Progressive Christianity and Bono

Image via Wikipedia

I was reading the 'Progressive Christianity' wiki page and noticed under the 'notable progressive Christians' Bono!

I would doubt that Bono would endorse anything which put him in a box. (Probably like myself). Yet if you look at the broad definitions of what progressive is on the wikipedia then you could see that Bono actually fits in with this definition nicely.

• A spiritual vitality and expressiveness, including participatory, arts-infused, and lively worship as well as a variety of spiritual rituals and practices such as meditation
• Intellectual integrity including a willingness to question
• An affirmation of human diversity
• An affirmation of the Christian faith with a simultaneous sincere respect for other faiths
• Strong ecological concerns and commitments
• Social justice commitments through collective salvation

I think like many 'Rock 'n' Roller' like Bono part of there allure, is the mystery which makes them tick. Unravelling the riddles that make up their poetry and lyrics. Realising that what they write resonates with us all.

Related articles

• What Progressive Christianity is really about - in their own words! (livingjourney.wordpress.com)

Marcus Borg on the mystical experiences of God

One of my favourite theologians Marcus Borg writes on the mystical experiences of God::

My experiences were what scholars of mysticism call “extravertive” or “eyes open” mystical experiences (the other type is “introvertive” or “eyes closed”). I saw the same visual “landscape” – a forest, a room, the inside of an airliner – that I normally see. There were no extra beings, no angels.
For a minute or two (and once for the better part of an hour), what I was seeing looked very different. Light became different – as if there were a radiance shining through everything. The biblical phrase for this is “the glory of God” – as the book of Isaiah puts it, “the earth is filled with the glory – the radiance – of God. The world was transfigured, even as it remained “the same.” And I experienced a falling away of the subject-object distinction that marks our ordinary everyday experience – that sense of being a separate self, “in here,” while the world is “out there.”

Interestingly Borg's experiences are similar to my own. What I find interesting is from my Charismatic/Pentecostal background the interpretation put on these experience. For starters Charismatic/Pentecostal would not label them 'Mystical'. Maybe a 'Prophetic' dream or vision, then an interpretation would be sought.  Often for those that received it or for others.
It would be interesting how Borg had these experiences, the background the culture he was in. For me it was usually outside the 'Church' in strange places like the shower or just going for a walk. When it did happen in the Church. I always felt there was a certain amount of hype. Which now I believe is just the same as going to a great concert. (Yes this happened to me quite distinctly at the MCG during U2's Zooropa tour).

POP

Somehow I found myself listening to Triple M yesterday in the car. The announcer said that every U2 album was great except POP. I nearly crashed! POP is my favourite U2 album.
I went off U2 after POP. It seemed they had lost something, it was if they had made it to the creative top of their game and where going to back to tried and true formulas after this. Formulas which are good but didn't challenge me in moving onwards in music.

I think the same could be said with a lot of band who reach their climax of there creative peak. The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's. The Cure's Disintergration.
Some bands are still pushing it to the limits Radio Head is a classic. Every time I listen there is something new musically for me.
Strangely I don't see it as much with individual artists. There is something about a group that works together on a project

Nick Cave and Bono

I spotted this post Bono vs Nick Cave on the Center for public website, by Greg Clarke.

"Both U2’s Bono and Nick Cave put their creative drive down to losing a parent at a young age. That tragedy gave them both a ‘Father-shaped’ hole in the heart that has to be filled with something. Bono says there’s something questionable about a middle-aged man who still needs to hear a stadium full of people chanting his name to know he’s OK. Nick Cave describes himself, using biblical language, as ‘doing the work of his father.
But both Bono and Cave acknowledge that the most significant man in history is not their respective fathers, but Jesus of Nazareth."

I find it interesting that both are often compared. Like brothers, they are examined by Aunties to see who has the strongest gentetic traits of their 'Father'. 

The 'Love Song'

Interesting 'Magnificent', from the latest U2 album has been haunting me.

I was born, I was born to sing for you
I didn't have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice from the womb
My first cry, it was a joyful noise, oh, oh

It has the same themes as Nick Caves lecture he gave on the 'Love Song'

'The love song is perhaps the truest and most distinctive human gift for recognizing God and a gift that God himself needs. God gave us this gift in order that we speak and sing Him alive because God lives within communication.'

It is as if Nick, has written the answer to why Bono has written 'Magnificent', why it is a great 'Love Song'. Although I think for Nick it maybe a bit blatant, to obvious.

I wonder what we would get if Nick Cave collaborated with Brian Eno..... 

U2, Magnificent

U2's "No time on the horizon" has in someways been a 'God send'. I find most music pretty insipid, even the last two U2 albums have left me feeling nothing. Yet new album has hit the mark. It has come at the right time. Words and music which I can sing with my Soul. The song 'Magnificent' has spoken about much of what I've been pondering lately.

I was born, I was born to sing for you
I didn't have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice from the womb
My first cry, it was a joyful noise, oh, oh

The idea of when you have found God, there is no escaping. You cannot, even if you want to disbelieve.

Richard Dawkins writes about this in the opposite direction for the athiest, using his argument against Pascals Wager::

”There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something you can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bible that I believe every word inside them. But none can make me actually believe it if I don’t. Pascal’s Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he’d see through the deception. The ludicrous idea that believing is something you can decide to do is deliciously mocked by Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, where we meet the roboti Electic Monk, a labour-saving device that you buy ‘to do your believing for you. The de luxe moel is advertised as ‘Capable of believing thingsthey wouldn’t believe in Salt Lake City’.

For me what often frightens me about God is the 'pre-destination' stuff. It is in someways a vortex in which your life is not your own. Thanks goodness for 'Open Theism', which I can intergrate belief.

Double Albums

I think for me one think that elevates a good band to something even better is, the double album. Not just a crappy, cheap double 'live' album, a double studio album. At times you get these overlapping themes almost like a symphony.

My top five are::

The Beatles :: White Album

Pink Floyd :: The Wall

The Cure :: Kiss me, Kiss me, Kiss me

The Whitlams :: Little Cloud

Nick Cave :: Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus

Its interesting U2 hasn't got there with a double though I think Achung baby, had enough material left over for Zooropa. I think this should have been a double. But then again I can only listen to Bono for a short while before his voice gets on my nerves...