U2 Rocks the House (of God)
Where the Streets Have No Name. Beautiful Day. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Yahweh. For fans of the Irish band U2, these are familiar rock songs. But to a growing number of Christians, they're becoming tunes for worship.
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And letting them rock out at the same time.
2 comments:
Glad to see your interest in the U2charist! Would mind making some corrections, though? There was a slew of misinformation about the U2charist that went out in 2005 and 2006, and it keeps on getting repeated, unfortunately.
As this BBC article correctly reports, the U2charist started in 2004, with the first service being held on April 17, 2004. Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation didn't exist at that point; they incorporated in 2006. I coined the term "U2charist" (also spelled "eU2charist") and instigated the first service, which was designed and hosted with help from the "Without Walls" emerging worship team of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. The service then spread quickly via the Internet and by word of mouth, such that the keynote Eucharist of the Diocese of Maryland's clergy convention in October of 2004 was a U2charist. Since all clergy in the diocese are required to go to clergy convention, that meant there were a great many clergy there, and many responded to the service enthusiastically and started putting on U2charists of their own, often with the assistance of the "Without Walls" team. You can see from this journal of the Diocese of Maryland's May, 2005 convention if you search for "U2charist" that the service had been going for some time and was widely known and had taken hold in Maryland by then -- that is, by May of 2005.
In June of 2005, a friend of mine named Paige Blair from Gathering the Next Generation (GTNG), a network for "Generation X" Episcopalians, having of the U2charist via the GTNG email list, expressed interest in putting on a U2charist service, and put out a request for liturgies she might use or adapt. At her request, I sent her a copy of one of the Maryland U2charist liturgies and some suggestions for how I'd change the prayers; you can see the June 29, 2005 email (with full headers) from her thanking me for sending the liturgy here. Paige used these as her sources, and then hosted her first U2charist that summer -- well over a year after the U2charist began.
I ask you to correct the information you've got here because it's harmful both to Paige and to me. Paige is a friend of mine. She's told me (and I believe her) that she has never claimed to have started the U2charist, and I have plentiful correspondence from her testifying to that. Suggesting that she did -- at least without reporting that she says she didn't -- makes her look guilty of plagiarism, and that's really unfair to her as well as potentially damaging to her career. And I'm a seminarian on the job market with a C.V. that includes the U2charist.
I released the U2charist, as I have done with every liturgy I've crafted, under a Creative Commons license. Everyone can use and adapt them for free, and I don't get a dime from it. All I ask is that people don't plagiarize the service or make someone else look guilty of plagiarizing it, and that U2's requirements for use of their music in services is followed.
So please don't repeat misinformation that hurts people who are volunteering their time and creativity to energize people to engage God's mission of ending extreme poverty. And please don't hesitate to contact me if any more information or documentation from me would help.
Many thanks!
Oh, I forgot to add that you can find more information on the U2charist and how it started and spread on the U2charist resources page, and especially in the U2charist FAQ.
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