U2: A Prophetic Imagination?
Craig Muir

My introduction to U2 was at a student party somewhere in Loughbourough in about 1981. The song was I will follow, it's driving, exciting rhythm was infectious, hopeful and yet there was a youthful uncertainty - "Do you like it?" someone yelled, "Yes, I acknowledged, "They're Christian's and they're great" he shouted back and I listened closer to this proclamation of belief , discipleship and loss.

I was on the inside
When they pulled the four walls down
I was looking through the window
I was lost, I am found.

If you walk away, walk away
I walk away, walk away
I will follow.
If you walk away, walk away
I walk away, walk away
I will follow.
I will follow.

U2 are Bono (Paul Hewson) who is the lead singer and main lyricist; The Edge (Dave Evans) plays guitar; Adam Clayton is the bass guitarist and Larry Mullen Jnr is the drummer. They grew up in Dublin and attended Mount Temple School, a comprehensive nondenominational school where they met in response to a notice that Larry Mullen put on the school notice board. They recorded their first album in 1980 and by the end of the decade had become one of the most successful bands in the world. Twenty years later they released their eleventh album, All that you can't leave behind it was quickly acclaimed as a commercial and critical success and in the days after September 11th 2001 it was to this exploration of our mortality that many turned for comfort and hope. I have grown up with U2, we are the same age, their first albums were about adolescence and early faith, the move from boyhood to manhood and the early excitement of following Jesus. Later albums explored political issues and spiritual questions similar to my own. All that you can't leave behind recorded and released as we passed forty years of age explores mortality and ends with grace;
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

Grace makes beauty out of ugly things

In the early days Bono, The Edge and Mullen belonged to a charismatic Christian fellowship in Dublin. There was a strong worship element within the songs, particularly within the second album October, released in 1983. They were flaunted by many Christians as an example of how Christians could produce gospel inspired music that would be played on mainstream radio. However as time went on, some would begin to question their Christian credentials, they left their Fellowship; their lyrics became more political and sexual - less overtly religious although still with a strong biblical element; as their success grew so did the Rock and Roll lifestyle. Amongst the general public, they have been seen as a campaigning band, always ready to jump on the next bandwagon - Life Aid, Anti-apartheid, Greenpeace, Good Friday Agreement and Jubilee 2000 to name but a few of the causes they have championed. Over twenty years they have constantly reinvented themselves, relentlessly promoted themselves and yet the task of this assignment will be to examine the possibility that this spiritual, musical, emotionally political journey has been in some way prophetic. The basis of this examination would be the contention that U2 (and Bono in particular as main lyricist and spokesman) have consistently been willing to explore the things of God; bring a spiritual dimension to their critique of society; challenge what they see to be wrong in the world and bring hope through a style of music which is uplifting and through a message which ultimately concentrates on the overwhelming love of God.

We will concentrate on three aspects of U2's work. The first will be the ongoing critique of the church and in turn the church's critique of U2. The second will be the way in which the band have used their music and their status to speak out on issues of justice. The third will explore ZOO TV, U2's portrayal of post-modern society. 

The benchmark we will use will be Brueggemann's Prophetic Imagination. He contends that

every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king [the dominant culture] wants to urge as the only thinkable one.
	Indeed, poetic imagination is the last way left in which to challenge and conflict the dominant reality

Hence, if U2 are engaged in a prophetic ministry, their role as songwriters and performers leaves them ideally placed to 
Ÿ	articulate the imagined alternative 
Ÿ	dismantle the dominant culture through radical criticism and lament
Ÿ	energise the alternative community through the language of amazement and new doxologies
Ÿ	and thus penetrate the despair so that new futures can be believed and embraced

Imagining Alternatives. 
Within the societies in which Moses, Jeremiah, Second Isaiah and Jesus emerge as prophets there is a dominant culture which seeks to control the thoughts and behaviour of those who live within the culture so that the status quo is maintained.  This status quo involves economics of affluence in which a small elite will benefit from the wealth of a consumer society; politics of oppression in which justice and freedom are ignored for the sake of the elite and its extravagant needs and religion of immanence where access to God is controlled by the ruling elite. Brueggemann terms the dominant culture royal consciousness and further argues that we live within such a society which
with its program of achievable satiation has redefined our notions of humanness, and it has done that to all of us. It has created a subjective consciousness concerned only with self-satisfaction. It has denied the legitimacy of tradition that requires us to remember, of authority that expects us to answer, and of community that calls us to care. It has so enthroned the present that a promised future, delayed but certain, is unthinkable

The role of the prophet is to imagine an alternative consciousness.
The  prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement almost anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger

Dismantling and Energising
The two functions of prophetic ministry are to dismantle and to energise. They will operate together, sometimes in parallel and on other occasions feeding one another.
On the one hand, Moses intended the dismantling of the oppressive empire of Pharaoh; and on the other hand he intended the formation of a new community focused on the religion of God's freedom and the politics of justice and compassion. The dismantling begins in the groans and complaints of his people; the energising begins in the doxologies of the new community 

