Not So Easy on His Knees: Balancing Faith with Celebrity (Part One)

By Laurie Britt-Smith

November 3, 2008

Editor’s Note: Here, we continue to publish the work of Dr. Laurie Britt-Smith and her exploration of Bono’s rock-n-roll rhetoric. In this installment, she begins an exploration of the tension between faith and celebrity grounded in the concept of a Discourse community as introduced in her last post.

In recasting a justice movement as a cross-cultural necessity powered by the individual instead of a corporate or governmental entity, Bono is spinning out a vision of an alternate reality that runs counter to the imperial history of western involvement in Africa. This is part of his role as a prophet-he is presenting a vision that makes a break from the established order, from the “imperial reality” as Walter Brueggemann terms it.

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