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Bono
calls on Christians to battle AIDS in Africa
By Steve Beard
When rock star
Bono wanted to tour the American Midwest to draw
attention to the devastating plague of AIDS in
Africa, he turned to the Church. On Sunday,
December 1, the Irish singer found himself sitting
on the front row through two infant baptisms and a
traditional lighting of the Advent Wreath before
he had his turn to speak at Saint Paul United
Methodist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Launched on World AIDS Day, the week-long,
seven-city “Heart of America Tour: Africa’s
Future and Ours” was sponsored by DATA (Debt,
AIDS, Trade in Africa), a political advocacy
organization that Bono helped found (www.datadata.org).
An estimated 42 million people worldwide live with
HIV, with 75 percent of them living in sub-Saharan
Africa. AIDS kills 6,500 Africans every day and
a projected 2.5 million Africans will die next
year because they lack the medicine to fight the
virus.
The situation in Africa is near to the hearts of
United Methodists in Nebraska. They are in
partnership with fellow United Methodists in
Nigeria,
actively involved in various projects including
raising money for an orphanage there. Margery
Ambrosius, one of the leaders of the
denominational
partnership, is a member at Saint Paul and was
enthusiastic to have Bono at her church. “He is
willing to use his celebrity to have an impact on
the
world, instead of just building more mansions,
like others might do,” she told the Lincoln
Journal Star.
The Sunday morning program included an energetic
youth choir from Ghana called the Gateway
Ambassadors and the sobering testimony of Agnes
Nyamayarwo, an HIV-positive Ugandan nurse who lost
her husband and 6-year-old son to AIDS.
Saint Paul pastor, the Rev. David Lux, offered
Bono (donning his blue sunglasses) the pulpit but
the singer jokingly responded, “I don’t know
about a rock star in the pulpit.” Later,
however, when his lapel microphone failed, Bono
jumped at the chance to use it. “I’ve always
wanted to get into one of these,” he said.
Bono used Scripture to explain why he was
investing his time in the fight against AIDS in
Africa. He told the congregation that he stopped
asking God
to bless his own work and started to do the work
that God already has blessed.
During his presentation, one of the newly-baptized
babies began to cry. As the father was taking the
child out of the sanctuary, Bono recalled the
child’s name and said, “Where are you going
Alexander?”
The Rev. Lux told GOOD NEWS that there were no
ruffled feathers about a rock star in the pulpit.
Instead, he has heard “several positive comments
from people who had children or grandchildren who
hadn’t been going to church but wanted to make
sure to be in church when Bono was there.”
He described Bono as “personable, friendly,
compassionate, and articulate. He challenges
Christians to live out the teachings of Christ in
specific
ways, like responding to the horrific AIDS crisis
in Africa which is ravaging families and children.”
The congregation raised nearly $4,200 in
a special offering on that Sunday toward the
building of an orphanage in Nigeria. Lux
vowed that the congregation will be “responding
in many other ways. Bono’s message, faith
commitment, and passion will inspire us for a long
time to come.”
As the lead singer of the group U2, Bono has long
used Christian imagery in his songs. Additionally,
he has also been candid about his fascination with
Jesus and his simultaneous disillusionment with
organized religion.
While at the Northeast Christian Church in
Louisville, Kentucky, GOOD NEWS asked Bono how his
Christian faith inspired his activism.
“Well, you know, I am not a very good
advertisement for God. So, I generally don't wear
that badge on my lapel. But it is certainly
written on the
inside. I am a believer,” he said.
“There are 2,103 verses of Scripture pertaining
to the poor. Jesus Christ only speaks of judgment
once. It is not all about the things that the
church bangs on about. It is not about sexual
immorality, and it is not about megalomania, or
vanity,” he said jokingly referring to his rock
star
status.
“It is about the poor. ‘I was naked and you
clothed me. I was a stranger and you let me in.’
This is at the heart of the gospel. Why is it that
we have
seemed to have forgotten this? Why isn't the
Church leading this movement? The Church
ought to be ready to do that.”
Throughout the Midwest tour, Bono was outspoken
about his faith. “That there’s a force of love
and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to
start with, if you believe it,” he told Cathleen
Falsoni of the Chicago Sun Times. “But the idea
that that same love and logic would choose to
describe itself as a baby born in straw and
poverty, is genius. And brings me to my knees,
literally.
“Christ’s example is being demeaned by the
church if they ignore the new leprosy, which is
AIDS. The church is the sleeping giant here,” he
said. “If
it wakes up to what’s really going on in the
rest of the world, it has a real role to play. If
it doesn’t, it will be irrelevant.”
While at the University of Iowa, Bono said, “We
don’t have to guess what is on God’s mind
here. It bewilders me that anyone can call
themselves
followers of Christ and not see that AIDS is the
leprosy spoken about in the New Testament. God is
at work here.…It is why I am here, I suppose.”
