U2's Theological Imagination: A Guide for Pilgrims on the Way

Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr., members of the Irish rock band U2 that marked the fiftieth anniversary of its founding in 2026, have sold over 170 million albums and won twenty-two Grammy awards. They are also theologians, individually and collectively. They think about God and God’s world, and they do so with the intention of articulating this thinking publicly through their musical art. U2’s Theological Imagination is an introduction to the constructive theological framework of U2’s Christian imagination. The book is also an account of the author’s experience of that theological framework as both an academic theologian and a fan of the band’s music along with members of his family. U2’s Theological Imagination is an invitation to readers to try out this theological framework for themselves as a means of envisioning a world that can move beyond the visible world in its present condition.

Steven R. Harmon is Professor of Historical Theology at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the author or editor of nine other books, including Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade).