon its
citizens who live within a geographic (physical) and/or ideological
(imagined) territory. Using coercion, states can levy taxes,
enforce legal codes, and regulate economic exchanges, among other
things. Sassen proposes though, that globalization disrupts
sovereignty, fracturing political identities and dislocating both
coercive and consensual will. In the example of the nation-states,
governments no longer, if they ever did, have absolute control within
the spheres of power they occupy. Instead, they share these
spheres with a number of global actors.[81] In his advocacy for Africa
and his work with DATA, Bono hopes these disruptions will provide
spaces for change; globalization will overcome its discontents: an
emerging World Polity, or global civil society, organized around
a universal rights regime, will triumph over the most powerful of
nation states.
Conclusion
[41] During a concert in Chicago in 2005, U2 finished the song “Running
to Stand Still” with Bono signing “halleluiah” beneath
a digital banner that read, “On December 10, 1948 the General
Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Following the historic act the
Assembly called upon all member countries to publicize the text of
the declaration.” As the banner faded away, the band
transitioned to the next anthem, “Pride (In the Name of Love),” with
video clips of a woman reading the articles of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights shown overhead. At the end of “Pride,” Bono
called out for the audience to “Sing for Dr. King, for Dr.
King’s dream, for a dream big enough to fit the whole world,
a dream where everyone is created equal under the eyes of God. Everyone!” Bono
then carried his homiletic tune from America to Africa, announcing
that Dr. King’s dream is “not just an American dream,
or an Asian dream, or a European Dream; it is also an African dream!” At
that moment, digital flags of African nations were lowered above
the stage as U2 faded into “Where the Streets Have No Name.” As
the intro gradually ascended, Bono rhythmically shouted, “From
the bridge at Selma over the Mississippi to the mouth of the river
Nile. From the swamp lands of Louisiana to the high peaks of
Kilimanjaro. From Dr. King’s America to Nelson Mandela’s
Africa, the journey of equality moves on.”[82]
[42] At the close of his 2006 prayer breakfast speech in Washington
D.C., Bono made a direct plea for U.S. funding to African nations,
saying, “To give one percent more is right. It’s
smart. And it’s blessed. There is a continent–Africa–being
consumed by flames. I truly believe that when the history books are
written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on
terror, the digital revolution, and what we did–or did not
do–to put the fire out in Africa.” In this paper, I have
described Bono’s religious politic, his model for social change,
and compared his public advocacy for Africa to the religious work
of American revivalists like Charles Finney. In many ways,
Africa is Bono’s “burned over district.” The continent
stands at the center of Bono’s imagined political process:
human rights discourses can integrate individuals and nation-states
into a World Polity. Further, I have argued that Bono’s public
advocacy for Africa, performed in concerts and speaking engagements,
reveals a secularized soteriology, a public prescription of spiritual
and economic salvation unbounded by religious institutions. Finally,
this message has been packaged and delivered in ways that blur distinctions
between show business and modern revival techniques.
[43] I conclude here by suggesting that Bono’s emphasis on
the “religious” individual over corporate “religion” goes
hand in hand with the political and economic demands of an imagined
World Polity: democracy, individualism, and self-governance. I
have compared Bono’s political work to Finney’s religious
work because, at least functionally, both have accomplished similar
tasks; they have organized individuals religiously and integrated
them economically into larger bodies. In Paul Johnson’s
interpretation, Finney’s revivals were a religious solution
to the moral dilemma of free labour in an industrializing society. In
fact, Johnson believes that the moral dilemma and political impasse
of free labor in mid-1820s New York “prepared the ground” for
Finney. Business leaders and factory owners needed a solution
for their inefficient labour force. Finney’s revivals
were their answer. In short, the revivals “… healed
divisions within the middle class and turned businessmen and masters
into an active and united missionary army.”[83] This
is why Johnson describes the 1830s revivals in the “burned
over district” as part of “a shopkeeper’s millennium.” The
revivals did not benefit society as a whole but served the interests
of an industrialist class.
