Evyatar Marienberg, a historian of religion at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, has written a book about Sting’s Catholic imagination and how it fueled his creativity.
Sting was confirmed at 14 and married his first wife in the Catholic Church at age 25.
Though Sting no longer identifies as a Catholic, much of his solo singer/songwriter career is steeped in Catholic imagery, symbols, stories and hymns that he absorbed growing up in his working-class Catholic parish.
Marienberg’s book, “Sting and Religion: The Catholic-Shaped Imagination of a Rock Icon,” takes a close look at the performer’s religious journey and its themes of loneliness, love and distance from God.
Along the way, Marienberg explains how Catholicism changed in the 1950s and 1960s, during the years Sting was growing up.
While he was a teen, the Second Vatican Council opened the door of the church to the wider world and instituted a raft of reforms.
The church also saw a sharp decline in its attendance.
Although Sting considers himself an agnostic, he still believes in some ultimate reality beyond the physical world. And he’s a fan of Pope Francis.
“I’ve chosen to live my life without the ‘certainties’ of faith, but I do maintain a great reverence for the mystery and wonder of our existence, and my agnosticism is a tolerant cousin to my curiosity,” Sting wrote in 1983.
Join Sting and his Catholic imagination, Live in Berlin – Tracks and timing
0:40 A Thousand Years
6:02 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
10:35 Englishman In New York
15:28 Roxanne
19:35 When We Dance
27:04 Russians
33:20 I Hung My Head
40:52 Why Should I Cry For You
47:04 Whenever I Say Your Name
54:22 This Cowboy Song
1:02:12 Tomorrow We’ll See
1:07:24 Moon Over Bourbon Street
1:13:51 The End Of The Game
1:20:27 You Will Be My Ain True Love
1:24:06 All Would Envy
1:30:09 Mad About You
1:34:23 King Of Pain
1:40:01 Every Breath You Take
1:45:55 Desert Rose
1:51:13 She’s Too Good For Me
1:54:51 Fragile
2:00:14 I Was Brought To My Senses
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