U2 has delivered a consistent message blending spiritual faith and social activism since its 1980 debut album. The band members, heavily influenced in their early years by living in war-torn Ireland—and three of them having belonged for a time to a Christian community called Shalom—fill their music with rich biblical imagery, both overt and implied, resulting in a spirituality that is inseparable from their art. Commenting on the role of imagery in religion, Bono said, “The only way we can approach God is—if we’re honest—through metaphor, through symbol. So art becomes essential, not decorative” (Bono and Peterson, “Bono & Eugene Peterson”). For U2, music is not something to be added as an accessory to the practice of faith. Rather it is a primary way to access God directly. Art functions as a core component for the spiritual life lived out in the daily context of work, school, family, and relationships.
Not comfortable in institutional Christian churches, the group members found themselves outside organized religion and, in fact, often critiquing it through their craft. Somewhere between orthodoxy and idealism, U2 has developed a unique integration of faith and culture that transcends traditional approaches to popular religious music by engaging the world, not by remaining isolated from it. Throughout its extensive catalog, the band has repeatedly embraced important themes from the Bible, integrating faith and art in ways that both acknowledge and reflect the spiritual hunger of a restless culture. Widely accepted by fans who search out the biblical themes in U2’s music, this posture has troubled many other conservative Christians, creating a dilemma for a church that is skeptical of the band’s unorthodox spirituality. In “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone),” Bono sings on behalf of his bandmates and reflects on their simple beginnings, “We were pilgrims on our way.” Indeed, U2’s journey into spiritual and artistic formation is one that has been navigated in a highly public context and continues to be lived out in the company of a host of faithful traveling partners.
U2 formed in a religiously turbulent culture. The context of the Troubles impacted the young musicians in ways they may or may not have been aware of, but it certainly left its mark as they searched for identity. Ireland’s history could be viewed as a long religious argument, starting in the fifth century with St. Patrick’s apocryphal arrival on the island as an ambassador for the Catholic Church, then escalating when England’s King Henry VIII broke with the pope and created the Protestant Church of Ireland in the 1500s. The schism culminated four hundred years later in the Troubles—a dark period of sectarianism that began in the early 1960s and was formally ended by the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. U2’s members were born and raised in a conflicted Ireland that was often split along religious lines: the northern portion of the island favoring Protestantism and the south supporting Catholicism. Growing up in a religiously divided culture, Bono, Adam, Larry, and Edge experienced firsthand the outcomes of rigid dogma and narrow-minded sectarianism.
There was, however, a bright light in the midst of Ireland’s banal and religiously intolerant culture. Dublin’s Mount Temple Comprehensive, the secondary school the boys attended, was a progressive, “experimental” institution that offered an alternative to the sectarianism of the day. Though the school had Protestant origins, the members of U2 found it to be an open and accepting environment, inclusive of those from other religious traditions as well as those who had no allegiance to a faith tradition. It was also at Mount Temple that the quartet met teachers and mentors who inspired them to think broadly and holistically about education, encouraging an integration of faith and life. History teacher Donald Moxham was one of U2’s first advocates, encouraging the boys’ creativity and providing a classroom for their unorthodox rehearsals. Albert Bradshaw, the school’s choir director, inspired the teens to actively engage music and make it a part of their daily lives rather than merely listen to it or treat it as an abstract subject. Sophie Shirley taught Mount Temple’s religious education class but did so in a way that fostered creativity, not denominational dogmatism, specifically helping Bono to see “God’s fingerprints everywhere” (McCormick, “Boy to Man,” 12).
But more than any other, it was Jack Heaslip who influenced the boys’ spiritual formation through a decades-long friendship of pastoral care. There from the beginning, his highly relational and creative approach made him a popular teacher and counselor at Mount Temple. Versatile enough to oversee the sex education class and read from Leonard Cohen, he could also teach English and lead Bible studies. When Bono’s mother died unexpectedly, Heaslip was instrumental in helping the enraged fourteen-year-old cope with the loss, always attending to the teen’s needs with patience and empathy. Though Heaslip eventually left Mount Temple to become an Anglican clergyman, he maintained a nurturing relationship with U2, ministering to hundreds of staff and crew members as their “traveling pastor” while on tour, as well as officiating at Bono and Ali’s wedding, baptizing their children, and burying Bono’s father.
The impact of Heaslip’s integrative approach to life and faith runs deep through U2’s music and activism. Shunning a duality between the sacred and the secular, he quietly counseled the group to engage its art as an expression of spirituality, emphasizing that U2’s job was simply to join God in the ordinariness of everyday life. Two examples of how Heaslip’s holistic theology has affected U2 can be found in an album title and a Bible verse. First, the title No Line on the Horizon assumes a unified creation, in which heaven and earth balance and interact with one another. On the CD’s packaging, the addition of an equal sign superimposed over Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photograph of a boundless sea meeting a never-ending skyline accentuated the seamless interface of heaven and earth, giving equal significance to both. A second example is from one of Bono’s favorite scriptures, found in the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9–13: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (emphasis added). Taken at face value, Jesus was highlighting the parity of both the physical and spiritual realms, refuting a common belief that the natural world is somehow less divine than the supernatural. This theology of an integrated creation is central to U2’s understanding of its mission.