[44] So the questions become: “Is Bono’s advocacy of
Jubilee, the ‘era of grace,’ part of a religious solution
to the moral dilemma of Africa? Has the plight of Africa, of
debt and AIDS, ‘prepared the ground’ for Bono?” In
this short space, I tentatively answer “yes” to both. Recall
that in 1949, another evangelist by the name of Billy Graham, who
happened to preach an anti-communist message at a revival in Los
Angeles, was thrust onto the American scene by the media efforts
of William Randolph Hearst, who told his newspaper and magazine staffers
to “Puff Graham!” That year, Graham appeared on
the cover of Life, Time, and Newsweek magazines.[84] One
could argue that Bono needs very little “puffing.” He
does plenty of that on his own rock star time. But it is also
important to remember that U2 burst onto the global scene through
their participation in “Live Aid,” a series of benefit
concerts for Africa in the mid 1980s.[85] And
the work Bono and U2 began in Africa during the 1980s has become
increasingly more relevant in a post-9/11 world. As the moral dilemma
of free labor was to Finney and the threat of communism was to Graham,
so are the challenges of debt, AIDS, and threats of terrorism in
Africa to Bono.
[45] So what does all this mean in terms of evaluating the efficacy
of Bono’s religious politic? Well, one thing is for sure:
revivals, even the rock ‘n’ roll kind, do not equal political
revolution. Instead, as I have tried to argue in this paper,
revivals are integrative, in the most Durkheimian sense–they
work in collaboration with existing religious and economic institutions
(even when they prophesy against them) and renew them by extending
their boundaries and imagining new configurations of sovereignty. Yes,
some persons may benefit, working their way up into an expanding
middle class, as they did in Rochester in the 1830s, but not everyone. Within
this model of social change, capital, both cultural and economic,
is never evenly distributed. With every political and economic
expansion is a contraction. Or as theorists Michael Mann puts
it, there is a “dark side” of democracy, a logic of coercion
and cleansing that operates underneath the ideals of freedom and
equality.[86]
[46] Take the example of Live 8, the most recent incarnation of Live
Aid and another well intentioned display of global solidarity on
behalf of the African poor. On 2 July 2005, crowds gathered
at venues in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the United
States, Canada, Japan, South Africa and the Russian Federation. The
goal of these benefit concerts was to help “Make Poverty History” by
influencing world politicians. Towards this end, the estimated
three billion viewers, more than twice as many as the initial benefit
concert, were asked to give their names and not their money for the
cause. The global display culminated with a concert finale,
referred to by organizers as the “Final Push,” in Edinburgh,
Scotland on 4 July, the first day of the G8 Summit meetings in nearby
Gleneagles Hotel.[87] By
most accounts, the concert series did sway political opinion. For
example, DATA reported that the G8 promised to “increase aid
to Africa by US $25 billion by 2010.”[88] Buoyed by this success, Bono described Live 8 as a “movement
of church people and trade unionists, soccer moms and student activists” that
gave “the poorest of the poor real political muscle for the
first time.”[89]
[47] Unfortunately, however, the political muscle flexed
on behalf of the poorest of the poor was not strong enough to
hold politicians to their promises. A year after the summit, Oliver
Buston, European Director of DATA, reported that the G8 had followed
through on only half of its commitments made at Gleneagles.[90] At the present moment, in 2006,
African nations are still struggling to compete in “transparent” global
markets. Some may argue, though, that any positive progress
is better than no progress. But as historian William Chafe
concluded in his study of the Civil Rights movement in Greensboro,
North Carolina during the 1960s, a “progressive mystique” may
hinder real democratic progress, even when it champions the ideals
of democratic discourse. As Chafe puts it, the civility
of those in power will remain in tension with the civil rights
of those in need “as long as those who take part in traditional
political discourse do not begin from the same place and do not
share the same resources.”[91] While Bono tries to counter
the resource imbalance–to free African nations of debt and
enable them to enter the global political discourse on equal footing
as other nations–his work is dependent on the philanthropy
and civility of those in power. And as long as those in
power give some aid, but not enough, then they will continue to
regulate the distribution of economic and political freedom, limiting
it to an elect few while holding it out as a horizon of hope for
the world’s poor.
