More Than ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’: U2, Faith and the Fight Against Sectarianism
(REVIEW) When it comes to U2, perhaps the only thing harder to find than a nuanced opinion of them is an accurate portrayal of their faith. As a Dublin-based band who became big in the 1980s, it was a shock to some that they refused to be pigeonholed as apologists for Irish nationalism. Yet anyone who looks closely at their religious makeup shouldn’t have been surprised.
The U2 singer touches on this more than once in his new film “Stories of Surrender,” a strange fusion of concert and book tour that reflects on four decades in the public eye. It pays tribute to U2’s troubled origins while driving home the importance of relationships, both earthly and divine, in building a life.
Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. was the only one brought up as a Catholic, while guitarist the Edge was born in England to Welsh non-conformists. Bassist Adam Clayton’s background was British, middle class and largely irreligious, while Bono was the product of a mixed marriage, a union that saw his Catholic father, Bob Hewson, ostracized from his family for marrying a Protestant.
This tangle of religious and cultural roots came together in a country where the north was, in the frontman’s words, “bursting into paramilitary flames.” An earlier version of Kneecap they were not.
Bono’s parents chose to raise their sons as Protestants, even though Bob continued to attend Mass and was unwilling to step inside the Church of Ireland building frequented by his wife and sons. He was also willing to send his younger son to Mount Temple Comprehensive, Ireland’s first co-ed, non-denominational secondary school. Ironically, this was where Bono and two of the future members of U2 — Edge and Mullen — got sucked into the charismatic evangelical movement that was a prominent feature of Christianity in the ‘70s.
It didn’t last. At the beginning U2 were far from musically gifted, and had grafted to improve their sound. They weren’t about to throw it all away and, according to Bono, their congregation cared only about making them choose between “this world and the next.” Still, that freedom to be Christian without being forced into a “Catholic” or “Protestant” mould was reflected in their music.
“Sunday Bloody Sunday” was easy to peg as a rant against the horrors of the 1972 massacre of Catholic civil rights marchers by the British army, but in fact it was a howl of outrage against the futility of sectarianism. Bono was loathed by the IRA for publicly criticizing the 1987 Enniskillen bombing (although the jury’s out on whether they put a price on his head).
In the ‘90s U2 were actively involved in the campaign for people in Northern Ireland to vote “yes” to the Good Friday Agreement. Bono famously stood between the Catholic politician John Hume and Protestant David Trimble and raised their arms in celebration after the two had publicly shaken hands. It was a gesture that could only really have come from someone who had seen sectarianism up close while also being shielded from it. It was solid training for what came next.
During the 2000s, Bono became notorious for his willingness to work across the noxious political divide between Republicans and Democrats, for the sake of securing U.S. aid and debt relief for lower-income countries (the same funds that were later obliterated by President Trump). Surprisingly, he used the Bible as a way to find common ground. Famously homophobic Sen. Jesse Helms was reportedly brought to tears when the U2 frontman quoted the passage from Matthew about clothing the naked. In a move that’s hard to imagine now, his support for anti-AIDS funding was secured.
“Stories of Surrender” often gets political, but the film’s most powerful moments are quieter, more personal. Much of it is framed as one long, unsatisfying conversation between Bono and his dead father, a man whose approval he always sought, but never quite got. One of the few moments they truly connected was when discussing religion.
Bono’s brief loss of faith was, he says, one of the most terrifying moments in his life, yet at least it wasn’t permanent. His dad’s drift from religion was, making his demise from cancer a terrifying experience for both father and son.
Parental absence left a hole that he filled with music and with God, and in “Surrender” the two come together whenever Bono sings to the adoring crowd before him. The religion element is dropped in so frequently that the man next to me at the screening even commented that the film felt alternately like “a revival” or “a sermon” — and not in a bad way.
It touches on the sorts of things you’d hear in a church, most powerfully, forgiveness. It’s unclear whether that ever happened for father or son. Bono admits that he finds it hard to bow down to his maker and to others. “Surrender” as a concept remains elusive. Yet you sense he’s trying. For someone who so often gets called arrogant, he seems genuinely surprised that he’s here.
“I couldn’t sing,’ he says. “Adam couldn’t play.”
And yet they went on to conquer the world, for a while at least. That certainly takes faith.
Maddy Fry is the editor of the Westminster Abbey Review magazine and the founder of U2 and Us on Substack. She writes about politics, religion and pop culture, with bylines in The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, Time, The New Statesman and The Huffington Post. She also enjoys drinking stout, listening to U2 and telling you why you are wrong about the “Star Wars” sequels.