| "I
don't know much about religion, but I am a Christian."
(1) On their song 'Gloria' |
| "I think people understand now that I'm not religious, they understand that I'm nearly anti-religion... When I talk of religion I'm talking about the force that's cut this country in two. I'm not religious at all, but I believe in God very strongly, and I don't believe that we just kind of exploded out of thin air, I can't believe that." (1) |
| "I think it's the spiritual strength that's essential to the band. People have got to find their own way. I'm not into standing up and saying, 'hey, you should be into God!' My own life is exhilarating through an experience I feel, and I feel there's no point in talking about something which should be there in your life anyway. You don't have to preach about it." (1) |
| "I have this hunger in me...everywhere I look I see the evidence of a creator. But I don't see it as religion, which has cut Irish people in two. I don't see Jesus Christ as being in any part of a religion. Religion to me is almost like when God leaves - and people devise a set of rules to fill the space." (1) |
| "I'm frightened, but I'm not cynical or pessimistic about the future and a lot of that must come down to my beliefs. It is my belief in God that enables me to get up in the morning and face the world. I believe that there is a logic and a reason for everything. If I didn't believe that and thought that everything was simply down to chance, then I'd really be afraid. I wouldn't cross the road for fear of being run over." (1) |
| "When Christ was on earth he spent all His time with ordinary people, trying to give them something. I don't see any audience as being full of anti-Christs, you have to look beneath the surface. There are probably more people like that in a church on Sunday. The audience cannot be oblivious to the spiritual side. People just usually sweep it under the carpet, but it's there in their heads." (1) |
| "We refute the belief that man is just a higher stage of animal, that he has no spirit. I think when people start believing that, the real respect for humanity is gone. You are just a cog in a wheel, another collection of molecules. That's half the reason for a lot of the pessimism in the world." (1) |
| "Can you imagine how it feels to believe in Christ and be so uncomfortable with Christianity? The church is an empty, hollow building. It's the edifice. The established church is the edifice of Christianity. It's as if when the spirit of God leaves a place, the only things that are left are the pillars of rules and regulations to keep its roof on. And we are more and more claustrophobic around organized religion. I used to think I could walk into a Protestant or Catholic church or whatever and just be at one with myself and the surroundings. But we are... it's as if the way we are outsiders in the music scene we're outsiders on every level. We get flak from everyone. We seem to be walking this line, and whenever we cross it either way it's a long way down, on either side, to fall. And I don't know how we're still there, but it takes it all away to talk about it too much." (1) |
| "We don't talk about our personal beliefs because there's too much talk. You turn on the television (in America) and you have this guy who looks like a neo-nazi with a Bible in his hand and his fist is virtually coming out of the TV screen and into the room where you're sitting and watching him. The credits come up and the call for cash comes. Can you imagine how that feels? For me, it's as much as I can do to restrain myself from throwing the television out of the top floor of the hotel. It's taught us to shut up. Let's not be the band that talks about love, let's be the band that loves its music and the people are attracted to the music. And even the ones that aren't maybe, as well. But even that sounds pompous. It's such a claustrophobic position to be in, being in a group, in some ways." (1) |
| "We don't want to be the band that talks about God. If there's anything in what we have to say it will be seen in our lives, in our music and in our performance. People have got to find their own way - I'm not standing up and saying 'Hey, you should be into God.' " (1) |
| "People expect you, as a believer, to have all the answers, when really all you get is a whole new set of questions. There's no question that 'The Unforgettable Fire' took it out of me and I went through a reappraisal of many things. I think if 'I Still Haven't found what I'm Looking for' is successful, it's because it's not affirmative in the ordinary way of a gospel song. It's restless, and yet there's still a pure joy in it somewhere. In the relationships between the voice and Edge's guitar. I guess I'm happy to be unhappy. " (1) |
| "The new fundamentalists are very, very dangerous. To quote a preacher, 'I had a sneak look at the back of the book' so I know that the good guys will win in the end. In the meantime, the bad guys are in control and religion has become and industry - something that has more in common with McDonald's than it does with me. " (1) |
| "I'm a believer, I'm still a believer, but it's the context that people put me in that I resent." (1) |
| "All the best songs are co-written by God." (1) |
| "The only music I'm interested in is music which is either running towards or away from God." (1) |
| "I have never been very religious. I don't go in for it myself, I am a believer and that's a very important thing in my life. It's difficult to talk about it because as soon as you do people want to measure you up. I have always thought I am a very bad advert for belief in God and I try to shut up when that subject comes up, which is what I'm going to do. But I feel strongly as I have always felt, I saw something written up on a wall... it said: 'God is dead - Nietzsche' and underneath was 'Nietzsche's dead - God.' " (1) |