[48] Put bluntly, I would have to believe that the realization of
the “era of grace” will, in the long run, serve the interests
of capital investors and industrialists more than it will benefit
African nations and their citizens. This does not mean that “good
things” will not and have not occurred. Rather it means
that, calling out Bono’s more prophetic voice, “the rich
stay healthy and the sick stay poor.”[92] Bono’s
advocacy for Africa may bring health to many, making a few more rich
and few less poor. But the distribution of economic salvation
is still contingent on the benevolence of the rich. In other
words, Bono has faith and hope in God’s grace and America’s
gift. But it remains to be seen whether this will be an American
Millennium or an African Jubilee. Bono wrestles America, but
is America overcome?
Notes
[2] For a description of the limitations of “globalization
from above,” see Richard Falk, “The Making of Global
Citizenship,” in Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order,
ed. J. Brecher et al. (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 39-50; For
a statement of the inherent potential of “globalization from
below,” see Alejandro Portes, “Globalization from Below:
The Rise of Transnational Communities,” in The Ends of Globalization:
Bringing Society Back In, ed. Don Kalb (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2000), 253-72.
[3] Jose Casanova, Public
Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1994), 233.
[4] Talal Asad, Formation of the Secular: Christianity,
Islam, Modernity (Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press, 2003), 200.
[5] By invoking the term “secular,” I am immediately
putting myself in the line of fire of both historians and sociologists
of religion. But let it be known, I am in no way invoking an
evolutionary model of secularization theory. Rather, I use
the term secular to distinguish church from state, specifically in
terms of sovereignty. Yes, there are historical moments where
church control over territory gave way to state control, yielding
modern nation-states with defined public spheres; however, I do not
believe that these secular spaces were ever as “disenchanted” as
Max Weber or other secularization theorists believed. Rather,
I agree with Celia Mariz that secularization leads to new modes of
enchantment, not disenchantment. See Cecilia Loreto Mariz, Coping
with Poverty: Pentecostals and Christian Base Communities in Brazil (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1994), 154.
[6] Weber used the concept of “elective affinity,” borrowing
from Goethe’s descriptions of romantic attraction in his novel
by that title, to describe the ambiguous causal relationships between
religious and economic interests. Weber argued that, “Not ideas,
but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet
very frequently the “world images” that have been created
by “ideas” have, like switchmen, determined the tracks
along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.” Max
Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans H. Gerth
and C Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 280;
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities (Oxford, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999). For an interpretive essay on “Elective
Affinities,” see Walter Benjamin, “Goethe's Elective
Affinities,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume
1, 1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Belknap
Press, 1996); For a discussion of Weber’s use of Goethe, see
Stephen A. Kent, “Weber, Goethe, and the Nietzschean Allusion:
Capturing the Source of the ‘Iron Cage’ Metaphor,” Sociological
Analysis (1983): 297-319.
[7] Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology,
ed. Hans H. Gerth and C Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1946), 273-74, 280.
[8] I do not think that a “dominant society” or
a “dominant worldview” is ever as coherent as Weber or
even Peter Berger would later suggest. See Peter Berger, The Sacred
Canopy (New York: Anchor, 1967).
