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BONO'S THIN ECCLESIOLOGY - Christianity Today, February 21, 2003
Any person can stand outside the church and critique its obedience to the gospel.
A Christianity Today Editorial
During the Heart of America tour in late 2002, which he organized to raise awareness of aids in Africa, rock singer Bono of U2 took a radical step: He pleaded directly with his fellow Christians.
Between visiting truck stops, high schools, and daily newspapers, Bono also dropped in on a few megachurches and Wheaton College. Bono has declined to speak with American evangelicals' mass media for years, and we're thankful that the urgency of his cause has changed that-see this issue's cover story (page 38). But Bono's excursion into American evangelicalism was missing one crucial element: a sense that he felt much respect for the evangelical culture he was lecturing.
In the more purple of his prosaic moments, Bono claimed that the church:
1. Will be "made irrelevant" if it does not respond adequately to Africa's aids crisis.
2. Practices a "hierarchy of sin" that condemns people with aids as deserving the affliction because of sexual promiscuity.
3. Has "pervert[ed] the gospels and the Holy Scriptures since they were first written."
MacPhisto, a satirical onstage character that Bono adopted during U2's concerts in the early 1990s, claimed that Pope John Paul and the Archbishop of Canterbury were doing Satan's work. Bono has taken a kindlier view of the pope since they talked about mutual concerns on Third World debt. Perhaps he will lighten up on the Archbishop of Canterbury now that Rowan Williams, a man of the Left, has ascended the throne.
Bono's full-throated judgments on the church prompt this question: Just how would he know? He has, after all, avoided the church since breaking with Shalom, a Watchman Nee-inspired group in Ireland, in the early 1980s.
This arm's-length experience of churches leaves Bono with a paper-thin ecclesiology that measures the church's mission (or its "relevance") almost exclusively in geopolitical terms. Bono seems unaware of the aids relief work that has been done in Africa for years, both by missionaries and by indigenous Christians (CT, Feb. 7, 2000). Never mind that many Christians were bringing relief to suffering Africans in the same decade that U2 poured millions into its bloated Zoo TV and PopMart tours (keeping the latter on the road cost $1.3 million a week). If Americans fail to persuade the Bush administration to increase foreign aid to the percentage of gross domestic product that Bono finds acceptable, then Bono finds the church guilty of standing by, like Germans watching Jews being hauled away to the death camps.
Bono has shown a clear compassion for suffering people throughout his career. He has performed at global benefits like Live Aid and has made quieter efforts to relieve people's suffering (such as spending a month in an Ethiopian refugee camp in the 1980s). We understand why Bono feels angry when he believes the church is sitting by in complacency while thousands of Africans face a daily threat of death.
Bono has said repeatedly that Christianity without an element of social justice is empty. We agree. But a Christian's pleading for social justice without worshiping God regularly within the community of the church is little more than activism for its own sake. Any person can stand outside the church and critique its obedience to the gospel. Part of God's call on a Christian's life is to walk inside and die to self by relating to other human beings, both in their fallenness and in their redeemed glory.
God may very well be using Bono to challenge the conscience of American evangelicals. It is well within God's frequently evident sense of humor to use a brash rock star in the causes of justice and mercy. If that is so, we hope that God also uses this time to draw Bono into a deeper sense of what it means to be a Christian.? 2003 Christianity Today.
RESPECT, RIGHTEOUSNESS AND A MIRRORBALL LEMON - Beth Maynard - Thunderstruck.org, February 21, 2003
A response to Christianity Today's editorial on Bono
As a pastor whose congregation is having a special service on AIDS in Africa next week, I was delighted to see Christianity Today dedicate so much space to their "Bono's American Prayer" cover story. And as a writer who is hard at work co-editing a book of sermons based on U2's catalog, I was glad to see Bono's spiritual influence acknowledged. However, the accompanying editorial calling into question his qualifications to speak to Christians on this issue struck me as a tad defensive.
In some senses, I share CT's frustration that Bono's comments about what goes on in "the church" are often stereotypical and clearly not based on much direct personal experience. Along with the editors, I wonder how a man who talks about how doing the hard work of staying with Edge, Larry, and Adam in a 25-year friendship (not to mention with his wife Ali in a 20-year marriage) is a "sacrament" could fail to see the same sacramental power in the hard work of relating, for an equally long time, to a specific group of other local believers whom you did not select.