Radical criticism and lament
The process of dismantling will happen through prophetic criticism and lament. Brueggemann suggest Jeremiah as a model for this aspect of prophetic ministry. Jeremiah grieved for his people and because no one would listen. He grieved because the people were numbed by the power of the royal consciousness and could not see what was there to be seen - a fake perception of the world. Jeremiah's grief is critical, public and conveyed through a poetry which both expresses the end of creation and the failure of kingship. It is time to cry and time to ask questions to which there can be no answers - for answers presume control, and that has gone. The anguish of the prophet seeks to open the eyes of the people to the reality that surrounds them. 
This denying and deceiving kind of numbness is broken only by the embrace of negativity, by the public articulation that we are fearful and ashamed of the future we have chosen. The pain and the regret denied only immobilizes.... Jeremiah understood that criticism must be faced and embraced, for then comes liberation from incurable disease, from broken covenant and failed energy.
... Jesus ... understands Jeremiah. Ecclesiastes said only that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh; but Jesus sees that only those who mourn will be comforted (Matt 5:4). Only those who embrace the reality of death will receive the new life. ... The alternative community knows it need not engage in deception. It can stand in solidarity with the dying, for those are the ones who hope. Jeremiah, faithful to Moses, understood what numb people will never know, that only grievers can experience their experiences and move on.

	Amazement and doxology
Brueggemann contends that "It is the task of prophetic imagination and ministry to bring people to engage the promise of newness that is at work in our history with God"; "to bring to public expression those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know that they are there and to "speak metaphorically about hope but concretely about the real newness that comes to us and redefines our situation". This is achieved through the language of amazement,
It is a language that engages the community in new discernment's and celebrations when it had nearly given up and had nothing to celebrate. The language of amazement is against the despair as the language of grief is against the numbness. I believe that, rightly embraced, no more subversive or prophetic idiom can be uttered than the practice of doxology, which sets us before the reality of God, of God right at the center of a scene from which we presumed he had fled. Indeed, the language of amazement is the ultimate energizer in Israel, and the prophets of God are called to practice that most energizing language.

The paradigm is Second Isaiah. Comfort is offered, hope is created and Israel is brought to an enthronement festival, the enthronement of the God of freedom and  new beginnings. The people learn how to sing once again. "Lament is the loss of true kingship, whereas doxology is the faithful embrace of the true king and the rejection of the phoney one." With comfort, hope and doxology comes new energy, a feeling of empowerment and the ability to live a life faithful to God. With the new king, comes a new song and a festival of celebration. To the barren one comes birth for now there is enough energy to imagine a future. For those who hunger there is nourishment. The prophet does not change the world, "the prophet seeks only to spark the imagination of this people, and that in itself turns despair to energy". 

Jeremiah and Second Isaiah together, poets of pathos and amazement, speak in laments and doxologies. They cannot be torn from each other. Reading Jeremiah alone leaves faith in death where God finally will not stay. And reading Second Isaiah alone leads us to imagine that we may receive comfort without tears and tearing. Clearly, only those who anguish will sing new songs. Without anguish the new song is likely to be strident and just more royal fakery.

The New Future
The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate energizing for the new future... The resurrection can only be received and affirmed and celebrated as the new action of God, whose province it is to create new futures for people and to let them be amazed in the midst of despair.

In this new future the marginalised victims, the dispossessed, the non people, the disinherited, the tired, weary, hungry, numbed subjects of the old order are given a new history, a new identity, a new ethic, new energy to travel with God into the imagined alternative. Having evoked an alternative community, penetrated the numbness and the despair, it becomes possible to believe in and embrace the new future allowing people to "see their own history in the light of God's freedom and his will for justice."
In the end, of course, "prophetic imagination" is not simply "a good idea." It is a concrete practice that is undertaken by real believers who share the conviction of grief and hope that escapes the restraints of dominant culture. It is my hope that my exposition of prophetic imagination is intimately connected to concrete practice and that it may, on occasion, evoke, generate, and authorize such concrete practice.

So we turn to the work of U2. To what extent have they imagined alternatives, radically criticised, lamented, energised, spoken the language of amazement and doxology?  In what ways might they have sparked the in others an imagination that has turned despair to energy?

I still haven't found what I'm looking for
Since leaving the Shalom Christian Fellowship in Dublin in the early 1980's, it seems that Bono, The Edge and Larry Mullen have never belonged to a specific Christian fellowship. For many within the church this alone is enough to start a debate about whether they continue to have a Christian faith. Such debate has been intensified by a lifestyle that some would not regard as "Christian" and by lyrics which whilst clearly spiritual and biblical in content do not seem to make any unequivocal claims of faith in Jesus Christ.

In 1987, they recorded I still haven't found what I'm looking for;
I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you.

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you.

But I still haven't found What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found What I'm looking for.

How could believers in Jesus Christ still not have found what they are looking for?
One of U2’s most popular songs even proclaims that they haven’t found what they are looking for. “You broke the bonds/ You loosed the chains/ You carried the cross/ And my shame/ You know I believe it/ But I still haven’t found/ What I’m looking for” ... This is a strange message for an alleged Christian rock group to broadcast to a needy world! During a Dublin concert, Bono paused in the middle of singing “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and shouted, “I hope I never find it!”

Others see this as evidence of a seeking, maturing faith. For Steve Stockman, the amazing part of the U2 story is that they have managed to keep the vitality of Christian faith so vibrant in the world of rock music in the absence of Christian fellowship. His exploration of their spiritual journey concludes that they have managed to offer a consistent Christian witness to the world and should be applauded for doing so. But we must not be side-tracked into the "are they - aren't they" debate. Of more consideration to us is to hear how they have criticised or energised the church.