[9] In this article, I employ a fairly limited definition
of religion as “meaning making” practices maintained
and negotiated through “church traditions,” with church
equaling “moral communities.” On meaning-making,
see Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); on moral communities, see Emile Durkheim, The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995);
on practice, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977). When I say Bono preaches
a “secularized soteriology,” I merely mean that he draws
out of church traditions a religious message and distributes this
rhetoric to extended moral communities outside church boundaries,
much like a revivalist. While I think it is a worthwhile task to
expand the scope of religious studies investigations to include popular
practices, I do not take up that task here. For such an effort,
see David Chidester, “The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of
Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock 'N' Roll: Theoretical Models
for the Study of Religion in American Popular Culture,” Journal
of the American Academy of Religion 64,4 (Winter 1996): 743-65;
see also David Chidester, Authentic Fakes: Religion and American
Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005);
On a side not, however, I will say that Chidester’s more recent
plunge into “authentic fakes” could be nuanced with more
attention to the role of tradition in defining religion. There
is a difference, I think, between the religious/political work of
Bono, predicated on church traditions, and the potlatch of “Louie,
Louie” that Chidester cites as an example of popular religion. Perhaps
this is one of the reasons Chidester omits Bono in his latest survey:
Bono’s political work is sandpaper to the easy slide of popular
religion. One would think, though, that given Bono’s
relationship to South Africa and his proximity to pop markets, Chidester
would have at least briefly discussed the “rock ‘n’ roll
messiah.”
[10] Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New
York: Routledge, 1995).
[12] For more
examples of Bono’s homiletics, see “The Hands that Built
America,” Gangs of New York Soundtrack (Interscope Records,
2002); see also U2’s performance at halftime of the 2002 Super
Bowl.
[13] Bono regularly uses U2’s concerts as a
political venue. See Robert J. Barro, “Why Would a Rock
Star Want to Talk to Me?” Business Week, 16 July 2001,
24.
[14] Personal Observations, U2 concert at the Continental
Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, NJ, 22 June 2001.
[15] Eamon Dunphy, Unforgettable Fire: Past, Present,
and Future–the Definitive Biography of U2 (New York:
Warner Books, 1987).
[16] For example, in earlier U2 songs, such as “Bad,” Bono
appropriated elements of early Christian desert mysticism. And on
the album, The Joshua Tree, Bono fuses these elements with
images of America. See Jessica De Cou, “Wide Awake: The
Appropriation of the Desert Fathers and Social Justice in U2's ‘Bad’.” Paper
presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Conference,
Atlanta, GA 2003.
[17] For theological and spiritual surveys of Bono
and U2, see Steve R. Harmon, “U2: Unexpected Prophets,” Christian
Ethics (2006), 81-88; Christian Scharen, One Step Closer:
Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos
Press, 2006); Robert Vagacs, Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics:
U2 in Theological Perspective (Brockton, MA: Cascade Books, 2005);
Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard, Get up Off Your Knees:
Preaching the U2 Catalog (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications,
2003); For what some consider the primary reference on this subject,
see Steve Stockman, Walk On: A Spiritual Journey of U2 (Relevant
Books, 2001).
[18] Martin Marty, The Public Church (New York:
Crossroad, 1981), 16. For a discussion of public theology in
the United States, see Steven Tipton, “Public Theology,” in The
Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion (Washington, DC: Congressional
Quarterly Press, 1998).
[19] There is an interesting love/hate relationship
between evangelical Christians and Bono in the United States. I
do not have the space to discuss the issue of reception here but
for brief examples see a number of articles in Christianity Today. For
two, see Cathleen Falsani, “Bono’s American Prayer,” Christianity
Today, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/003/2.38.html,
March 2003; Douglas LeBlanc, “Honest Prayer, Beautiful Grace:
The Messianic and Passionate U2 Sounds Like Itself Again,” Christianity
Today, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/002/39.77.html, 5 February
2001.
[21] Mike Lynch, “Road Show: The Rock Star and
the Treasury Secretary Demonstrate the Limits to Aid,” Reason,
http://www.reason.com/0208/co.ml.road.shtml, August 2002.
[23] See Transcript, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” 20
September 2002 (Harpo Productions, Inc., 2001).
[24] “Getting Evangelical About AIDS,” The
Christian Century, 22 February 2003, 6.
[27] Geoff Lealand, “American Popular Culture
and Emerging Nationalism in New Zealand,” National Forum (Fall
1994): 34.
[30] Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” in Strength
to Love (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 40.