The rejection of such a dualism—earth is evil and heaven is holy—was a consistent theme for Heaslip and can be heard in his prayer before the start of the Elevation tour in 2001. While offering a blessing during the final rehearsal, the Anglican priest gathered the crew and asked God for “an anointing on everything to do with this tour—every body, every thing.” He continued praying,
We think of the band, but we think of every piece of equipment and everyone who works that piece of equipment, everyone who packs up, everyone who drives a car, everyone who does the catering, everyone who is responsible for technology, every joint of wire, every plug, every soffit, every light. (U2, “Jack Heaslip/Bono”)
For Heaslip, the intersection of the spiritual and the physical meant that both crew and equipment equally could be conduits of the divine.
Heaslip also helped U2 understand that Christianity should not merely be relegated to a Sunday morning church gathering and that God is to be found in the most commonplace activities—including rock concerts! Faith is something to be thought about and acted on, not just in a traditional religious environment but in every experience of daily living. Commenting on Heaslip’s holistic approach and its influence on the band, Neil McCormick notes, “[I]t is [Heaslip’s] openness that is reflected in Bono’s own faith and its practical interactions with the corporeal world” (McCormick, “Boy to Man,” 12). Together with the others at Mount Temple, Heaslip both taught and demonstrated an integrative approach that became foundational for U2’s own understating of faith and life.
The band, however, didn’t always have such a holistic and open philosophy. Early on, as Bono, Edge, and Larry participated in the Shalom community, Christianity looked very different. While the idealistic punk and hippie movements of the 1970s raged on throughout Europe and North America, three of U2’s four members were attracted to the “born-again” Bible studies and squeaky-clean living of a conservative commune. It was there, in this countercultural enclave, that they found a higher purpose and grounded themselves against the pitfalls of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and the other vices that typically brought young bands down. Steve Stockman summarizes the experience:
The idea of it being radical attracted U2. In any other city in the Western world, this kind of Christian behavior would have been seen as old-fashioned and almost nerdish. In any other city, Bono would have laughed at such middle-class, respectable, religious behavior. But in Dublin, this was radical stuff. . . . In some ways, Shalom was an out-there kind of gang on parallel lines with the Lypton Village gang. It wasn’t as if one of them was dangerous and the other one safe. (Stockman, Walk On, 17)
In a sense, the three members of U2 were rebelling against the rebellion commonly found in the world of rock ’n’ roll, instead favoring the zealous Shalom community.
Eventually, Shalom’s appeal of communal living was overshadowed by its separatist dogma. As leaders required greater loyalty from Bono, Edge, and Larry, the young musicians were forced to choose between a career in secular music and commitment to the religious community. Additionally, the common trajectory of other Christian musicians in the 1970s and 1980s was to join the contemporary Christian music industry—a phenomenon that allowed pioneering artists such as Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill, Phil Keaggy, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith to build careers performing for church audiences. This self-sustaining profession, complete with recording companies, distributors, and publications, existed solely for the benefit of other Christians and didn’t appeal to nor resonate with U2’s worldview. The dilemma resulted in a personal crisis as each of the three members had to examine his own understanding of music and faith. In the end, all three opted to leave Shalom, rejecting what they saw as a false dichotomy, choosing instead a more holistic and integrated approach to faith and art. Taking the best of what they had learned from their participation in the Christian commune and the years spent at Mount Temple, U2 began to fashion its growing franchise, not merely as a business but also as an open, welcoming, and spiritually nurturing family.
As Bono, Edge, and Larry exited Shalom, they did so with a fresh understanding of their own Christian witness. They emerged knowing they didn’t want people to follow the band just because it had Christian members. Rather than holding up a banner announcing U2’s spirituality, they wanted the music to speak for itself. At twenty years old, Bono was clear about the group’s purpose: “We didn’t want to be involved in Christian subculture, which was a lot of Christians coming on to the gigs. We’re not interested in preaching to the converted” (U2’s Vision). When one magazine actually published the news that U2 was a “Christian band” (an error, since Adam did not profess any kind of faith), Bono bemoaned the damage done, responding, “We weren’t going to tell anybody, we were going to witness by our lives” (U2’s Vision). The sad irony was that as their faith became more public, he feared “the witness had ended” (U2’s Vision). Such a unique integration of faith, art, and a mainstream career was a direct contrast to the Christian subculture of the day. In comparison to other religious musicians, U2 was looking more like a band with Christian members than a Christian band.