Nevertheless, so far, he doesn't see that. Christianity Today seems to think that fact undermines any arguments he addresses to his fellow Christians who do see it, and that Bono ought to show us all a little more respect. In my opinion, it's only by ignoring Bono's deferential Heart-Of-America remarks about Billy Graham and Bill Hybels that one could really claim he showed no respect for the evangelical subculture during his speaking tour. (By the way, insistence on being shown the proper respect: Jesus isn't much of a model for that value, is he?)
But even if Bono hadn't praised these two leaders (and Wheaton itself, and the congregations of most of the churches he visited), I wouldn't have blamed him much for having a chip on his shoulder. I'd struggle with the evangelical subculture too if I had spent two decades watching it personally attack me in print, dissecting and judging my every utterance. As someone who hangs out a fair amount with evangelicals, but is never quite sure if I am one, even the very low level of such scrutiny to which I've been subjected has hurt me enough. I can't imagine what Bono's been through, and I'm prepared to cut him miles of slack for any sarcasm.
The editorial cites three Heart of America remarks for which CT's editors think we shouldn't cut Bono slack. As to the first, it's not for me to say whether God will judge the church as irrelevant if it stands by on the AIDS issue, but as to the other two, surely CT doesn't actually mean to imply that the church has never "perverted the Scriptures" or promoted a "hierarchy of sin" that majors on sex? Come on: guilty, your honor. While we're at this, let's ask Bono if he's ever perverted the Scriptures. I'm betting he'd say yes; surely those of us who have cast our lot with institutional Christianity can show a little humility here.
The editorial claims that "a Christian's pleading for social justice without worshiping God regularly within the community of the church is little more than activism for its own sake." I'm a mainline Protestant, and we get to see a lot of activism for its own sake: reducing koinonia to achieving diversity, prayer to sloganeering, or the coming of the kingdom to the passage of legislation. When Bono, on the other hand, points out that the Scriptures are packed with verses on the poor, he often adds that an even more frequent Biblical preoccupation is "personal redemption." Activists for activism's sake? It's hard to participate in a U2 concert without realizing that this band are anything but. Whatever language they use to talk about it, U2 know a whole lot about prayer, about liturgy, about holy-community-building, about the Holy Spirit -- and to boot, clearly know more than most churchgoers about communicating these realities to people who don't speak the language of Christian subculture.
Bono may have a "paper-thin ecclesiology" -- and may I just pause to ask us all to imagine someone's finding it a propos and needful to direct the same criticism at Eminem or the Stones -- but its thinness doesn't come from kneejerk leftist political ideals. In my wild running leap of a guess, I'd wager that the believers in U2 have retained more or less the same ecclesiology they developed from Watchman Nee in the early 80s: a house-church, "let's have prayer meetings within the band," "only God knows your heart" ecclesiology. Do I think that's paper-thin? Of course I do. But it's not paper-thin because it expects Christians to take action for justice; it's paper-thin because it's individualistic and fails to value the whole Body of Christ on earth. And that's just the same old point: Bono doesn't belong to a church.
Finally, the editorial's slam at U2 for spending money on ZooTV and Popmart while people were dying in Africa is polemics of a level I hope not to see too frequently in CT. (This mirrorball lemon could have been sold and the money given to the poor, is that it?) Would CT say the same to those who spent proportionally, in their own age, to build other environments that offered people life-changing artistic encounters with the sacred? Chartres cathedral? The Sistine Chapel?
Or is this just evangelicalism's age-old fear of the power of art itself, dressed up as a political critique? They're a rock and roll band, not Oxfam. What's remarkable is not that they didn't choose charity work over art, but that they take so much time off from art to support causes they believe are just.
I wish Bono would join a church, too. As a matter of fact, I wish many, many others of my fellow Christians would see all kinds of things exactly the way I see them. But just because they don't, doesn't mean I'm not going to listen to them when they tell me the truth. And that's what Bono's doing.
The Rev. Beth Maynard Beth is a parish priest and the former president of Gathering The neXt Generation (the Episcopal Church's network for postmodern ministry). When she's not on the Net or in one of those churches Bono doesn't go to, she's co-editing the forthcoming collection Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog/a>? Thunderstruck.org/Maynard, 2003.