[31] These goals
are the same as those shared by the United Nations. These included
eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; gender equality; universal
primary education; eradication of HIV/AIDS; see Lael Brainard, Robert
E. Litan, “No Stepping Back: America’s International
Economic Agenda for 2003-05,” Brookings Review (Winter
2003): 32.
[32] U2, Pop (Island Records, 1997).
[33] I am borrowing Weber’s classic description
of the “iron cage.” See Max Weber, Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1958).
[34] It is no accident
then that Bono’s heroes include King and Desmond Tutu, the
Anglican priest from South Africa who Bono referred to in his monologue
against apartheid, what some consider his first Messianic homily,
on the “Rattle and Hum” recording and tour from the late
1980s. See U2, “Silver and Gold,” Rattle and Hum (Island
Records, 1988). Both ministers advocate integrationist models: MLK
and civil rights, Tutu and reconciliation. Tutu is extremely
relevant to Bono’s theological model. Tutu’s “Rainbow
People of God” theology is a perfect example of what Bono’s
project is about. See Desmond Tutu, The Rainbow People of
God: the Making of a Peaceful Revolution (New York: Double Day,
1994). It is a pan-ethnic integrative theology linked to what Valerie
Moller, Helga Dickow and Mari Harris label a “new integrating
civil religion of the rainbow people” in South Africa after
the 1994 elections. Moller, Dickow, and Harris claim that this
civil religion helped South Africa transition to democracy and has
been a stabilizing factor after the transition; it fostered civic
and national pride as well as optimism for the country. See Valerie
Moller, Helga Dickow, and Mari Harris, “South Africa’s ‘Rainbow
People,’ National Pride and Happiness,” Social Indicators
Research (July 1999): 245.
[35] Jon Roe, “Bono is a Bastard, Bloody Bastard:
Gold Hearted Philanthropist or Total Fucktard? You Decide,” University
of Calgary Gauntlet: Undergraduate Students Newsweekly, http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/story/5842,15
September 2005; see also (www.bonothepuppet.com).
[36]Bono by no means preaches the same message as
liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez or Bishop Oscar Romero,
the priest murdered by U.S. trained soldiers in El Salvador in the
1980s. While Bono may publicly embrace their moral cause, he articulates
a very different political and economic vision of social change. Self-admittedly,
he is a rock star that preaches a message of elevation and integration
that is more reminiscent of W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Delany than
a Marxian brand of liberation theology. See Martin R. Delany, The
Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People
of the United States (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004); W.
E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folks (New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1994); Dubois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia:
University of Philadelphia, 1899).
[37] Kathryn Lofton, “Practicing Oprah, or The
Prescriptive Compulsion of a Spiritual Capitalism,” The
Journal of Popular Culture 39,4 (August 2006).
[38] Genesis 32: 26-28, New International Version (Wheaton,
IL: Zondervan, 1991).
[40] U2, Vertigo 2005: Live From Chicago DVD (Interscope
Records, 2005).
[41] Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium:
Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 3.
[42] Charles Grandison Finney, “A Revival Is
Not a Miracle,” in A Documentary History of Religion in
America to 1877, ed. Edwin S. Gaustad and Mark A. Noll (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 321-323.
[43] See entry on “Charles Grandison Finney,” in The
Encyclopedia of American Religious History, Edward L. Queen
II, Stephen R. Prothero, and Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr. (New York:
Facts on File, 1996), 236.
[44] Donald G. Mathews, “The Second Great Awakening
as an Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis,” American
Quarterly (Spring 1969): 23-43.
[46] Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American
Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 9.
[47] Kathryn E. Lofton, “The Preacher Paradigm:
Promotional Biographies and the Modern-Made Evangelist,” Religion
and American Culture 16 (1) (Winter 2006): 95-123.
[48] Transcript, “Bono’s Speech at Labour
Party Conference, Brighton, U.K.,” http://www.data.org, 29 September
2004.
[49] Charles Grandison Finney, “Aim to Show
What a Revival Is,” in Documentary History of Religion,
323-24.
[51] Finney, “Aim to Show What a Revival Is,” 324.
