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That's just the start of the faith references on this album. A killer fusion of blues and modern rock, "Love and Peace or Else" is U2's prayer for Middle East peace: "Lay down your guns/All your daughters of Zion/All your Abraham sons/I don't know if I can make it/I'm not easy on my knees/Here's my heart and you can break it/I need some release." Bono's work to relieve Third World debt and the AIDS crisis in Africa inspired the rallying cry of "Crumbs from Your Table," which takes its title from Matthew 15:21-28 while writing from the continent's perspective—"You speak of signs and wonders, but I need something other/I would believe if I was able, but I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table."

Note that many of the songs use key phrases that point to the gospel to define them. Even the rowdy hit "Vertigo" suggests prayer and humility as the answer to the feeling of imbalance and uncertainty: "I can feel your love teaching me how … to kneel." In the excerpt from "All Because of You" up above, Bono beautifully expresses a reluctant heart's willingness for restoration and renewal. And he can't be much more explicit about his faith in God with the openly prayerful "Yahweh," singing, "Take this soul, stranded in some skin and bones/Take this soul and make it sing … Take this city, a city should be shining on a hill/Take this city, if it be your will."

Yet despite the outspoken examples of faith in the lyrics, Bono and U2 remain something of an enigma when it comes to their core beliefs. In a November 14, 2004 article for The New York Times, Bono shares that he's worried about those who are overly fanatical about their faith, "wary of people who believe theirs is the only way. Unilateralism before God is dangerous." Yet in the same article, Bono explains the spiritual inspirations behind the new album: "There's cathedrals and the alleyway in our music. I think the alleyway is usually on the way to the cathedral, where you can hear your own footsteps and you're slightly nervous and looking over your shoulder and wondering if there's somebody following you. And then you get there and you realize there was somebody following you: It's God."

This is a band that loves to rest between the sacred and the secular, so that no one group can claim them. What is certain, evidenced by Atomic Bomb, is that U2 continues to do what they do best-create emotive rock that ignites the soul.

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