Later in their career, U2 experienced a different kind of shalom. Whereas the commune had been narrow and dogmatic, the band’s rediscovery of an Old Testament concept brought new meaning and life. Often translated as “peace,” the ancient Hebrew word shalom actually reflects a broad, holistic engagement with culture in the pursuit of justice. Motivated by biblical texts as well as global activists including Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, U2 embraced the idea of shalom as an active and effectual presence in the world. Far from being weak and passive, this scriptural notion of peace challenged U2 to boldly oppose crippling systems of injustice and to champion the cause of the poor and disenfranchised. The songs “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Bullet the Blue Sky” did this indirectly, while “Peace on Earth,” “Love and Peace or Else,” and “Staring at the Sun” were much more overt. But whether waving a white flag on the War tour in 1983 or unabashedly endorsing global peacemakers during the Innocence + Experience tour in 2015, U2 has used every means within its vast pool of resources to personally combat poverty, inequity, and injustice while calling its audiences to do the same.
As a young band, several members of U2 began their journeys of faith shaped and influenced by Mount Temple Comprehensive and a Christian commune. The band emerged from these experiences rejecting the religious/secular dualism so predominant in their native Ireland and forged ahead to super-rock-star status with a unique and integrative view of music and faith. Over time, the band contextualized their Christian faith in ways that led to greater public engagement, demonstrated both in concerts and in their offstage lives. Shalom itself was much more than the name of a commune—it also became a deeply guiding ethic for engaging an imperfect world. Bono summarized the band’s integrative approach by referencing one of his musical idols:
Bob Marley is one of the great, great heroes of mine. He did whatever he wanted with his music. He had his faith, his belief in God, or Jah as he called it. He had no problem combining that with his sexuality and the sensuality of some of his love songs. He was tender and open and politically a hard-ass. He had those three dimensions and it’s everything I want from U2. (Takiff, “From ‘Good Voice’”)
This inclination toward a holistic understanding of faith, politics, sexuality, justice, art, and activism provided rich experiences for U2’s members. It also allowed for a vast and deep pool of biblical imagery in its music.
U2 has used biblical imagery as a foundational poetic device throughout its career. At times, scripture is referenced in subtly nuanced lyrics—such as the New Testament’s Greek idea of unconditional agape love in “I Will Follow”—while at others, the Bible is directly referenced—as in the quote, “I was a stranger, you took me in,” from Matthew 25:35 and used in the song “Miracle Drug.” But most often, U2’s considerable use of biblical material is so tightly woven into the text of its songs that the casual listener might never know scripture is being referenced. In this sense, U2’s lyrics are “polyvalent.” That is, they take on multiple layers of meaning, but interpretation of a song is dependent on which layer(s) the listener is hearing.
“Song for Someone,” from Songs of Innocence, is a perfect example. On a popular level, the song has a singable tune, is musically accessible for the average fan, and is easy to relate to, especially for those who have had a close friend endure with them through difficult times. Bono has often said it is a love song for his wife. But on a deeper level, the song speaks to serious ontological questions about the conflict of good and evil. In one of several music videos featuring “Song for Someone,” director Matt Mahurin works at this level, portraying Bono as a lost soul trapped between earth and heaven, struggling through the darkness to reach a distant light. Similarly, Vincent Haycock’s short film set to “Song for Someone” focuses on a convict being released from prison and addresses themes of fear and liberation. Both of these video interpretations lead listeners to thoughtfully consider underlying meanings, opening the way for a more artistic experience with the song. There is, however, yet another level, a deeper spiritual plane, that also permeates the tune. The entire song could be sung as a prayer directly to God, the divine “Someone.” Using metaphysical language, “seeing,” “healing,” and “searching” all become metaphors for a spiritual journey. Bono closes the song with “I’m a long way from your hill of Calvary,” a traditional reference to the cross of Christ. And the lyric “the kiss I stole from your mouth” is a strong allusion to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (which is also a narrative found in “Until the End of the World”). For those aware of the scriptural implications, “Song for Someone” becomes an intimate spiritual experience. In the same way, many of U2’s songs function on multiple levels, first tapping into universally popular themes, then moving into weightier questions, and finally hinting at a spiritual realm. Assuming from the start that its fans were smart and inquisitive, U2 has always tried to layer its music in ways that appeal to those who want to look deeper.