The second album October was recorded as the leadership of Shalom Fellowship started to question whether U2 should belong to a rock group. The band were being put under a lot of pressure to conform to a very legalistic version of Christianity which saw the lifestyle they were beginning to lead as too worldly. As a whole October is the most evangelistic album they have ever recorded, a wonderful celebration of faith which exhorts us to rejoice. Yet questions are beginning to arise.
Oh where do we go?
Where do we go from here?
Where do we go?

and in the closing words of the final song
Is that all?
Is that all you want from me?
Is that all?

 The next two albums (War and Unforgettable Fire) would deal with more political themes and whilst they can be construed as a challenge to the church to become involved in issues of war, poverty and justice, there is nothing explicit about the church within these songs. However, U2 began to visit the United States on regular tours and started to become aware of a right-wing American evangelicalism.
I go to America and I turn on my television set, and I start sweating profusely because those guys have turned faith into an industry. It's appalling. It's ugly - the guy's hand is virtually coming out of the television set.

On the live version of the song Bullet the Blue Sky, Bono would ape the style of the Evangelists and interrupt this powerful condemnation of US foreign policy in central America to declare;
But I see no difference between CBS News
and Hill Street Blues
and a preacher on the Old Time Gospel Hour
stealing money from the sick and the old.
Well, the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister!

As Stockman points out "The link between televangelists, right-wing fundamentalism and the bombing of innocent people in El Salvador was a potent cocktail of prophetic anger." From this side of the Atlantic, American fundamentalism seems an easy target, but U2's discomfort with the church is more widespread than that. In 1985 Bono said
Can you imagine how it feels to believe in Christ and be so uncomfortable with Christianity? The church is an empty, hollow building. It's the edifice. The established church is the edifice of Christianity. It's as if when the spirit of God leaves a place, the only things that are left are the pillars of rules and regulations to keep its roof on. And we are more and more claustrophobic around organized religion. I used to think I could walk into a Protestant or Catholic church or whatever and just be at one with myself and the surroundings. But ... it's as if the way we are outsiders in the music scene we're outsiders on every level. We get flak from everyone. We seem to be walking this line, and whenever we cross it either way it's a long way down, on either side, to fall. And I don't know how we're still there, but it takes it all away to talk about it too much.

There is a feeling of lament in this and other statements and a wishfulness in the 1991 song "Acrobat";
And 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
'Cos I need it now

To take the cup
To fill it up
To drink it slow
I can't let you go

And I must be
An acrobat
To talk like this
And act like that

Some commentators are picking up the hint that it is not just U2 who have a spiritual yearning but no church, but a whole generation. David Ruis of the Winnipeg Centre Vineyard writes
There's a well-known rock band named U2. The lead singer, Bono, was part of a Bible study led by a good friend of mine many years ago. My friend told me that he has yet to meet someone with as much passion for God as Bono. 

U2 came from the church, but at the time they started, the church didn't know what to do with them. In their biographies, they talk about how they contemplated splitting up the band because they felt like they couldn't play their music and still be called Christians. 

Their passion and their talent is incredible, but what we as the church didn't know was where to place them. They ended up playing secular gigs, and have become one of the hottest bands in the world, easily filling up stadiums wherever they play. But they were never given the blessing that they wanted from the church. 

It's a tragedy that they couldn't find a place in the church for their kind of artistic expression. 

... [a] song, entitled "One" says: 

"You say love's the temple, love's the higher law, you ask me to enter, then you make me crawl, I can't keep hanging on to what you've got, if all you've got is hurt. One love, one blood, we've got to carry each other." 

Who's he talking to? The church! I am in no way endorsing the band member's lifestyles, or their decision to step out of the church. What that band does was meant to go to the glory of God. Their musical gifts were meant to be part of our inheritance. But since they were rejected by the church, they naturally migrated to those who would accept them - the "world". 

More sympathetic to U2 is Simon Jones who says;
The rock band U2 have had an ambiguous, ambivalent relationship with the church. Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly that they have asked questions, expressed thoughts and articulated doubts that have not been well received by Christians. They are open to ideas from all sorts of quarters, some of which Christians think are highly suspect. It is also true that the lifestyle of a rock group doesn't sit comfortably with membership of the average church....
The church ought to be the place where the likes of Bono (and he is like countless others on the fringe of the church, only more famous and richer!) can work through their questions, doubts, angst and uncertainties without being labelled heretics, backsliders or trouble-makers.

U2's seeking has allowed others to question and to express doubts. Their articulation of their own discomfort with the institutional church has provided a voice and an example to others who wish to explore a Christian understanding but who do not seem to belong within the church. The problem from the point of view of Brueggemann's model of a prophetic ministry is that they have not pointed towards an imagined alternative. For themselves there is an alternative, they have an inner circle of friends and colleagues with whom they share fellowship;
their church has had to be the "coffee table fellowship", or dare I say "the barstool fellowship" They have kept their spiritual dialogue going through friends who share their faith whether that might be old friends in Dublin, or fellow musicians ... or journalists and writers... though they have been known to attend churches locally or around the world on various occasions, they have been mainly limited to these informal means of spiritual nourishment and accountability.

This may be the imagined alternative, groups of friends, meeting together in the places they find convenient and comfortable to penetrate the numbness and be fed. But it is not offered as such, what is offered in song and interview is a disenchantment, a questioning  which laments but does not hope for themselves or on behalf of others.

