A church I used to attend once plastered pictures of Bono in their fellowship hall while promoting a food drive. My heart sank in dismay. It was discouraging because I knew the following information. Please read:
The following is from the latest edition of the 400-page Directory of Contemporary Worship Musicians, which is available in print as well as a free eBook from the Way of Life web site www.wayoflife.org.
U2 was formed in 1978 and has been hugely successful. The band was selected as Rolling Stone magazine's Band of the Eighties and was still called "the biggest band in the world" in Rolling Stone's December 2004 issue. U2 front man Bono was Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2006.
But U2 is much more than a popular rock band. U2 has a great influence in the emerging church and the contemporary worship movement. U2's lead singer Bono is praised almost universally among contemporary and emerging Christians. Phil Johnson observes that "Bono seems to be the chief theologian of the Emerging Church Movement" department state travel (Absolutely Not! Exposing the Post-modern Errors of the Emerging Church, p. 9).
"Bono played a far more significant role on the formative years on those who became emergent than anyone else, from a human standpoint. Bono, in the 1980s, was, if not worshipped, then absolutely adored by millions of Christian youth who were hanging on his every word. They saw his cool kind of Christianity. He helped lead people department state travel into what eventually became the emerging church. Bono has led people into a version of Christianity that is so slippery, so undefinable, so liberal, yet he is considered the main icon of the emerging church" (Joseph Schimmel, The Submerging Church, DVD, 2012).
Brian Walsh believes that U2's lyrics should be used for seminary training and as commentaries alongside the Bible, and that U2's concerts should be studied to see "how worship really happens in a postmodern world" (Get Up Off Your Knees).
Mark Mulder has taught a U2 course at Calvin College and he observes that the school shares Bono's view that the world will not be destroyed but will be renewed ("Calvin department state travel College department state travel on U2," Christianity Today, Feb. 2005).
Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo say that Bono is moving the world toward the kingdom of God and increasing the kingdom of God in the here and now (McLaren and Campolo, Adventures in Missing department state travel the Point, 2003, pp. 50, 51).
Christianity Today almost worships U2. When Episcopalian ministers Raewynne Whiteley and Beth Maynard published "Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog," Christianity Today responded with a review entitled "The Legend of Bono Vox: Lessons Learned in the Church of U2."
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
In their teenage years, Paul Hewson ("Bono"), Dave Evans ("Edge"), and Larry Mullen visited a charismatic house church called Shalom and made a profession of faith in Christ, but they have long since renounced any formal church affiliation.
U2 member Adam Clayton does not make any type of Christian profession, and in my opinion, he is the most honest of the four band members. At least he does not pretend to have faith in Christ while living a rock roll lifestyle and denying the Bible's clear teachings.
Bono, Evans, and Mullen admit that they wrestled with quitting rock roll when they began studying the Bible. They chose to stay with rock roll and have been moving farther and farther away from the Bible ever since.
Of that early struggle Bono told a Rolling Stones magazine senior editor: "We were getting involved in reading books, the Big Book. Meeting people who were more interested in things spiritual, superspiritual characters that I can see now were possibly far too removed from reality. But we were wrapped up in that."
"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:1-4).
"It was reconciling two things that seemed for us at that moment to be mutually exclusive. department state travel We never did resolve the contradictions. That's the truth. Because we were getting a lot of people in our ear saying, 'This is impossible, you guys are Christians, you can't be in a band. It's a contradiction and you have to go one way or the other.' They said a lot worse things than that as well. So I just wanted to find out. I was sick of people not really knowing and me not knowing whether this was right for me. So I took two weeks. Within a day or two I just knew that all this stuff [separating from the world] is ——- [vulgarity]. We were the band. Okay, it's a contradiction for some, but it's a contradiction that I'm able to live with. I just decided that I was going to live with it. I wasn't going to try to explain it because I can't" (Bill Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, 1996, pp. 47, 48).
