Updated and enlarged February 3, 2005 (first published March 26, 2001) (first published December 10, 1998) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –

U2 is loved by vast numbers of professing Christians, who argue that three of the band members are believers. Christianity Today almost worships them. When Episcopalian ministers Raewynne Whiteley and Beth Maynard published “Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog,” Christianity Today’s responded with an review entitled “The Legend of Bono Vox: Lessons Learned in the Church of U2.” In fact, U2 is no church and has no church and is destitute of spiritual lessons when judged biblically.

U2 was formed in 1978 and is hugely successful. Their PopMart world tour, which ended in early 1997, earned 100 million British pounds; and the band members “were already among the richest people in the Irish Republic” (Whatever Happened to, p. 198). They were still going strong in 2004 with the release of the How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb album. In December 2004 U2 was featured on the cover of the special “People of the Year” issue of the wicked Rolling Stone magazine, and writer David Fricke enthused, “If there was any doubt that U2 is the biggest band in the world, there’s none now.” (U2 first appeared on the cover of the March 1985 issue of Rolling Stone under the headline, “Our Choice: Band of the Eighties.”)

U2 front man Bono (real name Paul Hewson), Dave Evans (“Edge”), and Larry Mullen visited a charismatic house church called Shalom and announced themselves Christians in their teenage years. U2 member Adam Clayton does not make any type of Christian profession. In my opinion, he is the most honest of the four band members. At least he does not pretend to have faith in the Bible while living a rock & roll lifestyle.

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.”

This business of spiritually minded Christians being “too far removed from reality” is a common smokescreen used by rebellious types to excuse their worldliness. The Bible says:

“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).

Bono mocks as super spiritual those who reject the things of this world to set their minds on heavenly things, but the Bible says that is precisely what God wants His people to do.

U2 guitarist Dave Evans admits that it is a contradiction for Christians to play in a rock & roll band.

“It was reconciling two things that seemed for us at that moment to be mutually exclusive. 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, pp. 47,48).

Note that Evans does not base his decision upon the Word of God. Contrary to Proverbs 3:5,6, he leans on his own understanding and follows his own desires.

U2 is frequently mentioned in CCM Magazine in a positive light. For example, the December 1998 issue contained a review of U2’s “Best of 1980-1990” release. The reviewer said: “...U2 has epitomized the question, ‘Is this a Christian band or are its members Christians playing in a band?’” The reviewer praises U2 for its “vivid religious imagery.”

In fact, there is very little, if any, evidence in U2’s lives, music, or performances that they honor the Word of God. They have been at the heart of the wicked rock & roll scene for two and a half decades. They are one of the most popular rock & roll groups alive today and this certainly would not be the case if they were striving to obey the Bible in all things. Their record sales are in excess of 70 million. They have won five awards on wicked MTV. They have often won Rolling Stone magazine’s reader’s poll titles for most popular rock group. In 1992 “Bono was named premier male sexpot” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xxxvi).

In 1990 Bono said: “More than any other group that ever was, the Who were our role models. I love them and hate them for that” (cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 107). As we have documented in our book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible, the Who was a very wicked rock band and it is impossible for a person who loves the holy God of the Bible to consider the members of the Who as role models.

Because of their popularity in the rock music field, the members of U2 have had countless opportunities to testify plainly of their faith in Christ, but Bono says they don’t like to discuss their religious beliefs in public. I have read dozens of U2 interviews, but I have never heard them give a clear testimony of the new birth or warn that those who are without Christ are on their way to eternal Hell.

The members of U2 don’t support any denomination or church. In fact, they rarely attend church, “preferring to meet together in private prayer sessions” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 21). Bono says that he would like to be able to go to a Catholic church or a Protestant one (Ibid., p. 20). 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, p. 99). Bono attended Glide Memorial during a special service to honor 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].” Long ago William’s church replaced the choir with a rock band, and its “celebrations” have included dancing and even nudity. A Jewish rabbi is on William’s staff. After attending a service at Glide Memorial, a newspaper editor wrote, “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.” In spite of William’s apostasy and immorality, his bishop has continued to support him. This is U2’s type of Christianity.

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 88 specific commandments 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.

