Bono's Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Bono's Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast

Postby nomo » Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:15 pm

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=060203">www.sojo.net/index.cfm?ac...sue=060203</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The National Prayer Breakfast is normally a time for reaffirming<br>spiritual truths and testifying to the power of faith in people's<br>individual lives, but not so much a moment for prophetic and<br>controversial social utterances. There have been exceptions - when<br>Sen. Mark Hatfield spoke courageously about the moral "shame" of the<br>Vietnam War in the presence of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger (I<br>know a lot about that prayer breakfast speech because I helped write<br>it when I was a seminarian in Chicago); when Mother Theresa spoke<br>about the sacredness of life and raised the issue of abortion with the<br>Clintons on hand; and yesterday, when Bono spoke like a modern-day<br>prophet about extreme global poverty and pandemic disease and called<br>upon the American government, with George Bush and Congressional<br>leaders present, to do much more.<br><br>The speech, published below, was the most explicit about religion and<br>the role of faith that I had ever heard Bono deliver, and his<br>insistence on the biblical requirements of justice and not just<br>charity was reiterated over and over again. In a small session with<br>religious editors afterward, Bono spoke about how the churches had led<br>on the issue of debt cancellation with the Jubilee 2000 campaign, on<br>HIV/AIDS, and now on global poverty reduction. "You're the bigger<br>crowd," he said, "much more than my stadium audiences." He said the<br>church will just hear "fanfare" from musicians.<br><br>But Bono is offering far more than fanfare, as his talk below<br>demonstrates. To the religious editors he stressed how the justice<br>issue is "really it," and said that the churches had to figure out how<br>to make that clear to people and that "movement is the way" we will<br>finally succeed. Bono said he believed that something is moving now<br>and we have to create the momentum to accomplish our goals. On the way<br>to the car afterward, we spoke together about how really crucial that<br>movement building is, how nothing else will suffice to make the<br>changes in our world that are so vitally and morally necessary, and<br>how the strategy in the religious community is so key. We also talked<br>about the Isaiah 58 passage he had quoted in his speech - that when we<br>respond to the poor as the prophet instructs, "God will cover your<br>back." This is one speech you will want to read and pass on to your<br>friends.<br><br>- Jim Wallis<br><br><br><br>Bono's best sermon yet: Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast<br><br>[RUSH TRANSCRIPT: CHECK AGAINST DELIVERED REMARKS]<br><br>If you're wondering what I'm doing here, at a prayer breakfast, well,<br>so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of the cloth, unless that<br>cloth is leather. It's certainly not because I'm a rock star. Which<br>leaves one possible explanation: I'm here because I've got a messianic<br>complex.<br><br>Yes, it's true. And for anyone who knows me, it's hardly a revelation.<br><br>Well, I'm the first to admit that there's something<br>unnatural...something unseemly...about rock stars mounting the pulpit<br>and preaching at presidents, and then disappearing to their villas in<br>the south of France. Talk about a fish out of water. It was weird<br>enough when Jesse Helms showed up at a U2 concert...but this is really<br>weird, isn't it?<br><br>You know, one of the things I love about this country is its<br>separation of church and state. Although I have to say: in inviting me<br>here, both church and state have been separated from something else<br>completely: their mind.<br><br>Mr. President, are you sure about this?<br><br>It's very humbling and I will try to keep my homily brief. But be<br>warned - I'm Irish.<br><br>I'd like to talk about the laws of man, here in this city where those<br>laws are written. And I'd like to talk about higher laws. It would be<br>great to assume that the one serves the other; that the laws of man<br>serve these higher laws...but of course, they don't always. And I<br>presume that, in a sense, is why you're here.<br><br>I presume the reason for this gathering is that all of us here -<br>Muslims, Jews, Christians - all are searching our souls for how to<br>better serve our family, our community, our nation, our God.<br><br>I know I am. Searching, I mean. And that, I suppose, is what led me here, too.<br><br>Yes, it's odd, having a rock star here - but maybe it's odder for me<br>than for you. You see, I avoided religious people most of my life.<br>Maybe it had something to do with having a father who was Protestant<br>and a mother who was Catholic in a country where the line between the<br>two was, quite literally, a battle line. Where the line between church<br>and state was...well, a little blurry, and hard to see.<br><br>I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays... and my<br>father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from<br>my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the<br>way of God.<br><br>For me, at least, it got in the way. Seeing what religious people, in<br>the name of God, did to my native land...and in this country, seeing<br>God's second-hand car salesmen on the cable TV channels, offering<br>indulgences for cash...in fact, all over the world, seeing the<br>self-righteousness roll down like a mighty stream from certain corners<br>of the religious establishment...<br><br>I must confess, I changed the channel. I wanted my MTV.<br><br>Even though I was a believer.<br><br>Perhaps because I was a believer.<br><br>I was cynical...not about God, but about God's politics. (There you are, Jim.)<br><br>Then, in 1997, a couple of eccentric, septuagenarian British<br>Christians went and ruined my shtick - my reproachfulness. They did it<br>by describing the millennium, the year 2000, as a Jubilee year, as an<br>opportunity to cancel the chronic debts of the world's poorest people.<br>They had the audacity to renew the Lord's call - and were joined by<br>Pope John Paul II, who, from an Irish half-Catholic's point of view,<br>may have had a more direct line to the Almighty.<br><br>'Jubilee' - why 'Jubilee'?<br><br>What was this year of Jubilee, this year of our Lord's favor?<br><br>I'd always read the scriptures, even the obscure stuff. There it was<br>in Leviticus (25:35)...