[52] U2, U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle Ireland DVD (Interscope
Records, 2003).
[53] Dwight L. Moody, “Revivalism,” in Documentary
History of Religion, 278-80.
[56] Early on, Bono and two other members of the band,
Larry Mullen, Jr. and the Edge, were members of Shalom, an evangelical
Christian group in Ireland. Dunphy, Unforgettable Fire;
see also Stockman, Walk On. An interesting aside: Stockman
is, “a Presbyterian minister in Ireland [who] works in the
chaplaincy at Queen's University in Belfast. He is a regular speaker
at conferences and festivals, and has his own radio show on BBC Radio
Ulster. He has been using the work of U2 in his sermons and writings
for 20 years.” Also U2 lyrics and songs have been incorporated
into some Episcopal services in the United States. See Ray
Henry, “Episcopal Church Turn to U2 to Pack Pews,” Yahoo
News, http://www.yahoo.com, 14 April 2006.
[57] In his own pop way, Bono’s objection of “religion” assumes
that there are “religious” elements that transcend historically
contingent “religions.” For a disciplinary survey
of these terms, see Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions,
Religious," in Critical Terms in Religious Studies, ed.
Mark C. Taylor (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1998), 269-84.
[58] U2, “Staring at the Sun,” Pop (Island
Records, 1997).
[59] “Billy Sunday,” in Documentary
History of Religion, 282-84.
[60] Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 46-47.
[61] U2, “Acrobat,” Achtung Baby (Island
Records, 1991).
[62] Sam Jones, “How to Be Saved,” in Documentary
History of Religion, 281.
[64] U2, All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Polygram
Records 2000).
[65] U2, “Grace,” All That You Can’t
Leave Behind.
[66] U2, “Beautiful Day,” All That
You Can’t Leave Behind.
[69] I avoid the term ideology here because it implies
a dichotomy of false consciousness versus knowledge of “real” conditions. The
term can be reworked to avoid such pitfalls, but I will save that
problem for another time. For a brief discussion of ideology,
see Raymond Williams, “Ideology,” Keywords (Fontana,
1976). I use the term political to describe a set of United
States national/governmental interests. These interests are
not reducible to material interests, thus my avoidance of ideology,
nor can they be equated with theological motivation. My use
of the term political does not distinguish between material and ideological/theological
interests. I am using it as a generic catch-all for the interests
of social actors.
[70] Lael Brainard and Robert E. Litan, “No
Stepping Back: America’s International Economic Agenda for
2003-05,” Brookings Review (Winter 2003): 32-36.
[72] Tim Nudd, Aaron Baar, David Kaplan, and Andrew
McMains, “Stuck in a Moment: The Week Panel Gets an Earful
from Bono,” ADWEEK New England Edition, 7 October 2002,
42.
[74] DATA is modeled after the U.S. Marshall plan. Josh
Tyrangiel, “The World’s Biggest Rock Star is Also Africa’s
Biggest Advocate: But Bono Knows He has to Make the Case for Aid
with His Head, Not his Heart,” Time, 4 March 2002, 62.
[75] Bono’s theological model for social change
imagines a World Polity that allows only “good religion”–religions
that are compatible with democracy, capitalist markets, and universal
human rights–into this polity. Interestingly, Bono’s
integrationist model is strikingly similar to the American religious
academy after WW II. Robert Orsi, historian of American religion,
has argued that, “As the colonial period shuddered to a close,
scholars proposed a broadly inclusive, universal religion of man
as the goal of both the study and practice of religions. They
aspired to gather the world’s many different religious traditions
into a single, global narrative of the progressive revelation of
God. This social task seemed particularly imperative after
World War II when many in the discipline held that academic study
had a role to play in the reconstruction of Western culture devastated
by war and totalitarianism.” As seen with DATA, Bono
constructs a global narrative of progress that requires nation states
and pan-collective groups to adapt to the principles of progress:
democracy, accountability, transparency, and “good religion.” Robert
Orsi, “Snakes Alive: Resituating the Moral in the Study of
Religion,” in Face of the Facts: Moral Inquiry in American
Scholarship, ed. Richard Fox and Robert Westbrook (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 210-211.
