All that you can't leave out about U2 and religion

All that you can't leave out about U2 and religion
Bimpe Fatogun

January 11, 2002

A Presbyterian minister from Ballymena has just completed a book which looks into the religious significance behind the songs Dublin rockers U2 have been churning out since the 1970s.

Here the Rev Steve 'Stocki' Stockman gives Bimpe Fatogun chapter and verse on this latest rock bible:

PROBING the spirituality of the biggest rock band in the world might seem an odd source for a book - but when that band is U2 the idea begins to make sense.

Garnering several titles for band of the year and toppling the Beatles in a recent poll for greatest album of all time with The Joshua Tree, Ireland's favourite sons have never been more popular.

Never shy of controversy, their songs are peppered with religious references.

Bono's lyrical preoccupation with biblical ideas is perhaps most clearly illustrated in the final verse of the classic When Love Comes to Town - I was there when they crucified my Lord, I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword, I threw the dice when they pierced his side but, I've seen love conquer the great divide. While most people have an image of U2 as coming from an Irish Catholic heritage, the band is in fact 'five eighths Protestant'.

Adam Clayton and The Edge are both Protestant, Larry Mullen jnr is Catholic and Bono's late father was Protestant and his mother a Catholic.

Yet there has never been a definitive study of the supergroup's spiritual odyssey - until now.

Walk On - The Spiritual Journey of U2, already flying off the bookshelves in the United States and Canada, will be released Ireland and Britain next month.

For its author the Rev Steve Stockman, a Presbyterian minister from Ballymena, the book's success has been wholly unexpected.

The Rev Stockman (or Stockie to his friends) is the Presbyterian chaplain at Queen's University.

"I started the project a year ago this month, when U2 were an OK band who used to be the biggest band in the world. But in the process of writing the book they became the biggest band in the world again, " Rev Stockman explained "I thought I was writing a Christian book, for someone who was Christian who is interested in U2, so in my first draft I talked about the Church as 'we'.

"By my second and final drafts I was referring to the Church in the third person as I realised it was a book which would be of interest to a wider audience.

For the Rev Stockman the genesis of the book was a website he began in defence of the band against accusations that they had fallen away from their faith.

He sees a clear correlation between the band which came out of an evangelical Christian 'house church' in Dublin called Shalom (which Bono, Larry and the Edge attended) and the band which packs out stadia all over the world.

"There has been a change in their music over the years. In the beginning they were very vocal about their Christian faith, " he said.

Their second album, October was almost like a worship album, as indeed they were throughout the 1980s, " Rev Stockman said.

"They have said 'We sang about what we believed in in the 80s and what we didn't believe in the 90s'.

"They began to look more at what was in the world, at modern images of the world.

They were saying 'This is what the world is like' not that they necessarily agreed or disapproved one way or the other."

However, even in what was apparently one of their least 'spiritual' albums, 1997's Pop, the Rev Stockman believes the focus is still very much on religion.

"There is a line in the song MOFO which goes 'Looking for the baby Jesus under the trash'. That in many ways sums up what the album was all about then, " he said.

"Examining the way the world was and asking 'Throw me down a line, Lord.

Help me understand what's going on'."

For many Christians, the band's failure to articulate their faith in a more transparent way has come as a disappointment.

But the Rev Stockman believes the subtlety of their message is the cause of their enduring success.

"When I came back after the summer all the students had U2 posters up.

People who weren't listening to them anymore had rediscovered their albums, " he said.

"They are realistic about what is going on in the world but still manage to be hopeful in the midst of that realism."

The Presbyterian chaplain was unaware when he launched his website that it would lead to him becoming the author of what seems set to become a key entry in the U2 canon.

"I started my web page for fun but it got more serious when more people visited it and some debate started, " Rev Stockman said.

"There was one person who wrote to me and said that U2 were ashamed of the gospel. He seemed to think that in order for Bono to prove he wasn't ashamed of it he should talk about it at every concert.

"What I would say is that if you look at what the gospel says, it says go out and feed the sick, clothe the poor and visit people in prison. Those are things he is doing every day."

And so it was that the Presbyterian minister was commissioned to write a book charting the religion behind the rhetoric.

"A company in Florida approached me and asked if I would be interested in writing a book on U2.

"I didn't interview them, partly because they were touring the world and partly because I didn't really want them to explain what was already there in their songs. I wanted to show them it was already there."

So he listened to all the albums, read all the books, and brought the old interviews out of the attic he had kept for years.

"The book's focus is Bono, his music and his faith over 30 years of rock without being in a church setting. He is very Christian and spiritual and it is about how he has kept that going in a world where you are not supposed to be either of those things, " he said.

One theme touched on in the book is the attitude of the Church towards musicians and the arts. It is a subject the Rev Stockman would like to cover in a future book.

"In a sense the Protestant Church has lost the arts. I always remember a story from a north Belfast youth worker who was doing reconciliation work with teenagers, " he said.

"One of the things he did was to take them into each other's churches.

"There was one young Catholic youth who was very uninterested in everything, until he looked around him and gasped 'You've been robbed!'

"The fact that the Church is robbed of art is part of the reason it doesn't understand U2's work. The Protestant Church needs to sort itself out, " he said.

"In some ways the reformation was a theological blessing but a cultural curse. What we did was throw out a lot of babies with the bath water. One of those was the creativity of a Catholic place of worship."

During his exploration of the band's beginnings he deals with the cultural backdrop from which U2 emerged.

"In the book I look at how Dublin was the last place in the world at the end of the 70s you would have expected the biggest band in the world to emerge - but at the same time it was the only place from which U2 could have emerged.

"I explore how if they had emerged from anywhere else in the world they would simply have become a Christian rock band. Because they were from such a small church they looked farther afield for an audience."

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