The World’s Biggest Rock Band Is a Christian Rock Band

B efore U2 hit it big, on their 1983 album War they included a song lifted directly from Psalm 40 and didn’t bother to disguise it: The song was called “40.” It was a signature anthem, and the boys used to close out shows with it. By the late ’80s, U2 became the biggest rock band on earth — a position they have held ever since, with no real competition unless you count Bruce Springsteen and his E-Street crew as a band. Hitting their peak with the album The Joshua Tree, they addressed Jesus Christ in 1987’s “With or Without You”— “see the thorn twist in your side” — and in “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” delivered what one scholar declared the most successful hymn of recent decades.

Is U2 a “secret Christian” band, as the New Yorker once asked? No, they’re a joyfully, proudly outspoken one. Their Christianity is about as secret as Elton John’s sexuality.

U2’s lyrics speak plainly from a Christian heart, and the main reason so many listeners don’t make the connection is simply that as a culture, we’ve forgotten the Bible. The grave and stately majesty contained in the rhythms of the King James Version used to be such a staple of Anglo-American culture that it was not necessary to be a religious believer to be steeped in them. The comic novels of P. G. Wodehouse, for instance, contain no hint of religious dogma whatsoever, and yet they are absolutely saturated with KJV references. Page one of The Code of the Woosters (1938): “I had been dreaming that some bounder was driving spikes through my head — not just ordinary spikes, as used by Jael the wife of Heber, but red-hot ones.” That’s a deep cut.

Fast-forward to 2000, when Frank Bruni of the New York Times — a product of the elite Loomis Chaffee School and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina — was covering the campaign of George W. Bush and didn’t notice a near-direct quotation from the Sermon on the Mount: “Mr. Bush also offered an interesting variation on the saying about the pot and the kettle,” an amused Bruni wrote on April 24, 2000. “‘Don’t be takin’ a speck out of your neighbor’s eye,’ he told the audience, ‘when you got a log in your own.’” In the 21st century, you can confidently quote Matthew 7:3 and the editors of the most sophisticated newspaper will not only draw a complete blank, they’ll credit you with a witticism.

U2’s primary lyricist Paul Hewson, a.k.a. Bono, whose parents were Catholic and Anglican, has spoken frankly about his faith in interviews, and one writer counted more than 50 Biblical quotations in U2 songs. They’re not concentrated in one particular period of focus but rather distributed throughout the band’s career. 1987’s “Bullet the Blue Sky”: “Jacob wrestled the angel / and the angel was overcome.” 1981’s Gloria: “Goria, in te domine [in, you, Lord] . . . oh Lord, loosen my lips.” 2004’s “Vertigo”: “Your love is teaching me how to kneel.” From the same year, “Yahweh” quotes John 10:18 and the Sermon on the Mount.

With its references to “many mansions” and “keys to the kingdom,” 1993’s “The First Time” quotes both Matthew and John on its way to a retelling of the Prodigal Son story from Luke. In 1991’s “Ultra Violet (Light Your Way),” Bono begs Christ, “Baby, baby, baby, light my way” in a moment of anxiety about the difficulty of accessing God’s gifts: “You bury your treasure where it can’t be found / But your love is like a secret that’s been passed around.” “In the Name of Love” (1984) draws a parallel between the sacrifices of Jesus Christ (“One man betrayed with a kiss”) and that of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Possibly the most chilling use of the Scriptures in a U2 lyric is 1991’s “Until the End of the World,” in which the speaker is Judas, addressing Jesus after the Last Supper: “We ate the food, drank the wine . . . in the garden I was playing the tart, kissed your lips and broke your heart.” The song pushes on toward a climactic verse relating the traitor’s last thoughts as he commits suicide: “Waves of regret, waves of joy, I reached out for the one I tried to destroy.”

Bono has understandably taken a great deal of heat after he and U2 endorsed legalization of abortion in Ireland four years ago, and some would argue that he disqualified himself on those grounds alone. But legalized abortion is popular among Catholics, so Bono’s position is hardly an unusual one.

Although they are flawed messengers, that U2 can get stadiums full of people singing along to Christian lyrics makes them a countervailing cultural force.

U2 in general, and Bono especially, have proven themselves to be fully attuned to what it means to be a Christian, weighing its mysteries and ecstasies and pains and doubts. Yet Christianity and the culture it built are dissolving so rapidly before our eyes that even nonbelievers should be startled by the loss. Supposedly Christian churches are backing away from the rich and complicated legacy of the Bible and tossing out everything in the creed except vague, watery injunctions to be nice and maybe spare a thought for the poor. At weddings, we hear the occasional smiley-faced reference to love as spoken of in Corinthians. Weak sauce. Love is not proud, and Christianity is not a collection of inspirational kitchen magnets.