<br><br>'If your brother becomes poor,' the scriptures say, 'and cannot<br>maintain himself...you shall maintain him.... You shall not lend him<br>your money at interest, not give him your food for profit.'<br><br>It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry<br>with this. Jesus is a young man, he's met with the rabbis, impressed<br>everyone, people are talking. The elders say, he's a clever guy, this<br>Jesus, but he hasn't done much...yet. He hasn't spoken in public<br>before...<br><br>When he does, is first words are from Isaiah: 'The Spirit of the Lord<br>is upon me,' he says, 'because He has anointed me to preach good news<br>to the poor.' And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord's favour, the<br>year of Jubilee (Luke 4:1<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START 8) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> .<br><br>What he was really talking about was an era of grace - and we're still in it.<br><br>So fast-forward 2,000 years. That same thought, grace, was made<br>incarnate - in a movement of all kinds of people. It wasn't a bless-me<br>club... it wasn't a holy huddle. These religious guys were willing to<br>get out in the streets, get their boots dirty, wave the placards,<br>follow their convictions with actions...making it really hard for<br>people like me to keep their distance. It was amazing. I almost<br>started to like these church people.<br><br>But then my cynicism got another helping hand.<br><br>It was what Colin Powell, a five-star general, called the greatest<br>W.M.D. of them all: a tiny little virus called AIDS. And the religious<br>community, in large part, missed it. The ones that didn't miss it<br>could only see it as divine retribution for bad behaviour. Even on<br>children...even [though the] fastest growing group of HIV infections<br>were married, faithful women.<br><br>Aha, there they go again! I thought to myself judgmentalism is back!<br><br>But in truth, I was wrong again. The church was slow but the church<br>got busy on this the leprosy of our age.<br><br>Love was on the move.<br><br>Mercy was on the move.<br><br>God was on the move.<br><br>Moving people of all kinds to work with others they had never met,<br>never would have cared to meet...conservative church groups hanging<br>out with spokesmen for the gay community, all singing off the same<br>hymn sheet on AIDS...soccer moms and quarterbacks...hip-hop stars and<br>country stars. This is what happens when God gets on the move: crazy<br>stuff happens!<br><br>Popes were seen wearing sunglasses!<br><br>Jesse Helms was seen with a ghetto blaster!<br><br>Crazy stuff. Evidence of the spirit.<br><br>It was breathtaking. Literally. It stopped the world in its tracks.<br><br>When churches started demonstrating on debt, governments listened -<br>and acted. When churches starting organising, petitioning, and even -<br>that most unholy of acts today, God forbid, lobbying...on AIDS and<br>global health, governments listened - and acted.<br><br>I'm here today in all humility to say: you changed minds; you changed<br>policy; you changed the world.<br><br>Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists,<br>most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the<br>poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.<br><br>Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.<br><br>I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill. I hope<br>so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff.<br>Maybe, maybe not. But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and<br>ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.<br><br>God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house.<br>God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a<br>virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under<br>the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and<br>lives, and God is with us if we are with them. "If you remove the yoke<br>from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness,<br>and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the<br>afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with<br>become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy<br>your desire in scorched places."<br><br>It's not a coincidence that in the scriptures, poverty is mentioned<br>more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of air time,<br>2,100 mentions. (You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on<br>the subject of the poor.) 'As you have done it unto the least of these<br>my brethren, you have done it unto me' (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good<br>news to the poor.<br><br>Here's some good news for the president. After 9/11 we were told<br>America would have no time for the world's poor. America would be<br>taken up with its own problems of safety. And it's true these are<br>dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and<br>double-locked the doors.<br><br>In fact, you have doubled aid to Africa. You have tripled funding for<br>global health. Mr. President, your emergency plan for AIDS relief and<br>support for the Global Fund - you and Congress - have put 700,000<br>people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided 8 million<br>bed nets to protect children from malaria.<br><br>Outstanding human achievements. Counterintuitive. Historic. Be very, very proud.<br><br>But here's the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet<br>to come. There is much more to do. There's a gigantic chasm between<br>the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.<br><br>And finally, it's not about charity after all, is it? It's about justice.<br><br>Let me repeat that: It's not about charity, it's about justice.<br><br>And that's too bad.<br><br>Because you're good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at<br>it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can't afford<br>it.<br><br>But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of<br>justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our<br>pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.<br><br>Sixty-five hundred Africans are still dying every day of a<br>preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any<br>drug store. This is not about charity, this is about justice and<br>equality.<br><br>Because there's no way we can look at what's happening in Africa and,<br>if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that<br>Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn't<br>accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the tsunami.<br>150,000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, "mother nature."<br>In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month.<br>And it's a completely avoidable catastrophe.