BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - LAND OF HOPE AND DREAMS
24/05/2025
About 20 years ago I did a Masters in Theology on Music And Social Transformation so I love music when it speaks to power on issues of justice, inequality and war.
In the 80’s Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn and U2 taught me politics in 4 minute songs.
People tell me that music hasn’t the power to change things. All I can say is that Live Aid took me back to Scriptures and was a main influence in my understanding of the Kingdom of God and ministries I am involved in across the world and around the corner as a result. I know at least one politician who does what she does as a result of the music of U2.
In that Masters dissertation I looked back to the theological work of James Cone who saw the importance of spirituals and the blues in the civil rights movement.
This weekend Bruce Springsteen has entered the protest arena again. His words at his recent Manchester concert about his country’s President and government has been the talking point for some days.
So, Springsteen has released an EP with his two song introductions included. It is a potent little release.
The songs are potent little protests, hopes and prayers. Land Of Hope and Dreams is maybe my very favourite Springsteen song because of its sense of hope, heaven and shalom, a younger brother of Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready. It's like a hymn.
Long Walk Home is the song of the four that I know least. It was written as a critique of the George W Bush administration.
City Of Ruins is introduced by Bruce’s saying like the best priest or vicar “Let Us Pray”. He has been using it as a prayer since way back to 9/11.
Chimes of Freedom is that Bob Dylan cover that Bruce used way back on the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Tour of 1988.
They are all perfect messages into Springsteen’s nation’s current political zeitgeist. But the introductions add loads. He says:
In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.
Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us. Raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.
It’s like an MLK call to stand up. Before the My City In Ruins he goes again -
In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.
In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.
He concludes -
They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America that I've sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people.
So we'll survive this moment.
Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, in this world, there isn't as much humanity as one would like. But there's enough.
Let's pray.
As it finishes, I feel fuelled. To stand. To hope. To pray. The power of music. The companion that music can be as we take the long walk to that land of hope and dreams.