{"id":34672,"date":"2023-07-28T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=34672"},"modified":"2023-07-30T23:43:18","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T23:43:18","slug":"sinead-oconnor-was-once-seen-as-a-sacrilegious-rebel-but-her-music-and-life-were-deeply-infused-with-spiritual-seeking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/sinead-oconnor-was-once-seen-as-a-sacrilegious-rebel-but-her-music-and-life-were-deeply-infused-with-spiritual-seeking\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinead O’Connor was once seen as a sacrilegious rebel, but her music and life were deeply infused with spiritual\u00a0seeking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Brenna Moore<\/a>, Fordham University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When news broke July 26, 2023, that the gifted Irish singer Sinead O\u2019Connor had died<\/a>, stories of her most famous performance circulated amid the grief and shock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty-one years ago, after a haunting rendition of Bob Marley\u2019s song \u201cWar,\u201d O\u2019Connor ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live television. \u201cFight the real enemy,\u201d she said \u2013 a reference to clerical sex abuse<\/a>. For months afterward, she was banned, booed and mocked<\/a>, dismissed as a crazy rebel beyond the pale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commemorations following her death, however, cast the protest in a very different light. Her \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d performance is now seen as \u201cinvigorating,\u201d the New York Times\u2019 pop critic wrote<\/a>, and \u201ca call to arms for the dispossessed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attitudes toward Catholicism, sex and power are far different today than in 1992, whether in New York or O\u2019Connor\u2019s native Dublin. In many people\u2019s eyes, the moral credibility of the Catholic Church around the world has crumbled<\/a>, and trust in faith institutions of any sort is at an all-time low<\/a>. Sexual abuse, once discussed only in whispers, is now beginning to be talked about openly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I join the chorus of voices today who say O\u2019Connor was decades ahead of her time. But leaving it just at that, we miss something profound about the complexity and depth of her religious imagination. Sinead O\u2019Connor was arguably one of the most spiritually sensitive artists of our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am a scholar of Catholicism in the modern era<\/a> and have long been interested in those figures \u2013 the poets, artists, seekers \u2013 who wander the margins of their religious tradition<\/a>. These men and women are dissatisfied with the mainstream centers of religious power but nonetheless compelled by something indelibly religious that feeds the wellsprings of their artistic imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout her life, O\u2019Connor defied religious labels, exploring multiple faiths. The exquisite freedom in her music cannot be disentangled from that something transcendent<\/a> that she was always after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Rescuing God from religion\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Religion is often thought about as discreet traditions: institutions that someone is either inside or outside. But on the ground, it is rarely that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Catholic Church had a strong hold on Irish society as O\u2019Connor was growing up \u2013 a \u201ctheocracy,\u201d she called it in interviews<\/a> and her memoir, \u201cRememberings<\/a>\u201d \u2013 and for many years she called for more accountability<\/a> for the clerical abuse crisis. But she was also open in her love of other aspects of the faith, albeit often in unorthodox ways. She had a tattoo of Jesus on her chest and continued to critique the church while appearing on television with a priest\u2019s collar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Sinead O’Connor, with her tattoo of Jesus, embraces singer Deborah Harry at the 2011 amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles. Jeff Vespa\/Getty Images for amfAR<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ten years after her SNL performance, O’Connor took courses at a seminary in Dublin with a Catholic Dominican priest, Rev. Wilfred Harrington. Together, they read the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the Psalms: sacred scriptures in which God\u2019s voice comes through in darker, moodier, more human forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by her teacher, she made the gorgeous album \u201cTheology<\/a>,\u201d dedicated to him. The album is a mix of some of her own songs inspired by the Hebrew Bible \u2013 like \u201cIf You Had a Vineyard<\/a>,\u201d inspired by the Book of Isaiah; and \u201cWatcher of Men<\/a>,\u201d which draws from the biblical story of Job \u2013 and other tracks that essentially are sung versions of her favorite Psalms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2007 interview<\/a> with Fordham University\u2019s WFUV radio station, O’Connor said that she was hoping the album could show God to people when religion itself had blocked their access to God. It was a kind of \u201crescuing God from religion,\u201d to \u201clift God out of religion.