In addition, those who have been to the 2000-1 concerts describe a spiritual experience in which
"God is in the room, ... It feels like there's a blessing on the band right now. People are saying they're feeling shivers -- well, the band is as well. And I don't know what that 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 positions." 
The concerts finished with Bono giving thanks to the Almighty and leading the audience in a chorus of Hallelujah's.
The Church could almost pack up its contemporary music stall ... and head back home because on the Elevation tour, U2 has done what that industry has aimed to do - involve Jesus in the conversation of a generation. As the band's concerts finish with communal choruses of hallelujah just as they used to finish with Psalm 40, concert halls are taking on the spiritual feel and emotion of cathedrals and churches. God is in the house, and the world is there to meet with Him.

For some this may be the imagined alternative, however for most people the occasional U2 concert can not be enough to sustain a personal spiritual development. In fact it may reinforce a disenchantment with the church without the hope of an imagined alternative.

Hence, whilst there are elements of prophetic ministry within this aspect of U2's work, I am uncertain that there is enough to allow us to use this as an example of prophetic imagination. The element of lament amongst the songs are neither sustained or radical, there is no evidence that an alternative has been imagined by U2 or those who have embraced their music and philosophy.

And through the walls you hear the city groan
With the 1983 album War U2 began to sing about the political issues that concerned them. That album dealt with Northern Ireland; Nuclear war; the Solidarity movement in Poland; Refugees; Drug culture and closed with a version of Psalm 40 - a song that they would use to close their concerts throughout the 1980's.
I waited patiently for the Lord.
He inclined and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay.

I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song.
How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long, how long, how long
How long to sing this song?

The song from that album which would have the biggest impact is Sunday Bloody Sunday. In itself it has been a criticism, a lament and a celebration. In its original form the militaristic drum beat combines with a melodic guitar riff which carries the audience into the questions and the tears for a country torn in two. How many times has a piece of news from Northern Ireland caused each of us to ask this question?
I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away.
How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long, how long?
For a moment there is the hint of an alternative
'Cos tonight
We can be as one, tonight.
Until we return to the pain and the anger
Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead-end street.
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall.

Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me who has won?
The trenches dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters
Torn apart.

Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.

How long, how long must we sing this song?
Finally there is an attempt to move forward, to offer an alternative, a way in which Jesus can bring real peace to this religious war.
Wipe the tears from your eyes
Wipe your tears away.
I'll wipe your tears away.
I'll wipe your tears away.
I'll wipe your bloodshot eyes.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Sunday, bloody Sunday.

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality.
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die.

The real battle just begun
To claim the victory Jesus won
On...

Sunday, bloody Sunday
It was always a powerful song mixing criticism with lament, but it would take on a greater intensity after Sunday 8th November 1987. That morning an IRA bomb had killed 13 people gathered around the war memorial in Enniskillen. U2's concert in Denver that night was being filmed as part of a soundtrack album and feature film. The opening chords of Sunday Bloody Sunday are sparse and painful, the drum is missing and Bono's voice is filled with anger. Halfway through the song he breaks away from the band stands on the edge of the stage amongst the audience and points out an Irish flag, "The Irish in America" he declares to a cheer from the audience, and then continues;
I've had enough of Irish Americans who haven't been back to their country in 20 or 30 years.
Who come up to me and talk about the Resistance
- the Revolution back home
and the glory of the Revolution
and the glory of dying for the Revolution.
Fuck the Revolution!
They don't talk about the glory of killing for the revolution.
Where's the glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children?
Where's the glory in that?
Where's the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old age pensioners - their medals taken out and polished up for the day?
Where's the glory in that?
To leave them dying or crippled for life or dead under the rubble of the revolution that the majority of the people in my country don't want.
No more!

No more!

How long, how long must we sing this song?

The band did not play the song again for almost ten years and by that time it had started to take a very different few as Stockman explains.
As the band dusted "Sunday Bloody Sunday" off for the Elevation tour in 2001, the song had become a celebration of the positive, if cautious, steps Northern Ireland had taken toward a lasting peace... he told the crowd in Manchester, "Our prayer is that this wee, brave people make brave decisions, and this little island does not go back to war ... Compromise is not such a bad word after all." The chant at the end ... had changed in the new hopeful, fragile, climate. Instead of the screaming of "no more, no more" at the end of the song, Bono invited the crowd to "sing into the presence of love, sing into the presence of peace." There was a hope that these words would be sung for a long time.

U2's political concerns have ranged far and wide, apartheid; government terrorism; U.S. foreign policy; European integration; Bosnia; Gulf War; Burma and September 11th 2001. They have been an easy target for critics who claim that they jump on every bandwagon going or for those who can not understand a spiritual development which will result in "that odd, liberal sort of Christianity that occasionally blurs around the edges. Sometimes they teeter dangerously close to liberation theology, but pull back at just the right moment with their heads still on straight." Perhaps most telling has been the condemnation of those who oppose U2;

The group is active in political causes, but they are liberal humanistic ones. For example, in 1992 they played a benefit concert for the environmentalist/pacifist group Greenpeace and joined Greenpeace in protesting against a nuclear power plant. One of their hits, “Pride,” is a tribute to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King; and in 1994, U2 received the Martin Luther King Freedom Award. King was an adulterous, modernistic preacher who taught a false social gospel. U2 supported the adulterous, abortion-homosexual supporting Bill Clinton in his 1992 run for president. Clinton conversed with them on a national radio talk show during the election campaign and met them in a hotel room in Chicago. At the same time they mocked George Bush during their USA concerts that year. They featured a video clip depicting Bush chanting the words to “We Will Rock You” by the homosexual rock group Queen."