Another way U2 has incorporated scripture into its music is through the use of biblical genre—types of ancient literature that include poetry, historical narrative, letters, prophecy, apocalypse, parables, and more. In particular, U2 has always been fond of the book of Psalms. Primarily ascribed to King David, this anthology of songs and poems was used in Jewish religious rituals and served as a worship hymnal for the ancient Hebrew people. Filled with honest words to God, individual psalms contain expressions of joy, celebration, and praise, as well as grief, lament, and even doubt. Bono discussed his love of this genre when he penned the introduction for a new translation of Psalms in 1999, writing,
Abandonment and displacement are the stuff of my favourite psalms. The Psalter may be a font of gospel music, but for me it’s despair that the psalmist really reveals and the nature of his special relationship with God. Honesty, even to the point of anger. (Bono, “Psalm Like It Hot”)
Psalms have been part of U2’s spiritual and musical journey from the earliest days. In a 2016 interview, Bono recalled, “In the dressing room before a show, we would read the psalms as a band and then walk out into arenas and stadiums—the words igniting us, inspiring us” (Bono and Peterson, “Bono & Eugene Peterson”). Long before the invention of electric guitars, tube amplifiers, and LED screens, the poetry of an ancient people was filled with raw and powerful emotion. For U2, the psalms have both inspired and infused its entire catalog.
A specific phrase found repeatedly in Psalms has also been used frequently in U2’s lyrics. The simple question “How long?” can be traced back to multiple scriptural texts. In Psalm 13, the poet interrogates God using the phrase four times in two verses. Psalm 62 is even more incriminating, accusing God with, “How long will you assault me?” In Psalm 89, the psalmist doubts God, asking, “How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?” and in 119 he begs for relief from his enemy’s relentless pursuit, pleading, “How long must your servant wait?” Bono has borrowed this theme for lyrics in several of U2’s songs. In “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” he responds to violence and injustice with the cry, “How long must we sing this song?” In a similar way, U2 has often closed concerts with (Psalm) “40,” echoing a three-thousand-year-old lament, “How long, to sing this song?” And Bono has been singing “how long” in “Out of Control” since U2-3, the band’s very first recording project, as well as more recently in a U2/Green Day collaboration covering the Skids’ 1979 hit, “The Saints Are Coming.”
The book of Psalms has influenced U2 in many other ways as well. Psalm 23 became an anchoring theme on the Innocence + Experience tour of 2015. As the band paid tribute to the forgotten victims of the 1974 bombings in Dublin, Bono ended “Raised by Wolves” with a dramatic recitation, repeating the well-known verse, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” And while Edge’s wailing guitar transitioned to the frenzied intro of “Until the End of the World,” Bono embodied the pain and doubt of the original psalmist, screaming, “Comfort me! Comfort me! COMFORT ME!” The chilling effect was made even more poignant after the band’s longtime tour manager and friend Dennis Sheehan unexpectedly passed away soon after the tour started. During the conclusion of “End of the World,” leaflets containing text from Alice in Wonderland, Dante’s Inferno, and a variety of psalms fell from the ceiling in a final simulation of the Dublin explosions. Altogether, each concert on the first leg of the Innocence + Experience tour typically referenced more than thirty-five different psalms in both obvious and obscure ways.
There are many different translations of the Bible, but U2 has consistently turned to Eugene Peterson’s contemporary paraphrase called The Message. Peterson intentionally crafted his version of scripture for those who don’t have a church background and aren’t familiar with the formal language of traditional translations, hoping that it would resonate with a new generation of readers. Favoring this version, Bono used it during the Elevation tour in 2001 as he moved from the somber message of “Bad” to the ecstatic “Where the Streets Have No Name.” It was a redemptive moment, both festive and jubilant, punctuated by the lead singer’s loose quotation of Psalm 116: “What can I give back to God for the blessings you poured out on me? I lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to our Father. I’ll follow through on a promise I made to you. Hear my heart.” This time, rather than mourning a loss, U2 used a psalm to rejoice, bringing the audience into a communal celebration. Peterson has joyfully affirmed the band’s use of his paraphrase, commenting, “Bono is singing to the very people I did this work for. I feel that we are allies in this. He is helping get me and the Message to the very people Jesus spent much of his time with” (Bono and Peterson, “Bono & Eugene Peterson”).
In a less obvious way, but still reflective of ancient Hebrew poetry, U2 has also crafted its own modern-day psalms. “Wake Up Dead Man” is a heavy lament that could have been written by King David if he lived in the twenty-first century. In it, Bono pleads, “Jesus, Jesus help me / I’m alone in this world / And a fucked up world it is too.” Bare and stripped down, it’s a gut-wrenchingly honest prayer that demonstrates U2’s careful yet authentic blend of faith and doubt in a culturally relevant way. Mimicking a psalm of thanksgiving, “Magnificent” is a grand and upbeat expression of exuberant praise. As the band plays the joy-filled anthem, Bono sings, “Justified till we die / You and I will magnify the magnificent.”