Any person can stand outside the church and critique its obedience to the gospel.
A Christianity Today Editorial
During the Heart of America tour in late 2002, which he organized to raise awareness of aids in Africa, rock singer Bono of U2 took a radical step: He pleaded directly with his fellow Christians.
Between visiting truck stops, high schools, and daily newspapers, Bono also dropped in on a few megachurches and Wheaton College. Bono has declined to speak with American evangelicals' mass media for years, and we're thankful that the urgency of his cause has changed that-see this issue's cover story (page 38). But Bono's excursion into American evangelicalism was missing one crucial element: a sense that he felt much respect for the evangelical culture he was lecturing.
In the more purple of his prosaic moments, Bono claimed that the church:
1. Will be "made irrelevant" if it does not respond adequately to Africa's aids crisis.
2. Practices a "hierarchy of sin" that condemns people with aids as deserving the affliction because of sexual promiscuity.
3. Has "pervert[ed] the gospels and the Holy Scriptures since they were first written."
MacPhisto, a satirical onstage character that Bono adopted during U2's concerts in the early 1990s, claimed that Pope John Paul and the Archbishop of Canterbury were doing Satan's work. Bono has taken a kindlier view of the pope since they talked about mutual concerns on Third World debt. Perhaps he will lighten up on the Archbishop of Canterbury now that Rowan Williams, a man of the Left, has ascended the throne.
Bono's full-throated judgments on the church prompt this question: Just how would he know? He has, after all, avoided the church since breaking with Shalom, a Watchman Nee-inspired group in Ireland, in the early 1980s.
This arm's-length experience of churches leaves Bono with a paper-thin ecclesiology that measures the church's mission (or its "relevance") almost exclusively in geopolitical terms. Bono seems unaware of the aids relief work that has been done in Africa for years, both by missionaries and by indigenous Christians (CT, Feb. 7, 2000). Never mind that many Christians were bringing relief to suffering Africans in the same decade that U2 poured millions into its bloated Zoo TV and PopMart tours (keeping the latter on the road cost $1.3 million a week). If Americans fail to persuade the Bush administration to increase foreign aid to the percentage of gross domestic product that Bono finds acceptable, then Bono finds the church guilty of standing by, like Germans watching Jews being hauled away to the death camps.
Bono has shown a clear compassion for suffering people throughout his career. He has performed at global benefits like Live Aid and has made quieter efforts to relieve people's suffering (such as spending a month in an Ethiopian refugee camp in the 1980s). We understand why Bono feels angry when he believes the church is sitting by in complacency while thousands of Africans face a daily threat of death.
Bono has said repeatedly that Christianity without an element of social justice is empty. We agree. But a Christian's pleading for social justice without worshiping God regularly within the community of the church is little more than activism for its own sake. Any person can stand outside the church and critique its obedience to the gospel. Part of God's call on a Christian's life is to walk inside and die to self by relating to other human beings, both in their fallenness and in their redeemed glory.
God may very well be using Bono to challenge the conscience of American evangelicals. It is well within God's frequently evident sense of humor to use a brash rock star in the causes of justice and mercy. If that is so, we hope that God also uses this time to draw Bono into a deeper sense of what it means to be a Christian.? 2003 Christianity Today.
RESPECT, RIGHTEOUSNESS AND A MIRRORBALL LEMON - Beth Maynard - Thunderstruck.org, February 21, 2003
A response to Christianity Today's editorial on Bono
As a pastor whose congregation is having a special service on AIDS in Africa next week, I was delighted to see Christianity Today dedicate so much space to their "Bono's American Prayer" cover story. And as a writer who is hard at work co-editing a book of sermons based on U2's catalog, I was glad to see Bono's spiritual influence acknowledged. However, the accompanying editorial calling into question his qualifications to speak to Christians on this issue struck me as a tad defensive.
In some senses, I share CT's frustration that Bono's comments about what goes on in "the church" are often stereotypical and clearly not based on much direct personal experience. Along with the editors, I wonder how a man who talks about how doing the hard work of staying with Edge, Larry, and Adam in a 25-year friendship (not to mention with his wife Ali in a 20-year marriage) is a "sacrament" could fail to see the same sacramental power in the hard work of relating, for an equally long time, to a specific group of other local believers whom you did not select.