No doubt there is some truth to the notion that they jump on the occasional bandwagon. But the reality is that they have been very consistent in their support for Amnesty International and Greenpeace with a particular concern for the Sellafield Plant as it contaminates the Irish coast on which they live. In recent years Bono in particular has made his mark as part of the Drop the Debt campaign, using his fame and his contacts to gain access to those in positions of power and using concerts to make links between the abject poverty that so much of the world lives in and the terrorism that led to the events of September 11th. 

Bono's interest in Africa began with the bands involvement in Band Aid and Live Aid in 1984-5. Live Aid was a commercial success for U2, it brought them before a world wide audience for the first time and undoubtedly resulted in a boost in record sales. But it also reinforced their belief that music could make a difference in the world and their own need to be involved and informed. As a direct result Bono and his wife went to Ethiopia later that year in order to work as volunteers in an orphanage. Bono says of the experience
You'd walk out of your tent and you'd count bodies of dead and abandoned children. Or worse, the father of a child would walk up to you and try to give you his living child and say, 'You take it, because if this is your child, it won't die. 

In 1999 he joined Jubilee 2000, being used as a high profile ambassador meeting with the Pope, and senior politicians, impressing them not just with his commitment but his knowledge of the issues. After Jubilee 2000 he continued to work with Drop the Debt and formed and funded DATA (Debt, Aid, Trade for Africa). When he meets politicians his argument is pragmatic; "We put it in the most crass terms possible; we argue it is a financial and security issue for America ... There are potentially another 10 Afghanistan's in Africa, and it is cheaper by a factor of 100 to prevent the fires from happening than to put them out" When he talks with George Bush and other American politicians with a conservative Christian background he talks their language; 
These men are based on the Bible. And I know my Bible, so I just talked to them about the Bible. I told them how many verses are about poverty, I told them what Jesus said about poverty, and from the Bible I showed them this should be on their agenda.

 In March 2002 Bono appeared alongside President Bush at the announcement of an historic $5bn aid package for the world's poorest countries, the route to Bush had been the right wing conservative Senator Jesse Helms,
who had been very tough on the concept of foreign assistance and very bleak on Aids. He's a religious man so I told him that 2103 verses of scripture pertain to the poor and Jesus speaks of judgement only once - and it's not about being gay or sexual morality, but about morality. I quoted that verse of Matthew chapter 25: 'I was naked and you clothed me.' He was really moved. He was in tears.

Bono is no longer convinced that music makes a difference;
"I'm tired of dreaming. I'm into doing at the moment. It's like, let's only have goals that we can go after. U2 is about the impossible. Politics is the art of the possible. They're very different and I'm resigned to that now. Music's the thing that stopped me falling asleep in the comfort of my freedom. I learned about South America listening to the Clash. I learned about Situationism from the Sex Pistols. But that's a long way from budget caps and dealing with a Congress that is suspicious of aid ..."

Music does make difference in one way; it sways people emotionally. But for Bono that is no longer enough. "When you sing, you make people vulnerable to change in their lives. You make yourself vulnerable to change in your life. But in the end you've got to become the change you want to see in the world"

According to Brueggemann it is the role of the prophet to imagine the future not to implement it. Thus if Bono's work in this regard has been a prophetic ministry it may well be that it is now changing. His songs have articulated pain and grief, there has been a longing for a different world, a world that is based on love, justice, togetherness.
You say love is a temple, love a higher law
Love is a temple, love the higher law.
You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl
And I can't be holding on to what you got, 
when all you got is hurt.

One love, one blood, one life, you got to do what you should.
One life with each other: sisters, brothers.
One life, but we're not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other.
One, one.

There has also been much that has managed to energise a community, open eyes and ears to a different way of living. People have bought records and been introduced to Amnesty International, people have been to concerts and been confronted with a sermon on Irish Revolution or Apartheid or Debt Issues. People have been to a concert and been overwhelmed by the presence of God.
In writing her review of a U2 concert for the Chicago Sun Times, Cathleen Falsani observed: "I drove 200 miles this week to go to church in a gymnasium at the University of Notre Dame. With 11,000 strangers. And one Irish preacher with a familiar face." 
She goes on to confess, "in light of recent events that have sent me-like so many millions of others out there - diving back toward a place we call faith, the lyrics [Bono] sang were imbued with new meaning. It was sacred, joyful, healing. Like how church is supposed to be." What an utterly fascinating observation found within the culture section of a mainstream newspaper. 
Some Christian observers have also testified to similar mystical experiences. 
"I found myself singing the songs, very aware of God's gracious presence," testified Randy L. Rowland, a pastor from Seattle, about his time at a U2 concert. "At times during the concert, I found myself praying in the gaps between songs or during instrumentals." 
"When the concert was over, I realized that I had been involved in worship even though I hadn't really expected to worship," related Rowland in the pages of Worship Leader magazine. "I hadn't been all that conscious of what I was being caught up in, but there I was, worshipping the risen Lord at a rock concert." 
And they have allowed people to dream. When U2 played a New Years Eve concert in Dublin in 1989/90 Bono announced that it was time for the band to go and dream it up again. He invited the audience to do the same 
Here's to the future! The only limitations are the limits of our imagination. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud at high volume. That's what we do for a living.