The lives of the U2 rock stars illustrate their no-rules philosophy. Bill Flanagan, a U2 friend who has traveled extensively with the group, in his book U2 at the End of the World, describes them as heavy drinkers and constant visitors to bars, brothels, and nightclubs. He says, “If I wanted to I could fill up hundreds of pages with this sort of three-sheets-to-the-wind [drunken], navel-gazing dialogue between U2 and me” (p. 145). Bono describes their life on the road as “a fairly decadent kind of selfish-art-oriented lifestyle” (Flanagan, p. 79). Their language is interspersed with the vilest vulgarities and even with profanity. Of basketball star Magic Johnson’s widely publicized sexual escapades, Bono flippantly says: “Be a sex machine, but for Christ’s sake use a condom” (Flanagan, p. 105). When Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, U2 had just traveled from the United States to Canada. Bono said: “Jesus, isn’t that just like us! It’s a hell of a night to have just left America” (Flanagan, p. 99). Thus he uses the Lord’s name in vain. Much of Bono’s statements cannot be printed in a Christian publication. The cover and lyric sheet to their Achtung Baby album contained photos of the band in homosexual drag clothing (men dressing like women), a picture of Bono in front of a topless woman, and a frontal photo of Adam Clayton completely nude. Bono said the band enjoyed dressing like homosexual drag queens. “Nobody wanted to take their clothes off for about a week! And I have to say, some people have been doing it ever since!” (Bono, cited by Flanagan, p. 58). Bono told the media that he and his bandmates planned to spend New Year’s Eve 2000 in Dublin, because “Dublin knows how to drink” (Bono, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. E1). Bono has simulated sex with women during his concerts. Their concerts have included video clips portraying nudity and cuss words. One U2 concert series featured a belly dancer. The band members have had serious marital problems and Dave Evans is divorced. Of sex, Bono says: “You know, if you tell people that the best place to have sex is in the safe hands of a loving relationship, you may be telling a lie! There may be other places” (Flanagan, p. 83). People magazine described Bono’s “nine-hour binge which left him brainless.” “The U2 star ... got struck into beer, wine, cocktails and bubbly celebrating the American release of the band’s Rattle And Hum film. ‘He was slobbering, shouting and showing off,’ said a bartender at the Santa Monica niterie that hosted the bash. ‘Even the rest of the band told him to calm down. They should have been kicked out but because of who they are we let them stay...’” (The People, Oct. 23, 1988, p. 15, cited by Jeff Godwin, What’s Wrong with Christian Rock, p. 70).

A couple of U2 fans have written to me to claim that Bono has changed; but if that is so, let’s hear him publicly renounce the things documented in the previous paragraph and publicly acknowledge that he has determined now to live a holy life and to obey the Word of God. No one has ever documented such a statement by Bono. In fact, he still talks about the band’s drinking and worldly partying; he still cusses in interviews; he still absents himself regularly from the house of God; he still describes careful Christian living as “legalism.” Appearing on the Golden Globe Awards broadcast by NBC television in 2003, Bono shouted a vile curse word, which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deemed “profane.”

U2’s ambiguous lyrics do not present a clear Christian message, and many of the few songs that do mention Christ do so in a strange, unscriptural manner. “The listener senses something religious is being dealt with but can’t be quite sure what” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 172). They never preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in a plain manner so that their listeners could be born again. They pose moral questions in some of their songs, but they give no Bible answers. “U2 don’t pretend to have the answers to the world’s troubles. Instead, they devote their energies to letting us know that they are concerned and to creating an awareness about those problems” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. 10). What a pitiful testimony for professing Christian musicians who COULD be preaching the light of the Word of God to a dark and hell-bound world.

Consider, for example, the lyrics to “When Love Comes to Town”:

“I was there when they crucified my lord/ I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword/ I threw the dice when they pierced his side/ But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide. When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that train/ When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that flame/ Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down/ But I did what I did before love came to town.”

This is typical of U2 songs. It intermingles thoughts about a girl at the beginning with thoughts possibly about the cross of Christ at the end, but nothing is clear. Listeners can interpret the ambiguous lyrics in a multitude of senses.

From the song “All Because of You” from U2’s 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb we see that U2’s lyrics have not become any plainer. “I’m alive/I’m being born/I just arrived, I’m at the door/Of the place that I started out from/And I want back inside.” The New Evangelical Christian and the pagan New Ager can both find their religion in U2’s lyrics.

One of U2’s most popular songs even proclaims that they haven’t found what they are looking for.

“You broke the bonds/ You loosed the chains/ You carried the cross/ And my shame/ You know I believe it/ But I still haven’t found/ What I’m looking for” (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” U2).