Nevertheless, so far, he doesn't see that. Christianity Today seems to think that fact undermines any arguments he addresses to his fellow Christians who do see it, and that Bono ought to show us all a little more respect. In my opinion, it's only by ignoring Bono's deferential Heart-Of-America remarks about Billy Graham and Bill Hybels that one could really claim he showed no respect for the evangelical subculture during his speaking tour. (By the way, insistence on being shown the proper respect: Jesus isn't much of a model for that value, is he?)
But even if Bono hadn't praised these two leaders (and Wheaton itself, and the congregations of most of the churches he visited), I wouldn't have blamed him much for having a chip on his shoulder. I'd struggle with the evangelical subculture too if I had spent two decades watching it personally attack me in print, dissecting and judging my every utterance. As someone who hangs out a fair amount with evangelicals, but is never quite sure if I am one, even the very low level of such scrutiny to which I've been subjected has hurt me enough. I can't imagine what Bono's been through, and I'm prepared to cut him miles of slack for any sarcasm.
The editorial cites three Heart of America remarks for which CT's editors think we shouldn't cut Bono slack. As to the first, it's not for me to say whether God will judge the church as irrelevant if it stands by on the AIDS issue, but as to the other two, surely CT doesn't actually mean to imply that the church has never "perverted the Scriptures" or promoted a "hierarchy of sin" that majors on sex? Come on: guilty, your honor. While we're at this, let's ask Bono if he's ever perverted the Scriptures. I'm betting he'd say yes; surely those of us who have cast our lot with institutional Christianity can show a little humility here.
The editorial claims that "a Christian's pleading for social justice without worshiping God regularly within the community of the church is little more than activism for its own sake." I'm a mainline Protestant, and we get to see a lot of activism for its own sake: reducing koinonia to achieving diversity, prayer to sloganeering, or the coming of the kingdom to the passage of legislation. When Bono, on the other hand, points out that the Scriptures are packed with verses on the poor, he often adds that an even more frequent Biblical preoccupation is "personal redemption." Activists for activism's sake? It's hard to participate in a U2 concert without realizing that this band are anything but. Whatever language they use to talk about it, U2 know a whole lot about prayer, about liturgy, about holy-community-building, about the Holy Spirit -- and to boot, clearly know more than most churchgoers about communicating these realities to people who don't speak the language of Christian subculture.
Bono may have a "paper-thin ecclesiology" -- and may I just pause to ask us all to imagine someone's finding it a propos and needful to direct the same criticism at Eminem or the Stones -- but its thinness doesn't come from kneejerk leftist political ideals. In my wild running leap of a guess, I'd wager that the believers in U2 have retained more or less the same ecclesiology they developed from Watchman Nee in the early 80s: a house-church, "let's have prayer meetings within the band," "only God knows your heart" ecclesiology. Do I think that's paper-thin? Of course I do. But it's not paper-thin because it expects Christians to take action for justice; it's paper-thin because it's individualistic and fails to value the whole Body of Christ on earth. And that's just the same old point: Bono doesn't belong to a church.
Finally, the editorial's slam at U2 for spending money on ZooTV and Popmart while people were dying in Africa is polemics of a level I hope not to see too frequently in CT. (This mirrorball lemon could have been sold and the money given to the poor, is that it?) Would CT say the same to those who spent proportionally, in their own age, to build other environments that offered people life-changing artistic encounters with the sacred? Chartres cathedral? The Sistine Chapel?
Or is this just evangelicalism's age-old fear of the power of art itself, dressed up as a political critique? They're a rock and roll band, not Oxfam. What's remarkable is not that they didn't choose charity work over art, but that they take so much time off from art to support causes they believe are just.
I wish Bono would join a church, too. As a matter of fact, I wish many, many others of my fellow Christians would see all kinds of things exactly the way I see them. But just because they don't, doesn't mean I'm not going to listen to them when they tell me the truth. And that's what Bono's doing.
The Rev. Beth Maynard Beth is a parish priest and the former president of Gathering The neXt Generation (the Episcopal Church's network for postmodern ministry). When she's not on the Net or in one of those churches Bono doesn't go to, she's co-editing the forthcoming collection Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog/a>? Thunderstruck.org/Maynard, 2003.
thought it applied here as well..........
) and how much money was spent on ZooTV, how ridiculous!!! What does it solve to call Bono out it in that fashion??
