The Gospel According to the Boss

The Gospel According to the Boss [Excerpts]

To millions of fans, he's "the Boss," the blue-jeaned troubadour of the American heartland who finds nobility in the grind of daily life.

Across 35 years in dozens of rock anthems, from "Born to Run" to "Glory Days" to "Born in the U.S.A.," Bruce Springsteen has chronicled lost souls, haunted war veterans, gritty factory workers, and highways jammed with broken heroes -- but also advanced themes of redemption, hope and keeping the faith.

It's been a rich vein of spiritual motifs, and the politically progressive 58-year-old singer/songwriter has given voice to society's dispossessed. His work of late has been bleak, brooding and introspective, even grieving.

But the Boss as spiritual guidepost?

Jeffrey Symynkywicz, a Unitarian Universalist minister on Boston's South Shore and dedicated Springsteen fan, has pored over the singer's rich, multi-layered lyrics and viewed them through a theological lens. The result is the new "The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen," the latest addition to a crowded genre that mines the spiritual in pop culture.

A Harvard Divinity School graduate, Symynkywicz stresses that he's not out to peddle the First Church of Bruce. His admiration for Springsteen is rooted more in the inspirational and empathetic than the theological.

"What's inspiring about him is that he has so much to say about different life stages that we all go through," Symynkywicz said from his church in suburban Stoughton, Mass. "The thing I really like about his music as I've gotten older is that he gets older too. His music deepens and matures and he sings like a grown-up."

It's been a frenzied, often frightening time -- one Springsteen has faced unflinchingly -- and he's brought the rest of us along for the ride.

"When we discern that Springsteen is `there' for us -- when we feel as though he is addressing us directly and personally in his songs," Symynkywicz writes, "his work seems to put down strong roots in our own experience. His music helps us to make sense of the sometimes tangled, often disparate threads of our lives."

http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/the_gospel_according_to_the_boss/

[TBC: Bruce Springsteen is just one more false addition to the many books promoting "the Gospel according to" whoever. This has included entries such as The Gospel According to the Beatles. In every case the message of these performers has been anything but the needed biblical gospel.]