This article originally appeared in print journal November/December 2002.

Seminary students typically take a series of courses on exegesis—telling them how to study, interpret, and teach the Bible. But where can such students turn if they want to know how to exegete pop culture—a powerful force that unfortunately shapes many people’s lives much more than Scripture?

Two recent books exploring the rock band U2 and cable TV’s The Sopranos may hold a clue.

Superficially, Steve Stockman’s Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 and Chris Seay’s The Gospel According to Tony Soprano have many similarities. The two books are written by pastors who are both fans and students of their respective phenomenally popular subjects. And both books were created by Relevant Books, a new and refreshingly creative media enterprise founded by Cameron Strang, son of Charisma magazine publisher Stephen Strang.

Meanwhile, the biblically-based messages of hope and justice found in much of U2’s music have little in common with the squalid and violent world of the Soprano crime family. Or do they?

Stockman is a Presbyterian pastor from U2’s native Ireland. He has been a fan and student of the mega-popular band’s work for the past 20 years, and his book, which he calls “a spiritual companion” to U2’s career, provides a thorough and insightful overview of the band’s impressive body of work.

Walk On provides a guided tour of the exuberant Christian sentiments of early albums of the 1980s like Boy and October, the darker, ironic tone of 1991’s Achtung Baby and 1993’s Zooropa, and the maturity and spiritual wisdom of 2000’s breakthrough hit, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Stockman also provides an insider’s view of some of the Christian teachers who served as spiritual mentors to Bono, the Edge and Larry Mullen.

Even more dramatic, the book explores the growing spiritual tensions that led these three musicians to leave the potentially suffocating embrace of their Christian fellowship for the wider fields of the mainstream music world.

Bono was the first to attend Shalom, a charismatic, evangelical fellowship in Dublin, and he soon invited the Edge and Mullen to accompany him. For a while, the ministry provided the three musicians with fellowship, teaching and spiritual encouragement. But tensions grew after a ministry member said he’d received a prophecy stating that the three musicians should lay down their musical careers and concentrate solely on spiritual growth.

The Edge told journalist Bill Flanagan about the crisis. “It was reconciling two things that seemed for us to be mutually exclusive. We never did resolve the contradiction. That’s the truth. And probably never will.”

Still, one wonders what would have happened if Shalom’s spiritual leaders had had their way. Three talented Christian musicians would’ve turned away from their God-given gifts, and Bono would’ve focused on his own prayer life and personal discipleship instead of writing songs that challenged the world with the message of the Gospel and calmed people’s fears in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

It’s a long way from Dublin, Ireland to the New Jersey bars and back alleys of HBO’s popular and critically acclaimed The Sopranos drama series. But for Houston pastor Chris Seay, the gritty, grimy world of Tony Soprano and his crime family cronies is a perfect setting for the exploration of timeless spiritual issues.

A pioneering Gen-X leader and the pastor of Houston’s Ecclesia, Seay fell for The Sopranos early, and he fell hard. Members of his church wondered why Chris rushed home every Sunday evening to catch each new profanity-laced episode. Even his wife watched in amazement as Chris lovingly put his young children to bed and then sat glued to scenes of murder, mayhem and sexual violence.

Seay, who has long used video clips and song lyrics in his sermons, is unapologetic about his Sunday night addiction.
“The Sopranos has tapped into a part of me I have managed to keep hidden even from myself,” he writes. “It provokes me, excites me, pisses me off, and pries back the exterior to peek into the darkest parts of my soul. I want to be sanctimonious and push these hideous characters away. But I cannot. We’re just too much alike.”

While bands like U2, P.O.D., Lifehouse and others feature explicitly Christian themes in their work, Seay argues that The Sopranos works on a totally different level. He says the show illustrates the importance of spiritual truths by examining how meaningless life can be when such truths are neglected or intentionally ignored.

“The story calls attention to something missing from our lives, a chasm left empty by a lack of faith, a deep desire to belong, and shallow capitalistic values,” he writes.

Seay portrays Tony Soprano as a modern-day King Solomon, who spared no expense or experience in his search for truth. Like Solomon, Tony Soprano was confronted with the futility of much of life.

Many Christians haven’t felt inclined to wade through the show’s violence and profanity in search of signs of spiritual hunger, but Seay suggests that more believers should engage in such cultural investigations. And along the way, he argues that at least a part of the show’s massive popularity may be due to its unflinching look at good and evil.

Journalist Colleen Carroll is the author of a recently-released study entitled The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola Press). Unlike the world-weary Christian fundamentalists of the early 20th century, the 21st century Gen-X and Gen-Y believers try to make connections with secular culture—even if such connections are tenuous or even erroneous.

“They sometimes can see Christian themes and truths in places where they don’t exist because they want to see them and want to reach out to the world,” said Carroll in an interview published in the Aug. 5, 2002 issue of Christianity Today.

Some church leaders will judge that the recent books about U2 and The Sopranos fall victim to such well-meaning but muddled thinking. But for seminary graduates and other emerging leaders who’ve heard all about interpreting the Bible but never learned how to interpret popular culture, such books are a welcome relief. And for all their limitations, these books might help tomorrow’s leaders learn how to understand and respond to pop culture in informed and redemptive ways. t