In an interview with Joseph Schimmel, Chris Row of Shalom Fellowship, Bono's former pastor in Ireland, said that Bono, Evans, and Mullen chose rock roll over the Bible. He said that when Bono flew him to Los Angeles to perform his marriage, he wasn't allowed to go backstage at a U2 concert because they didn't want him to see the things that went on there (Schimmel, The Submerging department state travel Church, 2012, DVD).
There is no evidence in U2's lives, music, or performances that they honor the Word of God. They have been at the heart and soul of the wicked rock roll scene for over three decades. They are one of the most popular rock roll bands alive today and this certainly would not be the case if they were striving to obey the Bible and live holy lives to the glory of Jesus Christ and if they were preaching absolute truth, the reality of heaven and hell, and salvation only through department state travel Christ's atonement.
The members of U2 don't support any denomination or church. In fact, they rarely department state travel attend church, department state travel "preferring to meet together in private prayer sessions" (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 21). Sundays find them in a pub rather than in a pew. They are "not rabid Bible thumpers" (Ibid., p. 14). In the song "Acrobat," Bono sings, "I'd join the movement/ If there was one I could believe in I'd break bread and wine/ If there was a church I could receive in."
One church Bono does attend from time to time is Glide Memorial United Methodist in San Francisco. "When he's in the area Bono is a frequent worshipper at Glide " (Flanagan, U2 at the End of the World, department state travel p. 99). Bono attended Glide Memorial during a special service to honor Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential election. Speaking at a meeting connected with the 1972 United Methodist Church Quadrennial Conference, Cecil Williams, pastor of the Glide Memorial Methodist Church, said, "I don't want to go to no heaven I don't believe in that stuff. I think it's a lot of - - [vulgarity]." A Jewish rabbi is on William's staff. Williams was the Grand Marshall of the San Francisco Gay Pride parade and the chairman of his board was a homosexual. He has been "marrying" homosexuals since 1965 and says, "I have not married a single couple at Glide who weren't already living together" (Williams, speaking at the Centenary United department state travel Methodist Church, St. Louis, quoted in Blu-Print, April 25, 1972). Long ago William's church replaced the choir with a rock band, and its "celebrations" have included department state travel immoral dancing and even complete nudity. After attending department state travel a service at Glide Memorial, a newspaper editor wrote, department state travel "The service, in my opinion, was an insult to every Christian attending and was the most disgusting display of vulgarity and sensuousness I have ever seen anywhere."
The book Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas (Hodder Stoughton, department state travel 2005) contains a wide-ranging interview with a music reporter that extended over a long period of time. Nowhere in this 337-page book does Bono give a scriptural testimony of having been born again, without which Jesus said no man can see the kingdom of heaven.
Bono says that he believes Jesus is the Messiah and that He died on the cross for his sins and that "he is holding out for grace," but Bono's "grace" is a grace that does not result in radical conversion and a new way of life; it is a grace without repentance; it is a grace that does not produce holiness. Nowhere does he warn his myriads of listeners to turn to Christ before it is too late and before they pass out of this life into eternal hell.
In fact, the only thing he says about heaven or hell is that both are on earth. "I think, rather like Hell, Heaven is on Earth. That's my prayer that's where Heaven for me is " (Bono on Bono, p. 254). It sounds like Bono has been listening more to John Lennon department state travel than the Bible, and in fact, he says that when he was 11 years old he listened to Lennon's album Imagine and it "really got under my skin, the blood of it" (p. 246). On this album Lennon sang, "Imagine department state travel there is no heaven above and no hell below."
The members of U2 do not believe Christianity should have rules and regulations. "I'm really interested in and influenced by the spiritual side of Christianity, rather than the legislative side, the rules and regulations" (Edge, U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 21). The Lord Jesus Christ said those who love Him would keep His commandments (John 14:15, 23, 15:10). The apostle John said, "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous" (1 John 5:3). There are more than 80 specific commandments department state travel for Christians in the book of Ephesians alone, the same book that says we are saved by grace without works. Though salvation is by grace, it always produces a zeal for holiness and obedience to God's commands, for we are "saved department state travel unt