The poetry of the psalms isn’t the only biblical genre used by U2. Wisdom literature in the Bible often questions accepted notions of the way life works and is brilliantly demonstrated in U2’s collaboration with Johnny Cash on “The Wanderer.” Mirroring the biblical book of Ecclesiastes—which literally means “the teacher”—the song paints the portrait of a wandering soul consumed by cynicism. “Chasing after the wind,” the Teacher and the Wanderer each go on a desperate search for meaning in life. Robert Vagacs notes that the protagonist of U2’s song is roaming aimlessly through the dystopian landscape of “Zooropa,” a “journey into the emptiness of Babylon” (Vagacs 52, Religious Nuts). Cash sings, “Yeah, I left with nothing, nothing but the thought of you / I went wandering,” reflecting the restless spirit of all who search for purpose in life. In doing so, both the Teacher and the Wanderer remind the listener of the bleakness of a world without God and thus point to God himself as the antidote to cynicism and hopelessness.
The parables of Jesus have also influenced U2’s catalog. In the biblical sense, a parable is a story that uses the element of surprise to teach a truth about the kingdom of God. “The First Time,” another song on Zooropa, is a perfect adaptation of this type of scripture. Taking inspiration from Luke 15:11–32, Bono says, “It’s the story of the prodigal son but in it the prodigal son decides he doesn’t want to return” (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 249). Having gone out and squandered his inheritance, the boy comes home expecting to face his father’s wrath. Instead, the patriarch opens his arms and lavishes the lost child with gifts. But in U2’s telling of the story, the son ends up leaving through the back door, throwing away the key and turning away from love. Even so, and in spite of the rejection, the father’s steadfast commitment remains. The unexpected ending gives the story the punch that parables originally would have had in Jesus’s day.
The prophetic style of literature in the Bible has also shaped U2’s recordings and concert performances. The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures are not, as is often thought, simply fortune tellers or predictors of the future. Speaking on behalf of Yahweh, the prophets brought messages that had spiritual, social, political, and cultural implications, including the firm and consistent reprimand to love the widow, the orphan, and the alien (three groups that were routinely marginalized). Often stern and cautionary, the prophets identified injustice and called God’s people to make corrections. Many U2 songs blend political and spiritual themes in the same way. In “Love and Peace or Else,” the band highlights instability in the Middle East and challenges, “Lay down your guns / All you daughters of Zion / All you Abraham sons.” In concert, Bono wore a headband that read “coexist” and chanted, “Jesus, the Jew, Muhammed, all true—all sons of Abraham.” The phrase was not meant to say all of these faiths can be blended into one but to remind Christians, Jews, and Muslims of their common lineage. “Bullet the Blue Sky” has also been consistently used in a prophetic way, calling all people, but particularly Americans, to examine foreign policies related to global military aggression. Originally a commentary on the Reagan administration’s controversial activity in Central America, “Bullet” has been updated numerous times to address the conflicts in the Middle East, as on the Vertigo tour of 2005, and the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe on the Innocence + Experience tour.
But it is “Sunday Bloody Sunday” that has been one of U2’s most prophetic and versatile pieces, being reinterpreted and adapted to many different contexts over its thirty-plus year history. Written in 1983 for the War album, the song was originally conceived as an impassioned and peaceful response to the violence of the Troubles. In concert, Bono symbolized the call to unity by waving a white flag of peace. “Sunday Blood Sunday” found new life on the PopMart tour as Edge moved to the spotlight to perform the song as a solo. Soft and gentle, the moving ballad was a stark contrast to the decadence and excess of the tour’s theme of commercialism. In 2005, the song was reinterpreted yet again on the Vertigo tour. This time Bono’s cries of “No more!” during the bridge served as a jarring reminder that terrorism had changed the world in dark and irreversible ways. On the 360° tour, U2 continued calling attention to global concerns by championing the cause of peaceful Iranian dissidents. Known as the Green Movement, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” became a statement of solidarity with the men, women, and children who had been unjustly killed and imprisoned by Iran’s oppressive regime. In 2015, on the Innocence + Experience tour, the band reinvented the song once more as a dramatic re-creation of the 1974 Dublin bombings. Slow and dirge-like, in this iteration of “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Bono dropped the climactic final line, leaving out the lyric, “The real battle just begun / To claim the victory Jesus won / On Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” Void of this key theological statement, the song functioned as a corporate lament, offering a confession for the atrocities of Ireland’s past. Through more than three decades of usage, U2 has demonstrated its appreciation of the prophetic tradition by adapting and contextualizing one of its greatest hits.