<br><br>It's annoying but justice and equality are mates. Aren't they? Justice<br>always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.<br><br>You know, think of those Jewish sheep-herders going to meet the<br>Pharaoh, mud on their shoes, and the Pharaoh says, "Equal?" A<br>preposterous idea: rich and poor are equal? And they say, "Yeah,<br>'equal,' that's what it says here in this book. We're all made in the<br>image of God."<br><br>And eventually the Pharaoh says, "OK, I can accept that. I can accept<br>the Jews - but not the blacks."<br><br>"Not the women. Not the gays. Not the Irish. No way, man."<br><br>So on we go with our journey of equality.<br><br>On we go in the pursuit of justice.<br><br>We hear that call in the ONE Campaign, a growing movement of more than<br>2 million Americans...Left and Right together... united in the belief<br>that where you live should no longer determine whether you live.<br><br>We hear that call even more powerfully today, as we mourn the loss of<br>Coretta Scott King - mother of a movement for equality, one that<br>changed the world but is only just getting started. These issues are<br>as alive as they ever were; they just change shape and cross the seas.<br><br>Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while<br>we sing the virtues of the free market...that's a justice issue.<br>Holding children to ransom for the debts of their<br>grandparents...that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving<br>medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents...that's a justice<br>issue.<br><br>And while the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject.<br><br>That's why I say there's the law of the land…. And then there is a<br>higher standard. There's the law of the land, and we can hire experts<br>to write them so they benefit us, so the laws say it's OK to protect<br>our agriculture but it's not OK for African farmers to do the same, to<br>earn a living?<br><br>As the laws of man are written, that's what they say.<br><br>God will not accept that.<br><br>Mine won't, at least. Will yours?<br><br>[ pause]<br><br>I close this morning on...very...thin...ice.<br><br>This is a dangerous idea I've put on the table: my God vs. your God,<br>their God vs. our God...vs. no God. It is very easy, in these times,<br>to see religion as a force for division rather than unity.<br><br>And this is a town - Washington - that knows something of division.<br><br>But the reason I am here, and the reason I keep coming back to<br>Washington, is because this is a town that is proving it can come<br>together on behalf of what the scriptures call the least of these.<br><br>This is not a Republican idea. It is not a Democratic idea. It is not<br>even, with all due respect, an American idea. Nor it is unique to any<br>one faith.<br><br>'Do to others as you would have them do to you' (Luke 6:30). Jesus says that.<br><br>'Righteousness is this: that one should...give away wealth out of love<br>for him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the<br>wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives.'<br>The Koran says that (2.177).<br><br>Thus sayeth the Lord: 'Bring the homeless poor into the house, when<br>you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the<br>dawn and your recovery will speedily spring fourth, then your Lord<br>will be your rear guard.' The Jewish scripture says that. Isaiah 58<br>again.<br><br>That is a powerful incentive: 'The Lord will watch your back.' Sounds<br>like a good deal to me, right now.<br><br>A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In<br>countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord's<br>blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it…. I<br>have a family, please look after them…. I have this crazy idea...<br><br>And this wise man said: stop.<br><br>He said, stop asking God to bless what you're doing.<br><br>Get involved in what God is doing - because it's already blessed.<br><br>Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing.<br><br>And that is what he's calling us to do.<br><br>I was amazed when I first got to this country and I learned how much<br>some churchgoers tithe. Up to 10% of the family budget. Well, how does<br>that compare with the federal budget, the budget for the entire<br>American family? How much of that goes to the poorest people in the<br>world? Less than 1%.<br><br>Mr. President, Congress, people of faith, people of America:<br><br>I want to suggest to you today that you see the flow of effective<br>foreign assistance as tithing.... Which, to be truly meaningful, will<br>mean an additional 1% of the federal budget tithed to the poor.<br><br>What is 1%?<br><br>1% is not merely a number on a balance sheet.<br><br>1% is the girl in Africa who gets to go to school, thanks to you. 1%<br>is the AIDS patient who gets her medicine, thanks to you. 1% is the<br>African entrepreneur who can start a small family business thanks to<br>you. 1% is not redecorating presidential palaces or money flowing down<br>a rat hole. This 1% is digging waterholes to provide clean water.<br><br>1% is a new partnership with Africa, not paternalism toward Africa,<br>where increased assistance flows toward improved governance and<br>initiatives with proven track records and away from boondoggles and<br>white elephants of every description.<br><br>America gives less than 1% now. We're asking for an extra 1% to change<br>the world. to transform millions of lives - but not just that and I<br>say this to the military men now - to transform the way that they see<br>us.<br><br>1% is national security, enlightened economic self-interest, and a<br>better, safer world rolled into one. Sounds to me that in this town of<br>deals and compromises, 1% is the best bargain around.<br><br>These goals - clean water for all; school for every child; medicine<br>for the afflicted, an end to extreme and senseless poverty - these are<br>not just any goals; they are the Millennium Development goals, which<br>this country supports. And they are more than that. They are the<br>Beatitudes for a globalised world.<br><br>Now, I'm very lucky. I don't have to sit on any budget committees. And<br>I certainly don't have to sit where you do, Mr. President. I don't<br>have to make the tough choices.<br><br>But I can tell you this:<br><br>To give 1% more is right. It's smart. And it's blessed.<br><br>There is a continent - Africa - being consumed by flames.<br><br>I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will<br>be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital<br>revolution, and what we did - or did not to - to put the fire out in<br>Africa.<br><br>History, like God, is watching what we do.<br><br>Thank you. Thank you, America, and God bless you all.<br> <p></p><i></i>
User avatar
nomo
 
