The Devil and Bono Vox

The Devil and Bono Vox - I've been playing in rock and punk bands since I was a kid. I've also been a Christian pretty much my entire cognitive life. It's a given that a lot of my rocker friends don't "get" the Christianity part. But many of my Christian friends had an even bigger problem. "You should be playing in a Christian band", they'd insist. I'd reply, "why preach to the choir?". "Contemporary Christian" music always bored me stiff - because it was designed from the ground up to be safe to the consumer, the already-converted.

The examples I held up of Christians who were Rockers were the ones I wanted to emulate (back when I wanted to be a rock star), the ones who took their beliefs and waded into the jungle of the world's most profane business: Jim Kerr of Simple Minds, T-Bone Burnett, Mike Sharp and Dave Peters of The Alarm, arguably the late Stuart Adamson of Big Country...

...and the big kahuna, U2, led by Bono (Paul Hewson), the greatest rock band since the Beatles (and as distinct from Bruce Springsteen, who's less a Rock act than a Rock 'n Roll institution).

In the wake of their magnificent performance at the Super Bowl, Jim Boulet of the National Review finally nailed the dichotomy that Bono, U2, and that entire generation of Rockers who are Christians represent.