\u201d Rather than preaching or writing, \u201cmusic is the little way that I do that,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cI say that as someone who has a lot of love for religion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading the prophets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In doing so, she stood in the long line of the prophetic tradition itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The great Jewish thinker Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel\u2019s<\/a> book \u201cThe Prophets<\/a>\u201d begins with this sentence: \u201cThis book is about some of the most disturbing people who have ever lived.\u201d Over and over, the Bible shows the prophets \u2013 the prophets who inspired \u201cTheology\u201d \u2013 mounting bracing assaults on hypocrisies and insincerities in their own religious communities, and not politely or calmly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
A photo of Sinead O’Connor ripping the photograph of Pope John Paul II stands in front of a protest in Krakow, Poland, in 2023, accusing church hierarchy of covering up sexual abuse. Beata Zawrzel\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To many horrified Catholics, O\u2019Connor\u2019s SNL appearance and her many other criticisms of the church were blasphemous \u2013 or, at best, just throwing stones from outside the church for attention. Other fans, however, saw it as prophetic condemnation. It was not just a critique of child abuse but of church officials\u2019 professed compassion for children \u2013 sanctimonious pieties as they covered up the abuse<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In calling this out and so much more, O\u2019Connor was often seen as disturbing: not just the photo-of-the-pope incident, but her androgyny, her shaved head, her openness around her own struggles with mental illness. But for many admirers, as the documentary \u201cNothing Compares<\/a>\u201d makes clear, all this showed that she was free, and like the prophets of old, unashamed and unafraid to provoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rasta to Islam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, O\u2019Connor\u2019s religious imagination was so much more than a complex relationship with Catholicism. Religion around O\u2019Connor was eclectic and intense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was deeply influenced by Rastafarian traditions<\/a> of Jamaica, which she described<\/a> as \u201can anti-religious but massively pro-God spiritual movement.\u201d She considered Sam Cooke\u2019s early album with the Soul Stirrers the best gospel album ever made. She counted among her spiritual heroes Muhammad Ali \u2013 and converted to Islam in 2018<\/a>, changing her name to Shuhada\u2019 Sadaqat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
O’Connor performs during a concert at the Admiralspalast in Berlin in December 2019, after her conversion to Islam. Frank Hoensch\/Redferns via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yet O\u2019Connor\u2019s vision was not fragmented, as if she were constantly chasing after bits and pieces. The miracle of Sinead O\u2019Connor is that it all coheres, somehow, in the words of an artist who refuses to lie, to hide or not say what she thinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked about spirituality, O\u2019Connor once said that she preferred to sing about it, not talk about it \u2013 as she does in so many songs, from her luminous singing of the antiphon<\/a>, a Marian hymn sung at Easter services, to her Rasta-inspired album, \u201cThrow Down Your Arms<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cSomething Beautiful<\/a>,\u201d a track from the \u201cTheology\u201d album, O\u2019Connor speaks both to God and the listener: \u201cI wanna make\/ Something beautiful\/ For you and from you\/ To show you\/ I adore you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed she did. To be moved by her art is to sense a transcendence, a peek into radiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brenna Moore<\/a>, Professor of Theology, Fordham University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brenna Moore, Fordham University When news broke July 26, 2023, that the gifted Irish singer Sinead O\u2019Connor had died, stories of her most famous performance circulated amid the grief and shock. Thirty-one years ago, after a haunting rendition of Bob Marley\u2019s song \u201cWar,\u201d O\u2019Connor ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":34673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[10691,10622,14444,625,1828,53,5975,2754,10380,6610,14445,2875,10623],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34689,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34672\/revisions\/34689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}