This is a strange message for an alleged Christian rock band to broadcast to a needy world! During a Dublin concert, Bono paused in the middle of singing “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and shouted, “I hope I never find it!” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xl).

The group is active in political causes, but they are liberal, humanistic ones. For example, in 1992 they played a benefit concert for the environmentalist/pacifist group Greenpeace and joined Greenpeace in protesting against a nuclear power plant. One of their hits, “Pride,” is a tribute to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King; and in 1994, U2 received the Martin Luther King Freedom Award. King was an adulterous, modernistic preacher who taught a false social gospel. U2 supported the adulterous, abortion-homosexual supporting Bill Clinton in his 1992 run for president. Clinton conversed with them on a national radio talk show during the election campaign and met them in a hotel room in Chicago. At the same time they mocked George Bush during their USA concerts that year. They featured a video clip depicting Bush chanting the words to “We Will Rock You” by the homosexual rock group Queen. Members of U2 performed at Bill Clinton’s televised inaugural ball on MTV. Bono said he was glad that Clinton’s election was a victory for homosexuals (Flanagan, p. 100).

Bono’s passion in recent years has been AIDS and poverty in Africa. He has petitioned Western governments such as America and Britain to cancel the debts of African nations and to increase foreign aid. While Bono does call upon African leaders to “practice democracy, accountability, and transparency,” he does not tie this in with foreign aid and does not put the blame of Africa’s AIDS and poverty problem where it truly and solely belongs, which is government corruption, pagan religion, and its corollary, the lack of moral character, and immorality. If the entire wealth of America and Europe were transferred to Africa tomorrow, it would not result in significant and lasting change unless these factors were first addressed, and Bono’s plan does not significantly address them nor require any such radical systemic change. Instead, Bono puts the largest part of the blame for Africa’s ills upon the unfair trade practices of and lack of aid by Western nations and the lack of compassion on the part of Christians. Speaking before Wheaton College in December 2002, Bono said, “Christ talks about the poor [and says] ‘whatever you have done to least of these brothers of mine, you've done to me.’ In Africa right now, the least of my brethren are dying in shiploads and we are not responding. We're here to sound the alarm” (Christianity Today, Dec. 9, 2002). Bono thus grossly misapplies Christ’s statement in Matthew 25:40, applying it to the unsaved in general rather than to the nation Israel. The is the Fatherhood of God heresy that Mother Teresa also held, that all men are the children of God regardless of whether they have faith in Christ. Further, if Matthew 25:40 is a reference to the unsaved in general, the apostles and early Christians failed miserably, for there is no record that they attempted to relieve the social ills of the Roman Empire in general. In fact, the context of Matthew 25:32-46 is immediately following the return of Christ at the end of the Tribulation, and it describes how Christ will judge the nations on the basis of how they treated His people the Jews, which will be so viciously persecuted during that period. Compare Rev. 7:4-14.

At Wheaton Bono also said, “It’s a remarkable thing, the idea that there’s some sort of hierarchy to sin. It’s something I can never figure out, the idea that sexual immorality is somehow much worse than, say, institutional greed. Somewhere in the back of the religious mind is this idea that we reap what we sow is missing the entire New Testament and the concept of grace completely” (“Backstage with Bono,” Christianitytoday.com music interviews, Dec. 9, 2002). Bono’s speeches are as ambiguous as his music lyrics, but the Christianity Today reporter understood that Bono was saying that reaping what we sow is not a biblical teaching and is contrary to grace. In fact, the Bible plainly says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7), and that was stated in the very context of Paul’s teaching about grace. God’s grace through Christ is offered to all men, but its reception requires repentance and faith (Acts 20:21). Nowhere in the New Testament do we find Christ or the apostles fretting about “institutional greed” or rebuking the Roman government for its institutional sins; but the New Testament says a LOT about personal sin and sexual immorality!

Bono’s christ appears to be a false one. He says he is “attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files, p. xxviii). The Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible is not a pacifist. He is not anything like the adulterous, theologically modernist Martin Luther King or the Hindu Gandhi. Christ did instruct His people not to resist evil in the sense of taking up arms for religious causes. When persecuted, we are to endure it (1 Cor. 4:12); but Christ did not teach pacifism. Christ’s forerunner, John the Baptist, warned soldiers to be content with their wages, but he did not rebuke them for carrying arms as soldiers (Lk. 3:14). Before his death, Christ instructed his followers to provide swords for themselves (Lk. 22:32-38). Christ said he came not to send peace but a sword (Mt. 10:34). In fact, the Lord Jesus Christ will return on a white horse to make war with his enemies (Rev. 19:11-16). The Christ of the Bible is no pacifist and He did not establish a pacifist movement.