Along with poetry, wisdom, and prophetic genre, U2 has also been influenced by apocalyptic literature. In the Bible, an apocalypse uses imagery—sometimes bizarre and eccentric—to speak of judgment and the collapse of systems and structures, which give way to a new (or renewed) future. The book of Revelation, the most well-known example of an apocalyptic text, is filled with images of angels, demons, earthquakes, dragons, and flames. But contrary to popular belief, its main theme is a positive one—it is a message of hope for those who suffer under the daily hardships of a fallen world and a promise that evil in all forms will one day be vanquished. In the 1970s, an ardent wave of apocalyptic fervor was sweeping across North America and Europe. Promoting the imminent return of Christ and the consummation of all history, this “end times” theology was nearly inescapable, especially for communities like Shalom and the three young, zealous Christians of U2. The influence is seen in “Fire” on October (arguably the most religious-themed album of U2’s catalog), with lyrics including, “The sun is burning black,” “The moon is running red,” and “The stars are falling down,” all direct references to Revelation 6:12–13. Similarly, in “Tomorrow,” a mournful song about the loss of his mother, Bono sings, “He’s coming back . . . Jesus is coming / I’m gonna be there, mother.” The apocalyptic style of scripture can also be seen in some of U2’s later works. From Achtung Baby, “The Fly” alludes to the destructive forces of evil in an unbalanced cosmos, as Bono’s alter ego sings about stars falling from the sky, a world in darkness, and the universe exploding “’cause of one man’s lie.” “Until the End of the World,” as the title suggests, also has elements of apocalypse. In recent years, “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “City of Blinding Lights” have been used in concert to present the vision of a restored creation while alluding to a future age when evil is banished and the kingdom of God comes in its fullness. Each song hints at the heavenly city of perfection described in Revelation.
U2 has always assumed that its fans want deeper content than what the average rock band could provide. From the beginning, the band and its management set out to engage audiences on multiple levels by creating polyvalent experiences through studio recordings and concert performances. While the surface layer is immediately the most popular, deeper subtexts can include social-cultural and spiritual themes. The Joshua tree itself—perhaps the most iconic symbol of U2’s career—is a subtle allusion to Jesus (the Hebrew word Yeshua means “salvation” and can be translated to English as both Joshua and Jesus) and to the cross (which is referred as a tree in the book of Acts). Other more overt uses of scripture are plentiful as well. During the Innocence + Experience tour, “City of Blinding Lights” was accentuated with lighted crosses hanging from the ceiling and featured a stage in the shape of a cross. Despite the abundance of biblical imagery in U2’s work, the group has always believed that its message would be strongest outside of a Christian subculture, opting instead to incorporate faith and art in the mainstream music industry. Summing up the band’s spirituality, Larry reflected, “We don’t want to appear to be flaunting our beliefs. It’s a very personal thing and you don’t want it to look like some sort of lecture or gimmick. The music, the lyrics say everything the band has to say about their feelings” (Mann, “U2”). Bono’s attitude is similar: “This is how we worship God, even though we don’t write religious songs, because we didn’t feel God needs the advertising” (Assayas, Bono, 147). U2 remains confident that fans wanting a deeper experience will understand the messages underlying its songs. As the band has forged ahead with innovative production and creative artistic efforts, it also has fashioned a deeply spiritual culture unlike any other. And though its unique brand of Christianity has attracted others who also value community, activism, and scriptural reflection, its unorthodox spirituality hasn’t always been well received by the institutional Christian Church.
The Dublin of U2’s childhood provided many opportunities to experience religious discord firsthand. Edge’s parents sang in a Protestant church choir and Larry served as a Catholic altar boy. Bono’s mother would take him and his brother to a local Protestant congregation, while their father, a member of the Catholic Church, waited outside or went to Mass at a different time. Their interdenominational marriage was considered scandalous and was not even valid in some areas of Ireland. Schools in Dublin were segregated—they were either Catholic, reflecting the vast majority of people in the Republic of Ireland, or Protestant, representing the official Church of Ireland. It wasn’t until each of the four teens started attending Mount Temple that they had the chance to experience a nonsectarian education that valued both denominational perspectives. The culture in Dublin, heavily impacted by a conservative Catholic presence, was repressive and restrictive. Topics including sexuality, contraception, divorce, and abortion were taboo. Movies were censored, homosexuality was criminalized, and rock ’n’ roll could only be heard on the stolen waves that drifted across the sea from England. Driven by religious authoritarianism, the typical institutional church in Dublin during U2’s formation was inhibiting, heavy-handed, and provincial.
Despite the restrictive nature of the church, the band did have some positive experiences. Many of its earliest gigs were actually in chapels or parish social halls. Following a 1981 concert at a Grand Rapids church, the local newspaper linked the band’s spirituality to its sacred venue, reporting,
U2 hardly fits the choirboy image, but the Irish rock band found a perfect Saturday night sanctuary in Fountain Street Church. The Dublin boys had some 1,100 fans on their feet for a spirited one-hour set that baptized the locals in the joyous, mystical gospel of U2. Its sermon of rock tunes with religious overtones won over new followers. (“U2 May Be the Band”)
Whenever they performed in a church, the guys seemed comfortable and at home. And for the three born-again Christians, the drugs and alcohol so readily available at wild after-parties common to the rock scene were replaced, very naturally, with Bible study and prayer. On Sunday mornings, the trio would often break from rehearsal to quietly attend a church in whatever town they were currently touring.