ZOO TV
When U2 emerged in 1991 with the Album Achtung Baby the sound was very different, the themes were vague, the images blurred. Recorded in Berlin in the months following reunification, it dealt with broken relationships in a fragmented, confused society. It is filled with irony, lust and betrayal and for those who like issues of faith to be straight forward, black and white, it felt like the final betrayal. There was even more confusion when the band took the new show on the road. Stockman describes it like this;
As the lights went down, there was a bugle call. The 36 televisions that were scattered across the stage were fuzzy and flickered, seeking to catch some kind of signal. Suddenly, slogans were split across the screens in split-second, fit inducing flashes. TV pictures of sports and politics and science and fashion mingled in a good, bad and ugly of what was post-modern entertainment. The frivolous sat alongside the serious so they blended in to one another. There was a flickaholic in the room, as there now is in every living room across the world, changing channels at a speed that allows no one to get bored, but lets no one get a handle on what's happening. Television screens arrayed the entire stage and the video wall was drowning out the band. Welcome to Zoo TV. 

The show played with image and with truth, it presented the new hi-tech communication age as a parody of itself, and the band presented themselves as a parody of all that had gone before. Here was Bono as the glitzy rock star - the Fly in shiny leather suit and wrap around sun shades. In the United States he transformed into Mirrorball Man, the televangelist "a cross between Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggert". In Europe he became MacPhisto; 

a modern alter-ego of Mephistopheles - who sold his soul to the devil and Macdonalds, part of the throw-away society. ... he would be dressed in gold and would have 1970's style platform boots... somebody gave him a pair of horns ... and MacPhisto was born.

In character Bono had more freedom to question, to deconstruct the values of western society, to mock the world, expose the quest for power and success. He could explore the depth of post-modernity, he could live out the line from Sunday Bloody Sunday; 
When fact is fiction and TV reality.

particularly as the concept was worked through as the world watched its first Live for TV war direct from Baghdad and airmen talked about war as if it was a computer game. 

In 1993 they recorded Zooropa. The images become darker, the opening track weaves advertising slogans into one another and in Numb we are faced with the full futility of Brueggemann's royal consciousness.
Don't move
Don't talk out-a time,
Don't think
Don't worry, everything's just fine
Just fine.

Don't grab
Don't clutch
Don't hope for too much
Don't breathe
Don't achieve
Don't grieve without leave.

Don't check, just balance on the fence
Don't answer
Don't ask
Don't try and make sense.

Don't whisper
Don't talk
Don't run if you can walk,
Don't cheat, compete
Don't miss the one beat.

Don't travel by train
Don't eat
Don't spill
Don't piss in the drain
Don't make a will.

Don't fill out any forms
Don't compensate
Don't cover
Don't crawl
Don't come around late
Don't hover at the gate

Don't take it on board
Don't fall on your sword
Just play another chord
If you feel you're getting bored

Don't change your brand
Don't listen to the band
Don't gape 
Don't ape
Don't change your shape
Have another grape

Don't plead
Don't bridle
Don't shackle
Don't grind
Don't curve
Don't swerve
Don't lie, die, serve

Don't theorise, realise, polarise
Chance, dance, dismiss, apologise

Don't spy
Don't lie
Don't try
Imply 
Detain 
Explain
Start again

Don't triumph
Don't coax
Don't cling
Don't hoax
Don't freak
Peak
Don't leak
Don't speak

Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest

Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest

Don't struggle
Don't jerk
Don't collar
Don't work
Don't wish
Don't fish
Don't teach
Don't reach

Don't borrow
Don't break
Don't fence
Don't steal
Don't pass
Don't press
Don't try
Don't feel

Don't touch
Don't dive
Don't suffer
Don't rhyme
Don't fantasise
Don't rise
Don't lie

Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest

Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest	

(FAT LADY - backing vocal)

I feel numb
I feel numb
Too much is not enough
Gimme some more
Gimme some more
Of that stuff love
Too much is not enough

Too much is not enough
I feel numb
I feel numb
Gimme what you got
Gimme what I don't get
Gimme what you got
Too much is not enough
I feel numb

I feel numb
Gimme some more
Gimme some more
Of that stuff love
Gimme some more
Too much is not enough
I feel numb

I feel numb
I feel numb

I feel numb

I feel numb
I feel numb

I feel numb

I feel numb

I feel numb

I feel numb

I feel numb

When Brueggemann calls upon prophetic ministry "to penetrate the numbness in order to face the body of death in which we are caught", it is surely the attitudes of this song to which he is referring. He carries on, "Clearly, the numbness sometimes evokes from us rage and anger, but the numbness is more likely to be penetrated by grief and lament." This song is delivered in a monotone by The Edge, the video shows him starring at the camera oblivious to the world around him. The character is so numb that there is not yet the capacity to grieve or to lament, yet as we view the despair, as we hear the admission "I feel numb" for someone there will be the realisation that this parody is too near the truth for comfort and reality may begin to sink in and let death go. 

