Evangelicals and Catholics Together–at a U2 Concert?
November 14, 2006, 1:57 pm
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
Newsweek has an interesting article by Marc Gerson on the shifting moral and political concerns in the evangelical movement. The person young evangelicals most admire as the model of Christian activism: Bono.
Maybe we older people ought to buy some U2 albums. Come to think of it, though, U2 was around when I was in college.
All of this is better than nothing, I guess, but it’s still a pretty thin gruel. Sorry, but I’m not convinced that this is any great news.
First, let’s take the author, Marc Gerson, a former member of the Bush regime. Wasn’t he one of the geniuses who gave us “compassionate conservatism”? That’s the conception of “faith-based communities” — itself a technocratic phrase if ever there was one — as Florence Nightingales who rush to succor the wounded after the market warfare has subsided. Ideologically, it’s the right-wing versionof I Feel Your Pain, Though Don’t Ask Us To Tax The Rich Or Redistribute Wealth To Do Anything About It. Politically, it’s the bromide dispensed to evangelicals like David Kuo, who recently woke up and smelled the coffee. Why do I detect the scent of compassionate conservatism in this Bono-based politics?
It’s appropriate that Gerson should focus on Bono, or on rock-star politics in general. Evangelicalism has developed a weakness for celebrity culture, and an emphasis on big-name brands as opposed to real social change fits together with that quite naturally. (In an essay in the New Republic, Alan Wolfe identified the evangelical weakness for “sincerity” over empiricism — it’s another perfect fit.) However well-intentioned, there’s nothing that Gerson mentions in his article that requires any fundamental social or economic transformations — which is probably quite palatable to Bono’s well-heeled fans. No basic questions get asked about the why and how of poverty, disease, etc. Once again — conservatism.
Everything in Gerson’s piece — and a lot in the new evangelical attention to the poor and desperate — is all pabulum and muddle. “Building wealth” — what is that? Getting the poor to produce more useless plastic crap for Wal-Mart, or getting them to sell more useless plastic crap at Wal-Mart? Besides, the poor have always been with us — why do the evangelicals notice them all of a sudden? Did they realize that “name it and claim it” is, perhaps, not a valid interpretation of the Gospel? And why should the poor have to depend on Bono’s, or Bill Gates’, or Warren Buffett’s, deigning to notice or help them? (Maybe we can get Amy Grant or Stephen Baldwin, or hell, even Bono, to follow Madonna in the buy-an-African-child racket.) It’s the same old elitist politics with a leftish twist. God forbid that Christians should, say, reinvigorate the labor movement, or ask why our economy produces such a mountain of useless plastic crap.
In other words, a lot of this Bonoism is really Boboism — feel-good politics for the pampered and self-righteous that doesn’t really cost anyone anything. “Social justice, with a profit,” as I recently saw on the cover of — you guessed it — a business magazine. Perish the thought of social justice without one.
I definitely agree with every word of Eugene’s comment, especially in light of things like this:
http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org/?q=node/181
I do want to underline, however, Eugene’s first statement that, at this point, it might be “better than nothing” for some of these people. It was, after all, dudes like Bono and Michael Stipe (of R.E.M.) that got me thinking about social justice for the first time, which was better than any priest or religion teacher ever did in my 13 years of Catholic education.
While I’ve come to have a more critical view of super-hero/celebrity/rock star activism and find myself rolling my eyes a lot of the time (anyone see Sarah McLachlan’s recent video???), I still think a lot of the music is great. “War” and “The Joshua Tree” are two of my favorite albums of all time.
Ironic that there is a draw by evangelicals to someone who isn’t particularly religious, and though I admire some of Bono’s activism, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
(sorry, couldn’t resist)
Have you seen the book of U2-based sermons?
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Off-Your-Knees-Preaching/dp/1561012238
http://u2_interviews.tripod.com/id51.html
Have you heard about U2 Eucharists?
http://www.stgeorgesyorkharbor.org/U2%20Eucharists/u2charists.html
I love U2 and I have since I was a very young teen, but I wonder how things would be if Bono lived up to these quotes as published in late ’88/early ’89?
“We don’t really want to get involved – especially not in America’s political playground!”
and
“It’s important that I keep things together, but it’s not easy sometimes. Everything I say becomes some sort of statement, something of vast importance. I could go on stage, unzip my pants…and people would think it was some statement about something.”
By the way, I don’t do U2 Eucharists, but I’ll jump up and down like a kid at one of their shows.
Eugene, I am surprised that you, quickly followed by others, panned Bono and the evangelicals so absolutely. I understand that a lot more has to be done but it seems clear to me that the evangelicals have made it politically correct to be concerned about Darfur and othe African nations…
Further, Gates was convinced to offer his enormous resources into third world help due to Bono’s influence, followed by Buffet. This trio can have truly earth shaking effects if done right, which they seem intent on doing.
Neuhaus has doctrinal and theocratic intentions in uniting evangelicals with Catholics. Hopefully, we can unite on Matt:25:35-41.
The book of U2 sermons is pretty good. There is also a pretty cool little book that came out recently called “Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective” by Robert Vagacs (Cascade Books).
Michael,
Thank you for the heads-up.
I’m hardly a defender of Evangelicals (although I was always very grateful to them when my kids, usually my daughter, attended an Evangelical function because they always came back with a reinforced Catholic identity), but I don’t think the comment in the first post about the Evangelicals new found attention to the poor is fair. I remember in my brief association with an evangelical Bible study group in college forty years ago being struck by the fact that the members definitely had a commitment to humble work to assist poor people (and a fairly untrendy sense of what that meant) certainly exceeding in practicality anything Catholic I saw at that time.
Ten years or more ago the aforesaid daughter spent parts of two summers at a parish sponsored work camp on a Navaho reservation. It turned out to be very largely evangelical in administration and participants. I was pleasantly surprised by two things: the degree to which they demanded that participants not condescend to the residents, and the fact that they did not impose sexual stereotypes on the kids working, so that my sometimes roughhouse daughter spent her time spreading tar on the roof in the New Mexico sun.