Looking back again at the Shalom experience also provides some insight into U2’s understanding of church. Though Bono, Edge, and Larry initially had good interactions with Shalom, in the end the community drove the young men away because of its own controlling practices, as it sought to compel them to give up their career in secular rock music. Larry was the first to leave, frustrated by the coercive environment. Years later he reflected on his time with the movement:
The idea was to create a Christian community, where people would live and work under strict Christian standards. When you’re young and impressionable it all sounds ideal. But there was something terribly wrong with the concept. It was a bit like the bigger the commitment you made, the closer you were to heaven. It was a really screwed-up view of the world and nothing to do with what I now understand a Christian faith to be. . . . I learned a lot though and I also gained a faith I didn’t have before, and that’s still with me. (U2 and McCormick, U2 by U2, 117)
For Bono, the split was especially painful. The guys had come to love and admire some of Shalom’s leaders, but these same leaders, as well as some of their close friends, were pressuring them to conform to the conservative commune, causing them to be torn in two between their music and their mentors. A twenty-nine-year-old Bono eventually confessed, “In the end, I realized it was bullshit, that what these people were getting close to with this idea was denial, rather than willful surrender. It was denial, which is the next-door neighbor to self-flagellation” (Block, “Bono Bites Back”). For U2, Shalom’s rejection of culture was merely a form of legalism and self-asceticism, just another version of the repressive religious structures they grew up in.
In part, the internal conflict U2’s members experienced in their separation from Shalom was later reflected on in Achtung Baby. Abandoning its explicit presentation of social and political themes, the band turned instead to look inward at its own personal demons. As Bono sang, “Let me be your lover tonight” on “Even Better Than the Real Thing” and painted a sultry portrait of Salome as she stood in contrast to an ascetic John the Baptist in “Mysterious Ways” (complete with a belly dancer in concert!), the new emphasis on human sexuality—especially as U2 mixed in themes of spirituality—left some pious fans questioning the band’s own faith. If that wasn’t enough to cause concern, “Acrobat” seemed to be a direct assault on the institutional church, as Bono confessed, “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.” Achtung Baby represented a radical shift not only in musical style but also in U2’s interpretation of faith and art. Preferring the straightforward agenda of the 1980s era, with its emphasis on love and activism, many Christians were confused by the dark direction the band seemed to be pursuing. The overstimulating themes, decadent images, and taboo subjects of sexual identity, failed relationships, ego, greed, and consumerism raised the suspicions of those in the established church. U2’s ironic approach during the last decade of the millennium was lost on many of its fans—especially the conservative and religious ones—and could partially explain why sales were down for Zooropa and Pop, specifically in America.
But that wasn’t the end of U2’s journey with the church. Later in his career, Bono found a renewed passion for faith and institutional Christianity. Having just returned from a tour, he went to a Christmas Eve service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Tired and somewhat bored, he picked up the Bible and began to read the story of Jesus’s birth. But on this night, the story took on new life, leaving the middle-aged lead singer stunned and transformed. Reading the narrative as if for the first time, he noticed,
The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw . . . a child . . . I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry. . . . Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this. . . . Love needs to find form, intimacy needs to be whispered. To me, it makes sense. It’s actually logical. It’s pure logic. Essence has to manifest itself. It’s inevitable. Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh. (Assayas, Bono, 125)
Bono further stunned both the rock and religious communities in 2006 when he brought the two worlds together in a collision of pop culture, social justice, and personal faith. Speaking via a taped interview with Bill Hybels, the pastor of one of America’s largest megachurches, Bono used the opportunity to chastise Christian leaders from around the world, saying, “The church has historically always been behind the curve. It’s amazing to me—on civil rights, fighting against the racism in the ’60s and the ’50s in the South in United States, and apartheid in Africa.” He continued, “[And] the church had been very judgmental about the AIDS virus in particular” (Lawrence, “Preaching to the Converted”). But Bono didn’t just criticize the group of religious leaders gathered that day at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. He also commended them. On behalf of the ONE campaign, he confessed that Hybels had helped change his own view of organized Christianity, acknowledging “the importance of the church in creating the moral as well as the practical infrastructure to deal with some of the biggest problems facing the world” (Lawrence, “Preaching to the Converted”). On a return visit to Hybels’s church three years later, Bono again admitted, “I can honestly say that as a person who’s really enjoyed giving off about the church, you have completely ruined it for me because the church has done incredible things” (Lawrence, “Bono Returns”). With the Hybels interviews, Bono seemed to be redoubling his effort to engage the same religious structures that he and the band had been so critical of in the past. And having just released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in 2004—an album that contained a significant amount of unambiguous faith language, including “Yahweh,” a modern hymn of commitment and consecration—Christians were again ready to claim the band for themselves. Bono’s pursuit of contemporary Christian musicians, including Michael W. Smith, Switchfoot, and Jars of Clay, as well as other evangelical leaders, such as Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church in Southern California, demonstrated a gradual yet consistent embrace of conservative Christianity. As a result, some music critics returned to their old accusations that Bono and the band had once again compromised their artistic integrity.