Brueggemann goes on "Prophetic ministry seeks to penetrate despair so that new futures can be believed and embraced by us." On Zooropa there is little evidence of hope and yet for at least one reviewer there is the realisation that Zooropa "signifies the beginning of a search into the unknown, a search that will lead them to wander through the dark regions of the psyche, a journey they will one day return from, older and wiser, but refreshed." It would be a while before U2 would offer its audience some clues about the direction they were looking in. Stockman suggests that it can be found in a brief second on the 1997-8 Popmart tour.
It was throwaway gesture in which the whole Popmart thesis is understood. Perhaps it was even the whole point of the U2 dissertation of the nineties. The band was cranking up the volume in "Mofo" when Bono came to the line "Looking for the baby Jesus under the trash," As he sang those words he gestured his arm to the biggest TV screen in the world, that huge golden arch and that mighty lemon. It was almost just a shrug ... All of this paraphernalia the band had around it night after night for most of the nineties was trash. What was more important was underneath it all"

Underlying the whole of U2's work there has been a basic hopefulness. It was not easy to find in the 1990's but has become more apparent as we entered a new decade. Love has been a recurring theme, but it is hard love, a tough love, it is in God's grace, undeserved found in unexpected moments and amongst the confusion of the modern world. Most explicitly it is expressed within the last song of the latest album
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

Grace makes beauty out of ugly things
But Grace can be found elsewhere. In the total forgiveness of Daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car, in the renewal of Please; in the tightly held hand of the Drowning Man; in the redemptive power When love came to town; and in a campaign to allow the poor of the world to begin again. U2 have managed to express the numbness and despair felt by so many and yet carry themselves and so much of their audience at least into the possibility of a better future. 

Take the colours of my imagination
Take the scent hanging in the air
take this tangle of a conversation
and turn it into your own prayer

At the beginning of this exploration we asked a number of questions based on Brueggemann's model.  To what extent have U2
Ÿ	articulated the imagined alternative?
Ÿ	dismantled the dominant culture through radical criticism and lament?
Ÿ	energised the alternative community through the language of amazement and new doxologies?
Ÿ	penetrated the despair so that new futures can be believed and embraced?
I find myself answering with a tentative perhaps. With regards to the debate with the Church, U2 have been critical but don't seem to have imagined an alternative or offered much energisation outside their concerts. If the established church is as bankrupt as they seem to imply, where are those seeking God to find fellowship with one another? A U2 concert is fine but they only tend to come around every 3 or 4 years and are too expensive for many of us to contemplate. We know that U2 are not alone in this dissatisfaction with the institutional church, but what new direction can be imagined?

With respect to some of the political campaigns U2 have supported, there do seem to more elements of prophetic ministry. They have criticised, lamented, imagined a world of love in which we carry each other. They have inspired and encouraged people to look at the world around them and make the changes they can make, they have exhorted God and praised God and with others must feel tantalisingly close to embracing a new future for Northern Ireland and for the debt ridden nations of Africa. It feels like many elements of prophetic ministry have been practised in these areas.

The 1990's critique of postmodernism and consumerism was an imaginative example of how to parody the weaknesses of a culture using the very techniques that have created its dominance. Although the very fact that U2 made a lot of money from their critique of consumerism leaves us with an uncomfortable irony. However they used the period to make some harsh comments and perhaps to help some to draw away from the all pervasive power of an individualistic, consumer society. Clearly we are long way from being able to dismantle this power but U2 have suggested a way that may lead us towards the alternative society in which people have equal value, whatever their status, income or nationality, in which God will be praised, the Kingdom will come on earth as in heaven.

This seems to leave us with an argument in support of U2 as practitioners of a prophetic ministry. Yet I am still unsure. Part of my uncertainty is no doubt that as someone who has enjoyed the music and been challenged by the vision for the last twenty years, I am reticent about wanting to be too enthusiastic, wary in case the fan has not been analytical enough. There is a danger in an exercise such as this one that we look at a group of people whose views we broadly agree with, confirm our own prejudices and declare our own opinions prophetic. The real mark of a prophetic ministry will be that through its imagining, dismantling and energising a community will have been stirred into action. I have trawled the Internet looking for evidence of action arising from U2 songs or statements other than the work Bono is doing himself. I have found very little. There are people who like the music and the politics, there are people who like the music and hate the politics, their are people who cottoned on to the irony of the nineties and plenty more who were bemused. But very little that might be U2 inspired "concrete practice that is undertaken by real believers who share the conviction of grief and hope that escapes the restraints of dominant culture."

This in itself is not enough to draw a conclusion that U2's work has failed to meet the criteria set of a prophetic imagination. But it is enough to leave the question open. Indeed I suspect that such a tangled conversation must always be open ended and that we can be too quick to declare as prophetic those people and organisations we wish to be prophetic. What can be said is that in the last twenty years U2 have asked questions of themselves, of their listeners, of many in positions of power and influence and of God. They have articulated bad news and they allowed many who would never go near conventional religious institutions to catch a glimpse of the Kingdom. They have encouraged us to open our eyes to see the world as it is and as it could be, to search for God amongst the trash and to walk on singing hallelujah.
Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
All that you scheme…

Discography
(Albums and Tracks included)
Boy, October 1980, Island Records Ltd
I Will Follow
Twilight
A Cat Dubh
Into The Heat
Out Of Control
Stories For Boys
The Ocean
A Day Without Me
Another Time, Another Place
The Electric Co.
Shadows And Tall Trees

October, October 1981, Island Records Ltd
Gloria
I Fall Down
I Threw A Brick Through A Window
Rejoice
Fire
Tomorrow
October
With A Shout
Stranger In A Strange Land
Scarlet
Is That All?