Posts: 3388
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2005 1:48 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Bono's Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast

Postby Darklo » Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:50 pm

What a load of sanctimonious bs. <p></p><i></i>
Darklo
 
Posts: 81
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2006 4:59 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Bono's Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast

Postby Byrne » Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:18 pm

Reading the transcript of Bono's speech reminds me of...<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Q</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> How many members of U" does it take to change a lightbulb?<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>A</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Only one, Bono, he just holds the lightbulb & the world revolves around him<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I've never been into his music or his band but, he gained <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>some</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> respect from me for doing what he did (even if it was sanctimonious bullshit).<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
User avatar
Byrne
 
Posts: 955
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 2:45 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Jubilee 2012!?!

Postby IanEye » Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:29 pm

In terms of Pranksterism, I actually like the idea of introducing the concept of a Federal Reserve Jubilee into the minds [such as they are] of the lower Middle Class Fundamentalists of America.<br><br>Imagine if you actually could convince all of the USA Fundies that The Fed was going to HAVE to have a Jubilee before it's 100th Anniversary, [2013] or else God would be really angry.<br><br>Imagine all of the Fundies INSISTING that the entire debt be cancelled because "it's in the Bible".<br><br>Of course their reasons would be self serving, "Why, if'n my car loan is gone I could get me one a them thar new Humm-aahS!!"<br><br>But what fun to watch all of the Far Right Think Tanks try to figure out a way to put out the holy Pentacostal fire of Christians rightously screaming for their God sanctioned Jubilee.......<br><br>In God We Trust, right?!? <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START ;) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
User avatar
IanEye
 
Posts: 4863
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:33 pm
Blog: View Blog (29)


Return to Religion and the Occult

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests