Interesting Interview With Bono

March 6, 2011

Interesting Interview With Bono

Janet sent me this link with the observation that "he sounds more orthodox than I thought he would." Indeed he does. I'm not the biggest U2 fan, though what I like of their music I like a lot, and have assumed for a long time that their much-reported Christianity didn't amount to very much any more, that it had become a veneer over ordinary secular liberalism. Well, this would indicate that I'm wrong, at least about Bono himself, and I'm happy to be so. Setting aside his conventional objections to the Catholic Church and her difficult doctrines, and a general suspicion of institutional religion in general, he seems to have a pretty good grasp of the heart of the matter.

The web site where the excerpt appears is interesting, too. I especially liked this quote from the proprietor's About Me page: "The world's deteriorating moral climate was starting to get to me, especially since I was in the camp of those adding to it. "

Maclin Horton

Music, Religion

bono, christianity, u2

2 responses to “Interesting Interview With Bono”

Francesca

March 6, 2011

It’s a very nice interview indeed. I always believed that Bono was serious about his Christian faith, but never listened to U2. This was not for musical reasons. We had an ex-student at Aberdeen who had gone mad, and whenever one ran into him, he would always try to give you some U2 CD. When they spoke at his funeral, after he killed himself, a lot of people remembered that. I am so ignorant that about the group that only recently did I realize that that song which one hears in Malls, ‘Once more for love’ was by them, and about Martin Luther King. But I suppose because, in Aberdeen, so many of my students were young zealous Christians, I had heard often that U2 were similarly oriented.

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Mac

March 6, 2011

I freely admit I was operating mostly on prejudice, based partly on annoyance at their Super Colossal Pop Star presence and over-the-top spectacle concerts (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2_360%C2%B0_Tour — 200 trucks to haul the staging etc.). It’s a long way from their early days as a punkish group who were apparently pretty fervent members of some charismatic congregation. And Bono can come across as kind of pompous sometimes. I remember a reviewer taking Bono to task for taking himself too seriously–“All I’ve got is a red guitar, three chords, and the truth”. “Come on, guys,” said the reviewer. “You’re a highly successful arena rock band, not Vatican II.”

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