War, March 1983, Island Records Ltd
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Seconds
New Years Day
Like A Song
Drowning Man
The Refugee
Two Hearts Beat As One
Red Light
Surrender
40

Under a Blood Red Sky, (Live album) November 1983, Island Records Ltd
Gloria
11 O'Clock Tick Tock
I will Follow
Party Girl
Sunday Bloody Sunday
The Electric Co.
New Years day
40
The Unforgettable Fire, October 1984, Island Ecords Ltd
A Sort of Homecoming
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Wire
The Unforgettable Fire
Promenade
The 4th of July
Bad
Indian Summer Sky
Elvis Presley And America
MLK

The Joshua Tree, March 1987
	Where The Streets Have No Name
	I Still Haven't Found What I am Looking For
With Or Without You
Bullet The Blue Sky
Running To Stand Still
Red Hill Mining Town
In God's Country
Trip Through Your Wirs
One Tree Hill
Exit
Mothers Of The Disappeared

Rattle and Hum, November 1988, Island Records Ltd
Helter Skelter (live)
Van Dieman's Land
Desire
Hawkmoon 269
All Along The Watchtower (live)
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (live)
Freedom For My people
Silver and Gold (live)
Pride (In The Name of Love) (live)
Angel Of Harlem
Love Rescue Me
When Love Comes To Town
Heartland
God Part II
The Star Spangled Banner
Bullet The Blue Sky (live)
All I Want Is You

Achtung Baby, November 1991, Island Records Ltd
Zoo Station
Even Better Than The Real Thing
One
Until The End Of The World
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?
So Cruel
The Fly
Mysterious Ways
Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
Acrobat
Love Is Blindness

Zooropa, July 1993, Island Records Ltd
Zooropa
Babyface
Numb
Lemon
Stay (Faraway So Close)
Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car
Some Days Are Better Than Others
The First Time
Dirty Day
The Wanderer

Pop, March 1997, Island Records Ltd
Discotheque
Do You Feel Loved
Mofo
If God Will Send His Angels
Staring At The Sun
Last Night On Earth
Gone
Miami
The Playboy Mansion
If You Wear That Velvet Dress
Please
Wake Up Dead Man

All That You Can't Leave Behind, October 2000, Island Records Ltd
Beautiful Day
Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
Elevation
Walk On
Kite
In A Little While
Wild Honey
Peace On Earth
When I Look At The World
New York
Grace

Bibliography

Bowler, Dave and Dray, Brian, U2 A Conspiracy of Hope, Sidgewick and Jackson, 1993
Brueggemann, Walter Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World, Fortess Press, Mineapolis, 2000
Brueggemann, Walter, The Prophetic Imagination; Second Edition, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2001
Chatterton, Mark, U2: the complete encyclopaedia, Firefly Publishing, London, 2001,
Fallon, BP, U2 Faraway So Close, Vigin, 1994
Flanagan, Bill, U2 At The End Of The World, Bantam Press, 1995
Hauerwas, Stanley, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World and Living In Between, Labyrinth Press, 1988
Jackson, Laura, Bono: The Biography (Piatkus, 2001),
Stockman, Steve, Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, Relevant Books, 2001
Turner, Steve Imagine: a vision for christians and the arts, ivp, Leicester, 2001

Articles
Guardian, March 18 2002
Time, March 4 2002

Webography
@u2, http://www.atu2.com
Aderholdt, Danielle Lee, "Christians in the general market" http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/towers/1022/dla2.html
arielsong, http://www.epinions.com/content_55261236868
Beard, Steve, "Serious Thinking about Rock and Soul" http://www.next-wave.org/feb02/seriousthinking.htm
Bono, "Speech given at the launch of NetAid, (During the UNDP 1999 Race Against Poverty Awards Ceremony)", September 08, 1999, http://www.atu2.com/news/article.src?ID=578&Key=launch%20of%20netaid&Year=&Cat=
Bowden, Tony and Stewart, Jennifer, Sides, "U2's mysterious ways" http://www.tmtm.com/sides/u2.html
Bynum, E. L., Independent Baptist News & Views, March 2001 - http://www.llano.net/baptist/nv103.htm#U2,
Calvary Contender, http://home.hiwaay.net/~contendr/4-2002.html
Christianity Today, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/005/20.5.html 
Christianity Today, "A Rock Band That's Good for Something" http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/114/52.0.html
Hinlicky, Sarah E. , "I Believe in God... Do U2" http://www.boundless.org/2000/features/a0000402.html 
Jolman, Samuel, "Still haven’t found what we’re looking for", ONLINE CHIMES, http://www-stu.calvin.edu/chimes/990430
Jones, Steve, "Why bother with Church?" http://www.tribalgeneration.com/living_meatdrink_whybother-1e.shtml 
Mattingly, Terry, On religion, "U2 Bedevils the modern church", http://tmatt.gospelcom.net/column/2002/01/30/
Pritchard, Ray, "Solus Christus: By Christ Alone Matthew 16:13-18", Calvary Memorial Church, June 29, 1997, http://www.calvarymemorial.com/sermons/062997.HTM 
Ruis, David, "Creativity and the Arts" http://www.cambridgemusicgroup.com/cmg_article_creativity_and_the_arts.htm
Rythmns of Redemption, http://www.stocki.ni.org/
U2.com, http://www.u2.com
U2 Direct Quotes Page, http://www.mindspring.com/~twhite21/band/U2dquotes.html
Way of Life, "The Rock Group U2", http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/rockgroupu2.html
What's Wrong with Christian Rock Music? http://www.users.on.net/mec/answers/82_cha.htm
White, Jason "U2's spiritual journey" http://www.hollandsentinel.com/stories/020902/rel_02090229.shtml