[76] George Marshall, “Harvard Commencement
Address June 5, 1947,” in The Department of State Bulletin,
XV1, No. 415 (June 15, 1947): 1159-1160.
[77] For a discussion of the Marshall plan as an “expansion
of American markets,” see Michelle Cini, “From the Marshall
Plan to EEC: Direct and Indirect Influences,” in Martin Shain,
ed., The Marshall Plan: Fifty Years After (New York: Palgrave,
2001). For Bono’s interpretation of the Marshall Plan as pragmatic
and not ideological, see Michka Assayas, Bono in Conversation
with Michka Assayas with Forward by Bono (New York: Riverhead
Books, 2005), 101. For Jeffrey Sach’s commentary on the Marshall
Plan and its influence on DATA and the Jubilee 2000 movement, see
Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our
Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), 341-342. Former vice-President
Al Gore has also been a proponent of a “Global Marshall Plan.” For
Gore’s take on a Global Marshall Plan, see Al Gore, The
Earth in Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 2000), 298.
[78] “Chairman Ed Royce Meets with U2’s
Bono,” Africa News Service, 14 March 2002.
[79] Hamid Sirdar, “Singer’s Philanthropy
Admirable,” Africa News Service, 26 February 2002. Some
have also expressed hope that African nations can elevate themselves
economically by adopting a globalized American civil religion. For
example, six days after 11 September 2001, Lamin Jabbi, a Gambian
lawyer, proclaims that like America, “civil religion could
also be our saviour!” Jabbi argues that Gambia should
be committed to religious pluralism and should be more like the United
States, where “… the political domain there has generated
a religious dimension of its own, not Christian, Muslim or Jewish
[that] is centered in such key ideas as belief in God, which is proclaimed
on every dollar bill, their shared historical experience and a common
destiny of their worldly successes and failures.” See Lamin
Jabbi, “Civil Religion Could Also Be Our Saviour!” Africa
News Service, 17 September 2001. Whether or not there actually
is such a thing as “civil religion” in America, whatever
its varieties may be, is not as relevant here as how the rhetoric
of civil religion is employed globally. See Robert Bellah and Phillip
Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion (New York: Harper and
Row, 1980). Jabbi’s case is a clear example of the important
role civil religious rhetoric serves in the interests of national
integration into global economic markets. In Benedict Anderson’s
terms, this rhetoric facilitates the incorporation of “imagined
communities” (nation-states) into an “imagined community” (World
Polity). I am invoking the phrase “imagined communities” as
described by Benedict Anderson. See Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Verso, 1991).
[80] Saskia Sassen, Losing
Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995), 99.
[81] Ibid; see also Saskia Sassen, Globalization
and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and
Money (New York: The New Press, 1998).
[83] Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium, 140.
[84] See entry on “Billy Graham,” in Edward
L Queen II, Stephen R. Prothero, and Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., eds., The
Encyclopedia of American Religious History (New York: Proseworks,
1996), 263-265.
[85] According to MTV, an estimated 1.4 billion people
tuned in for the television broadcast of the July 15, 1985 Live Aid
concert. Gill Kaufman, “Live Aid: A Look Back at a Concert
That Actually Changed the World,” MTV News, mtv.com,
29 June 2005.
[86] Michael Mann, “Globalization and September
11,” New Left Review, 1999; Mann, “The
Dark Side of Democracy: The Modern Tradition of Ethnic and Political
Cleansing,” New Left Review, 2001.
[87] http://www.live8.live.com; According to the BBC, “Organisers
estimated that 85% of the world's population would have been able
to tune into the event.” See “Live 8 Attracts 9.6m UK
Viewers,” BBC News, bbc.co.uk 4 July 2005.
[90] “G8 Stall on Aid Promises to Africa”
[91] William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights:
Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 249.
[92] U2, “God Part II,” Rattle and
Hum (Island Record, 1988).
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