Bono has never claimed to be a theologian, nor has he been trained in the academic discipline of theology. He has, however, taken a very active interest in the study of God, as well as the interpretation and application of scripture, through avid reading and wise counsel. While Larry and Edge have, from the Shalom days, assented to their faith in quieter ways, they, too, have played important roles in shaping the band. Adam is the least explicit about spirituality and perhaps the most honest. Not opposed to discussing faith, he uses less definitive terms about the spirit of a U2 concert: “I don’t quite know what it is . . . but I definitely know when it’s there. It doesn’t happen every night, but some nights there’s a sense of community and fellowship. And people have said there’s a spiritual aspect to what’s happening in the house” (LePage, “Bass Notes”).
Consumed by a unique desire, and with few models to imitate, U2 set out to mix faith and art in unconventional ways on a scale that was unprecedented. Committed to an open, nonsectarian understanding of Christianity, U2 infused its music with biblical imagery and opened its growing family of associates and fans to those of other faith practices, political persuasions, and sexual identities, taking a path that led them far away from the Christian subculture. Author Beth Maynard concludes,
U2 is anything but a “Christian rock group.” They are simply artists who find it natural to draw on biblical imagery and raise religious issues in their work. . . . They wrestle with spiritual themes and set nuggets of scripture in the midst of their work, but they compete in the marketplace rather than preach to the choir. (Whiteley and Maynard, Get Up Off Your Knees)
Eschewing the judgmental experiences of childhood and adolescence, the band embraced love, grace, and tolerance. More than a nice sentiment or an idealistic experiment, the tangible outcome of U2’s mission has always found embodiment in cultural engagement and activism rather than Sunday morning worship services. Both suspicious and supportive of the mainstream church but deeply concerned that Christianity must be integrated into daily living, Bono summed up his thoughts, advising, “Whenever you see religious people, where their faith is more important than love, they’ve got it the wrong way round in my view” (Robinson, “‘I Nearly Quit’”).
U2 has created a quandary for the church, especially for evangelicals in America. On the one hand, the band has resisted the perennial trappings of the standard “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” culture, loaded its lyrics with biblical imagery, and called fans to action against the evil and unjust systems of this world. On the other hand, U2 has not fit preconceived notions of the institutional church as it has critiqued organized religion, enjoyed wealth and fame, and celebrated the human condition with a transparency uncharacteristic of musicians in the Christian subculture. Bono is quick to recognize the dilemma in a conversation with Eugene Peterson:
The Psalmist is brutally honest about the explosive joy that he’s feeling, and the deep sorrow or confusion. . . . And I often think, “Why isn’t church music more like that?” . . . I find in Christian art a lot of dishonesty. . . . I would love if this conversation would inspire people who are writing these beautiful voices, these beautiful gospel songs, [to] write a song about their bad marriage; write a song about how they’re pissed off at the government. Because, that’s what God wants. (Bono and Peterson, “Bono & Eugene Peterson”)
The church can easily love Bono when he claims it as his own, but it’s quick to turn away when he drops the “f-bomb” at an awards show.
A true enigma, the U2 organization has continued to expand, growing closer as a community and reenvisioning corporate spirituality. Ironically, this has made the band accessible, even attractive, to those of other faiths, as well as those who don’t profess any faith. Christian or not, many irreligious fans have alluded to a spiritual presence at a concert, often referring to the experience as “the church of U2.” And though he attributes the work more precisely to a movement of the divine, Bono is quick to acknowledge what fans also sense:
It feels like there’s a blessing on the band right now. People say they’re feeling shivers—well, the band is as well. And I don’t know what it is, but it feels like God walking through the room, and it feels like a blessing, and in the end, music is a kind of sacrament; it’s not just about airplay or chart position. (Tanner, “Courageous Crooners”)
U2 believes that music is a sacrament—an activity that mediates and ushers in the divine presence of God. On the Innocence + Experience tour, Bono would often improvise during the bridge of “I Will Follow,” singing, “We come here to surrender, surrender to your love / We come here to surrender, to the spirit of the holy dove.” The simple yet profound statement works as a theological tenant for those who believe (“I will follow the God of unconditional love and submit to the presence of his Spirit”), or as a supreme ethic for those with no religious affiliation (“I will follow and give my life to others even when unconditional love is not reciprocated”). Either way, fans can’t miss the call during a U2 concert to turn the music’s message of love into practical and tangible action. If faith and spirituality are one side of a proverbial coin, then the other would be a sustained demonstration of that faith through activism and social engagement. For U2, these two foundational values are inseparable.