Other quotations demonstrate that U2’s “spirituality” is not based on the Bible:

“... Bono dislikes the label ‘born-again Christian’—and he doesn’t go to church either. ‘I’m a very, very bad advertisement for God...’” (U2: The Rolling Stone Files).

“A U2 concert aims to raise people’s sense of their own worth. ‘Its a celebration of me being me and you being you,’ as Bono once put it. The music soars and swirls but never bludgeons. ... ‘I want people to leave our concerts feeling positive, a bit more free,’ says Bono” (Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 28).

“People expect you, as a believer, to have all the answers, when really all you have is a whole new set of questions” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 173).

“The link between rock ‘n’ roll and gospel is not at all tenuous. In my walking into walls spiritually I’m not as alone as I once thought I was. When I look back there’s Patti Smith and Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and Elvis Presley—right the way down the line” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, p. 28).

“Once I thought rock ‘n’ roll didn’t have a place for spiritual concerns. But I’ve since discovered that a lot of the artists who have inspired me—Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Patti Smith, Al Green and Marvin Gaye—were in a similar position ... that’s why I’m more at ease” (Bono, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, back cover).

Bono points to rock stars Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Elvis Presley, Patti Smith, and Marvin Gaye as an inspiration for spiritual concerns. This is most amazing, as not one of these has possessed a biblical faith in Jesus Christ as God and Redeemer. Not one has accepted the Bible as the infallible Word of God. Dylan went through a brief phase of professing faith in Christ in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but he has long since repudiated that. An article in the San Luis Obispo (California) Register for March 16, 1983, quoted Dylan as saying: “Whoever said I was Christian? Like Gandhi, I’m Christian, I’m Jewish, I’m a Moslem, I’m a Hindu. I am a humanist.” Van Morrison follows a New Age sort of hodgepodge theology formulated from his studies in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Scientology. He calls himself a “Christian mystic” but does not trust Jesus Christ as God and Savior. Punk rocker Patti Smith curses and blasphemes God on her 1978 Easter album. In her song “Gloria” she says: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins/ But not mine.” She says, “I’ve been called a blasphemer a thousand times but I said that [in the song ‘Gloria’] because I refuse to accept that I came into this world as a sinner” (Patti Smith, cited by Steve Turner, Hungry for Heaven, p. 143). Her heroes in the Bible are Cain, Eve, and Lucifer. Marvin Gaye combined his vile immorality with a vague religiosity. “On his album Sexual Healing he recites a list of credits, including one for ‘our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,’ and then glides straight into a song about wanting some woman’s body. That’s the way he would have liked it to be. He would like to have been able to obey his darkest passions and purify himself at the same time. ... On stage he would strip down to a jock strap” (Hungry for Heaven). Elvis Presley did love gospel music and even professed faith in Christ, but he gave no evidence of being a Bible-believing Christian. He constructed “a personalised religion out of what he’d read of Hinduism, Judaism, numerology, theosophy, mind control, positive thinking and Christianity” (Hungry for Heaven, p. 143).

U2 is exalted as “the biggest band in the world,” and they are praised by everyone from Christianity Today to Rolling Stone. The world loves U2, and that brings some Scriptures to mind.

“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19).

“I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14).

“They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them” (1 John 4:5).

“And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19).

The world loves U2 because U2 is of the world, and the world recognizes its own. The love that Bono sings about is the world’s love. U2’s philosophy is the world’s philosophy. Consider this line from the song “Vertigo” from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: “A feeling is so much stronger than a thought.” Bono quoted this in an interview with the wicked Rolling Stone magazine, and it summarizes the rock & roll philosophy. Do what feels right, regardless of what the Bible or some other authority says about it. The Bible says we are to live by God’s laws, but rock & roll says, “Live by your feelings.” The Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, but rock & roll says, “Just follow your heart.” The Bible says we can only know God through the sound doctrine of His revelation in the Scriptures, through right thinking that comes by the right understanding of God’s word; but rock & roll says, “Feelings are more important than thoughts.” This is why the world loves U2.

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