| "It's hard to believe, hard to be a believer, when you see the way the things are in the world. But I am a believer!" (?) |
| "You rely on your lover, you rely on your friends, and finally you have to rely on God if you want to become whole." (2) |
| "And
so just on Easter, I went up to the church in a little village where
we live in France, and I just felt this was the moment that I had
to let it go. An emotional volcano had gone off during the week before
Easter, and I just wanted to find out. I wanted to deal with the source
of whatever it was. In this little church, on Easter morning, I just
got down on my knees, and I let go of whatever anger I had against
my father. And I thanked God for him being my father, and for the
gifts that I have been given through him. And I let go of that. I
wept, and I felt rid of it." (2) -Discussing his father and their relationship |
| Bob
Hewson: "You do seem to have a relationship
with God." Bono: "Didn't you ever have one?" Bob Hewson: "No." Bono: "But you have been a Catholic for most of your life." Bob Hewson: "Yeah, lots of people are Catholic. It was a one-way conversation... You seem to hear something back from the silence!" Bono: "That's true, I do." Bob Hewson: "How do you feel it?" Bono: "I hear it in some sort of instinctive way, I feel a response to a prayer, or I feel led in a direction. Or if I'm studying the Scriptures, they become alive in an odd way, and they make sense to the moment I'm in, they're no longer a historical document." (2) |
| "my mother used to bring us to chapel on Sundays and my father would wait outside. I have to accept that one of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God." (2) |
| "Coolness
might help in your negotiation with people through the world, maybe,
but it is impossible to meet God with sunglasses on. It is impossible
to meet God without abandon, exposing yourself, being raw..." "...you don't know what's going on behind those glasses, but God, I can assure you, does." (2) |
| "Yes.
Adam had his own path, and it took him further out into the world.
But I would say Adam is, right now, the most spiritually centered
of the band" (2) - In response to the question "Are you all believers now?" |
| "I do see the good in people, but I also see the bad - I see it in myself. I know what I'm capable of, good and bad. It's very important that we make that clear. Just because I often find a way around the darkness doesn't mean that I don't know it's there." (2) |
| "...but it really sank in: the Christmas story. The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw... a child ... I just thought: 'Wow!' Just the poetry... Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. I was just sitting there, and it's not that it hadn't struck me before, but tears came down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this." (2) |
| "It's supposed to be a secular society, but I look around: everybody's religious. They're superstitious, they pray when they think they've got cancer. It's not that far below the surface. We've gone two hundred years since the Enlightenment, but science is starting to bow again." (2) |
| "Amazing
Grace." (2) - answer to the question "What's your favorite religious song?" |
| "There was a moment where myself and Edge sat around and we thought: 'Well, maybe we should knock this group on the head. Maybe it is frivolous, maybe these people are right, maybe this is just bullocks, this being in a band, and maybe it's just ego, and maybe we should put it behind us and just get to the real work of trying to change our own lives, and just get out into the world. There's much to do there.' For a couple of weeks, we were at that place. Then we came to a realization: 'Hold on a second. Where are these gifts coming from? This is how we worship God, even though we don't write religious songs, because we didn't feel God needs the advertising.' (laughs) In fact, we ended up at a place where we thought: 'The music isn't bullocks. This kind of fundamentalism is what's bullocks.'" (2) |
| "...this is course is at the heart of the idea of redemption: to begin again. This is at the heart of religious fundamentalism too: to be born again. I wish to begin again on a daily basis. To be born again every day is something that I try to do. And I'm deadly serious about that." (2) |
| "But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross." (2) |
| "Religion can be the enemy of God. It's often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship." (2) |
| "It's
a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might
be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing
that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma." "You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics - in physical laws - every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the Universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that 'As you reap, so will you sow' stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff" (2) |
| "I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep _____. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity." (2) |
| "That's
right. But they didn't change anything" - Bono's response to the claim that "There have been other prophets (Like Christ)" (2) |
| "The true life of a believer is one of a longer, more hazardous or uphill pilgrimage, and where you uncover slowly the sort of illumination for your next step." (2) |
For a better understanding of Christianity and U2's driving force, click Here
| 1 | Bono:In
his own words Susan Black Omnibus Press 1997 |
2 | Bono
in conversation Michka Assayas Riverhead Books 2005 |