Bono also spoke openly of his faith while he was a
guest on CNN’s Larry King Live on World AIDS
Day, differentiating between his belief in God and
mere religion. “My mother was a Protestant. My
father was a Catholic. And I learned that religion
is often the enemy of God, actually.…Religion is
the
artifice-you know, the building, after God has
left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the
building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules,
regulations,
traditions. I think what God is interested in is
people’s hearts, and that’s hard enough.”
He continued, “The idea that God might love us
and be interested in us is kind of huge and
gigantic, but we turn it, because we’re
small-minded, into
this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God,
that is religion.…
“I don’t doubt God. I have firm faith
absolutely in God. It’s religion I’m doubting,”
he said. The singer emphasized the
vital implications of battling AIDS in
Africa. “This moment in time will be
remembered for…how we let an entire continent,
Africa, burst into flames and stood around with
water in cans. This is not acceptable. It is not
acceptable to let people die because they can’t
get the drugs that you and I take for granted.”
Throughout the week-long tour, Bono was
accompanied by actress Ashley Judd and actor Chris
Tucker, who visited Africa four times in 2002. The
group spoke in schools, truck stops, and churches
along the way. The unique nature of the tour
sometimes created surreal images such as comedian
Tucker instructing the editorial board of the
Chicago Tribune to hold hands as he closed the
meeting in prayer-a first in the newspaper’s
history.
While in Chicago, the group met with Bill Hybels,
pastor of Willow Creek Community Church-the
largest church in the United States-to discuss
ways
to get the message of AIDS in Africa out to the
churches.
The group also visited the Apostolic Faith Church,
a predominantly African-American congregation on
the south side of Chicago. Tucker broke down in
tears as he spoke of travelling companion Agnes
Nyamayarwo’s strength in living with HIV.
“I don’t know how Agnes has overcome this. Her
strength is overwhelming to me. I don’t think I
could do it. I just don’t. God is inside her.
God is
inside this house. Look around.…We are all
connected in this AIDS crisis. Pray for us,
all of us, that we are guided the right way and
doing the thing
of the Holy Spirit.”
Spirits were lifted when the tour was greeted with
a rousing reception from the students at Wheaton
College later that evening. “I am blown away by
your joy,” actress Ashley Judd told the
evangelical college students.
A welcoming telegram from Billy Graham-the school’s
most influential alumnus-was read to Bono. “We
want to stand in solidarity with what this tour is
about,” said college President Duane Liftin.
“So this is Wheaton College,” said Bono. “It
gave the world Billy Graham and [horror film
maker] Wes Craven. Get them frightened and then
you know where to send them.”
Recognizing the volatility of the AIDS issue, he
told the students: “Our discussion may divide
some of us tonight. Why? Because I believe that if
the Church doesn’t respond that it will become a
largely irrelevant body that preaches, ‘Love thy
neighbor,’ and does nothing. It will be the salt
left on the side of a plate.”
“‘Love thy neighbor’ is not advice,” he
said. “It is a command.”
Quoting C.S. Lewis, Bono reminded the students,
“All that is not eternal, is eternally out of
date.” He told the students that they have a
moral
obligation to battle the AIDS crisis. “You didn’t
start it,” he said. “But you can end it. We
need your help. Let’s rock and roll.”
Bono spent his final day on the tour meeting with
religious and civic leaders at the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) headquarters in Louisville,
Kentucky, and stopping off at a Krispy-Kreme donut
shop for a snack. The program that evening was
held at the suburban Northeast Christian Church.
“Politicians think people in the Midwest,
working people who have their own problems, care
less about what’s going on in the rest of the
world,” he said
at a new conference. Politicians tell him there
are no votes on this issue. He believes they are
wrong.
When asked by GOOD NEWS if he or his organization,
DATA, supported or endorsed any specific
legislation, Bono said, “I think we are keeping
it
broad. We are just saying, ‘Call your
congressman, call the president. Let’s grow a
movement.’ It is fertile soil around here. This
is Kentucky. I am
absolutely sure that if we start banging the
dustbin lids and telling the politicians that
there is a vote here, they will switch on it.”
Bono emphasized that “I’m not here as a
do-gooder. This is not a cause; it’s an
emergency.” The tour was not a fund-raising
effort; instead, it was a
consciousness raising educational event-that very
often doubled as a revival meeting with the
Gateway Ambassadors youth choir singing, praying,
and dancing with fervor and zeal.
After Agnes shared her testimony, Bono said: “Let
me say this in the House of God: If there is
anybody here who wants to pass judgment on a woman
like Agnes and her children-and indeed the man who
gave her the virus, her husband-maybe they should
leave now. God will be the judge-not anyone in
this church.”
The congregation applauded.
“Let he without sin throw the first stone,” he
remarked soberly.
“I guess that would clear the place. I’ll be
out of here,” Bono said with a smile.
Serving as a benediction, Bono said, “I am
normally not too comfortable in churches. I find
them often pious places and the Christ that I hear
preached doesn’t feel like the one I read about
in the gospels. But tonight, God is
in the house.”
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Steve Beard is the editor of GOOD NEWS.
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