From Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline, an amazing book, a description of how Quakers (the Society of Friends) realized something in 1758 that, well, you'll see:
"John Woolman and others had pricked the conscience of the Society of Friends over their involvement in the demonic institution of slavery. As Philadelphia Yearly Meeting gathered for its business meetings that year, the slavery issue was a major agenda item. A great deal was at stake and the issue was hotly debated. John Woolman, with head bowed and tears in his eyes, sat through the various sessions in complete silence. Finally, after hours of agonizing prayer he rose and spoke. 'My mind is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being and the justice of His judgment, and herein my soul is covered with awfulness [probably in the "full of awe" sense--me]...Many slaves on this continent are oppressed and their cries have entered into the ears of the Most High...It is not a time for delay.' Firmly and tenderly Woolman dealt with the problems of the 'private interests of some persons' and the 'friendships which do not stand upon an immutable foundation.' With prophetic boldness he warned the Yearly Meeting that if it failed to do its 'duty in firmness and constancy' then 'God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter.'
"The entire Yearly Meeting melted into a spirit of unity as a result of this compassionate witness. They responded as one voice to remove slavery from their midst. John Greenleaf Whittier states that those sessions 'must ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in the history of the Christian Church.'
"That united decision is particularly impressive when we realize that the Society of Friends was the only body that asked slaveholding members to reimburse their slaves for their time in bondage."
Something I wrote for @U2 almost exactly three years ago.
I've said before that U2 was rock 'n' roll incarnate, but I didn't have a full understanding of what that phrase could mean until I saw them in Boston on June 5th.
What they have managed to do, what makes them different from every other band today, is to tap the anarchic energy glimpsed in every great live performer -- the Stones, Springsteen, the Who -- proving these were all fed by the same source. They present an alternate history of the last 40 years where rock 'n' roll is the only thing that makes sense.
Bono in particular seems to be channeling something -- and indeed, at that Boston show, when he sang "I'm a MAAAAAAAN" in "Kite," my overwhelming impression was that the note he hit was actually beyond his ability. He could only sing that line at a U2 concert, with the music behind him and the audience pouring their enthusiasm into him. I could feel this same concert-fuelled extension of ability in myself during the snippet of "40" at the end of "Bad." It was too high for me to do at full voice; nevertheless, there I was singing it.
Channeling rock 'n' roll -- that's what all the snippets of other people's songs might be pointing toward. Bono sang "In My Life" as if it belonged to him, as if it was his heritage as Rock Singer. And for U2 the music is freed from the shackles of genre definition -- they threw in bits of Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra songs and they made equal sense with Van Morrison's "Gloria." "The same spirit runs through all of these," U2 seemed to be saying. "Or it does, now that we sing them."
What sort of spirit is it? U2 have been bandying about the term "ecstatic" to describe the sort of music they strive to make. In fact it's hard to use any other word for the frenzy that takes over with "Elevation" or "Where the Streets Have No Name." But there is an aspect of rock 'n' roll which is terrifying too, and they tap into that with equal skill. "Even when music is angry or agitated," Bono says in the tour program, "if it's ringing true then it's a force of love. If somebody is coughing up their real experiences in order to make sense of them, then that's an amazing thing." For many of us in the audience, the most frightening moment of the opening night Boston show was at the end of "Until the End of the World." Edge, whose reputation paints him as the calm, collected, "Zen" member of the band, threw his guitar down and kicked it, yelled something at Larry, and wore a grim expression as they begun the next song. Many of us, as I said, were disturbed by this development -- "Edge isn't angry! Edge can't get angry!" But others of us were genuinely excited -- "Cool! Don't see that too often!"
The strangest part was that we in the audience were oblivious to whatever mistake or accident upset Edge so. But what made his outburst exciting to see was that it betrayed the extent he cared about getting this performance perfect. The rock 'n' roll spirit may not always be ecstatic, but it is passionate, and passion is not always joyful.
There is a seduction to the darker side of passion. When the liquid tones at the beginning of "The Fly" were cut by the slashing rhythm of the main riff, I had this sudden sense of being wicked -- and really enjoyed the feeling. It was a mischievous, trickster, MacPhisto sort of wickedness, and it was all in the music -- Bono hadn't begun singing. Looking back I think of psychology class and the concept of the "shadow self," the part one usually tries to keep hidden. I also thought of Bono's oft-stated belief that what God wants for us is wholeness, to lay claim to all aspects of one's self, embarrassing or frightening as they may be.
Rock 'n' roll in concert, especially a U2 concert, has mad energy to get lost in, to dive into and swim away from, times when you know those up on stage are seized in the grip of the wave as much as, or more than, you are. Bono in the program again: "The out of body experience is really about realizing...that the music is working you, not the other way around." At the end of "Bullet the Blue Sky" Bono was doing a different rap than what I'd heard him do before. The song has meant many things over the years past its inspiration in the fighting in El Salvador -- during Zoo TV, for example, "burning crosses" became swastikas, a comment on the rise of fascism in Europe. During this tour, footage of Charlton Heston defending handgun accessibility in America is shown before the song. In Boston, Bono chanted "676,000 in twenty years" -- gun-related deaths in the U.S. -- as he swung a portable spotlight. It marked every area of the crowd, the shadows of waving fans putting them in bold relief. Then he aimed it at his temple, his finger, as it were, on the trigger. "Mark Chapman. Mark Chapman," he chanted. They were the last words of the song, the name of the man who shot John Lennon. "Mark Chapman."
Here is where the idea of U2 as rock 'n' roll incarnate is most important. The person who "just doesn't get" U2 could watch this and ask, "Does Bono think he's John Lennon?" But if the music is a continuum, then the spirit that flowed through the Beatles not only flows through U2 but U2 dares speak in its name. Mark Chapman didn't just kill a person named John Lennon nor a very talented musician and songwriter: he silenced a true voice. The fact is that "a gun in the hands of a bad man" could kill not just some guy named Bono but close a door now flung wide to the rock 'n' roll spirit. Realizing this at the Boston show, I felt my legs give out. Some others didn't hear what Bono had been saying and slow-danced with significant others during the next song. I stood there and felt the words hit me as if for the first time: "You got me with nothing to win and nothing left to lose. And you give yourself away...I can't live with or without you."