One Love: Bono’s quest for God

John Mac Ghlionn• June 17, 2025

Bono has finally done it. After four decades of swagger, sermons, and sunglasses, the U2 frontman has scored his first UK number-one hit as a solo artist. The track is a reimagined version of “Desire”, an old flame reignited, tied to his recent documentary Stories of Surrender

For most artists, reinvention is the beginning of the end. For Bono, it’s proof that he’s still got gas in the tank—and God on his mind.

U2, meanwhile, is having a modest chart revival of its own. “Atomic City” just clawed its way back into the UK’s physical singles chart, like a ghost returning to remind you it never left. There’s something poetic about it. Bono goes number one on his own—but never really alone. When he rises, so does the band. They’re a package deal. Like faith and doubt. Or Ireland and rain.

And here’s the bit casual listeners often miss: U2 has always been a Christian band. Not in name. Not in the way that comes with pastel fonts and altar calls. But in essence. And in Bono’s case, in anguish.

 For a man so synonymous with ego he should come with a gravitational field, it’s worth remembering that behind the shades is a boy who lost his mother at 14 and turned his heartbreak into theology. Paul David Hewson wasn’t forged in arenas. He was forged in grief—and in a home divided by sectarian lines. His father was Catholic. His mother Protestant. In 1960s Ireland, that wasn’t just controversial. It was damn near revolutionary.

He went to both churches. Sat in pews of two tribes. Watched grown men and women try to make God pick a side. And then watched God stay maddeningly silent when his mother dropped dead. What emerged from that silence wasn’t atheism. It was an existential angst. And that angst became U2.

When the band formed, they didn’t just want to make music. They wanted to make music with meaning, music that asked real questions and demanded real answers. They weren’t performing; they were testifying.

Songs like “Gloria” and “I Will Follow” were spiritual autopsies. Beneath the guitars and hooks was a kind of holy desperation. Bono wasn’t just mourning the death of his mother. He was ripping open the silence that followed and shouting into it. Grieving, yes—but also interrogating. Challenging God. Accusing Him. Pleading with Him. Wrestling with absence the way Jacob wrestled the angel.

There was no tidy theology here. No neat conclusions. Just raw faith and raw pain trying to coexist in the same breath. The early records felt like pages from a psalmist’s diary—filled with longing, confusion, fury, and flashes of grace. It wasn’t Christian rock. It was rock made by Christians who weren’t afraid to admit they were struggling to make sense of it all.

And that was the point. They weren’t selling salvation. They were chasing it. Loudly. Desperately. Publicly. And for a generation of listeners, that meant everything.

Then came the Shalom Fellowship—a small, intense Christian group with big opinions and even bigger ultimatums. They loved Jesus. Hated rock and roll. And they made it clear that Bono couldn’t have both. To them, the stage was a stage for sin. The music was too loud, too secular, too dangerous. God didn’t want guitars. He wanted surrender.

And for a while, Bono genuinely considered walking away. All of it. The band, the stage, the calling. Thankfully, manager Paul McGuinness stepped in with blunt, distinctly Irish clarity. He saw exactly what was at stake. He reminded Bono that faith didn’t have to be severed from vocation—that maybe, just maybe, this was the mission field. That the pulpit might look like a stage. That truth might sound less like a sermon and more like a roar to 80,000 people who didn’t even know they were reaching for God. The Dubliner came to his senses. And when he did, he emerged from the fire not cleansed, but clarified.

While other bands sang about cocaine and casual flings, U2 sang about justice, salvation, and the ache of still not finding what they were looking for. Bono never hid his faith. He never softened his belief to make it palatable. You can sneer at it if you want—but sincerity has a longer shelf life than irony. And U2’s willingness to go full Psalms in an age of postmodern noise paid off.

It’s never been an act. When Bono campaigns for African debt relief or testifies before Congress, it’s not virtue signalling—it’s scripture, lived out loud. His activism is messy, overreaching, sometimes tone-deaf—but it’s real. You can call it a messiah complex. He calls it Christian duty. And frankly, he’s got more receipts than most preachers.

Now, at 64, he’s got a solo number one. It’s the kind of late-career surprise that feels both unexpected and inevitable. The face is wrinkled. The voice is weathered. But the mission hasn’t changed: wrestle with desire, confront mortality, look forward, and when in doubt, upward.

That’s the paradox of Bono. Part prophet, part peacock. He’ll bore you stiff with a speech and then drop a lyric that breaks your heart in two. But beneath the ego is a theology forged in real pain, real prayer, and the stubborn refusal to let go of God even when He feels a million miles away.

In a world that trades faith for cynicism and encourages mindless materialism, Bono still believes. And maybe that’s the real miracle.

(Photo by VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images)

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