Bono's "Messianic Promotions" and Progressive Christian Ethics: The Paradox of Divine Morality and the Evolving Ethics of Rock and Roll (Part 4)

This essay was originally produced in Dr. John Shook's seminar on Social Ethics and Religion, during the fall of 2011, in Union Institute and University's Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program. 

Much scholarship has sought to assess and define the spirituality and rhetoric of Bono, lead singer and songwriter of Irish rock band U2. Formed in 1976, the band’s motivation to espouse a specific and comprehensive ethical humanism has been the subject of documentaries and scholarship. This brief discussion of Bono’s efforts seek to apply a definition of a morality that, rooted in the Paradox of Divine Morality, is markedly progressive: humanity has the ability to both know a higher moral truth as well as change its systems of ethics and justice, and God’s role is fully beyond and apart from these efforts. 

While the band’s commercial success enabled their rhetorical stance—their third album, War, released in 1983, has been called a “crusade for pacifism”—much criticism regarding the band’s wide popularity, coupled with an ill-defined message of human ability to overcome oppression, has helped U2 define an ethical and progressive role for performers in the genre of popular rock music. During the tour in support of the War album in 1983, Bono periodically waved a giant white flag from the stage; U2 was featured in the July 1985 Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief; the following year, the band would headline a tour sponsored by Amnesty International, and Bono would travel to San Salvador and Nicaragua, to publicly witness injustice and systems of oppression. In 1997, the band’s mobile stage for their PopMart tour included a massive golden arch and mirror-ball lemon, both commentaries on the commercialism they would continue to contend with throughout their career. Building on his stance of activism established through the 1980s and 1990s, media coverage of Bono’s appearance with then-President Bush at a National Prayer Breakfast in 2006 notes the star’s political, spiritual, and musical notoriety:

Bono's work with churches reflects just how politically savvy he is, and underscores his third goal, which is harnessing the power of American religion to shape the outcome of American politics, or at least the U.S. budget. Bono has worked with Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and progressive preacher Jim Wallis. America's strong religious identity has actually made it easier to preach his social gospel here than in Europe, which is now largely secular, he said. ‘The church,’ he [Bono] said after the breakfast, ‘is a much bigger crowd than even the stadium-sized crowds that we play to in U2’ (Eckstrom, 2006).

Seales (2006) criticized Bono for mixing rhetorical messages of spirituality and a set of revolutionary social ethics, while maintaining a belief in a capitalism that supports his band’s financial success: for this criticism of the U2 front man’s unique social gospel, Seales structures his argument based around 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” (2006, p. 2). As Bono’s political and spiritual rhetoric advocates a salvation that comes through acceptance of a common conceptualization of the world, that acceptance establishes a societal status of spiritual enlightenment, for sale beneath the giant replication of capitalist capitalist and corporate images, in no more than slight mockery. Seales names Bono’s “Messianic promotions” as in support of a “secularized soteriology” and “World Polity” (p. 13): “When I say Bono preaches a secularized soteriology,” I merely mean that he draws out of church traditions a religious message and delivers this rhetoric to extended moral communities outside church boundaries, much like a revivalist” (Seales, footnote, p. 13). While Seales’ criticism of Bono’s progressive Christian morality is useful, leveraging his argument using commentary based on Calvinist revivalism and the work of Finney in the 1830s, lyrical analysis of one of U2’s most popular songs is useful in understanding the nature of Bono’s spiritual quest:

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes I'm still running (U2, “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” 1987). 

Bono’s lyrics call for no reconceptualization of Christian symbolism, like Daly (1974) and other liberatory theologians: “I believe in the Kingdom Come,” but also the rock song calls for a blending together of some degree of spirituality or identity: somehow, we shall “bleed into one,” regardless of who had held the hand of devils or angels previously. This call for the continued exploration of human ethics is direct and appealing to many; U2’s popularity in the late 1980s was unparalleled. Today, Bono’s statement above, coupled with his social activism, has helped him and U2 establish a place from which the modification of social ethics and rhetorical power of the genre of popular rock music is effective. 

  

Bono’s most recent interview—upon the release of a film, celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the release of their album Achtung Baby—is marked with religious and political language, as he describes the creative dilemma the band found itself in at the height of their success: “We were carrying Catholic guilt around – the sin of success. We had emerged from playing with The [Virgin] Prunes and hanging around the Project Arts Centre getting mime lessons from Mannix Flynn. And the context here is that the musical scene we came from had this very Maoist music press. There were certain canon laws: thou shalt not go platinum; thou shalt not play in a stadium or an arena; thou shalt not go to America; thou shalt not be careerist. If you even thought about those things you had committed a sin” (Bono, as cited by Boyd, 2011). While further contextualization of the impact of Bono’s social activism is deserving of separate study, a post on a forum discussing song lyrics—written by someone whose view of the Paradox of Divine Morality appears at once to be more traditional—illuminates the importance of further interpretation of Bono’s “secularized soteriology” (Seales, 2006, p. 2): “Despite this long-time mass-media-ed song, and that it contains that very sentiment above; I'm aware that how U2 used this song during the last tour (as an element of mass-spiritual brainwashing) STEERED PEOPLE AWAY and/ or REINFORCED THEM TO STAY AWAY from the very TRUTH and Authority of God's words that would have provided anyone actually, TRULY "LOOKING FOR" God - to have a viable personal relationship with him, and to learn and do his will, etc. - with WHAT THEY NEEDED, "TO BE WITH [HIM]." I was there, I saw it, and I heard it.”(theresa1, 2009). While theresa1’s comments reflect the threat of Bono’s espousal of a progressive and inclusive ethics and his Messianic position to her view of Christ as a sole means to salvation, the use of popular rock music as a means by which one may learn of and come to adhere to a new set of societal behaviors and public emotion is important in regards to many social sciences. 

For citations, an introduction, and a conclusion, please view http://www.commontimevt.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-paradox-of-divine-morality-and.html