There will be singing in the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 15:3-5). There may even be guitars—thousands of them (Rev 14:2).
I don’t know if Bruce Springsteen has read the Book of Revelation, but his Spring-Summer 2025 “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour suggests he might have some understanding of what Christians call the Kingdom of God.
In the age of Trump, Bruce Springsteen may be the most influential political theologian at work today.
Music critics, scholars, and biographers have long noted the spiritual depth of the Boss’s lyrics. In an oft-cited 1988 essay in the Catholic journal America, Andrew Greeley, a priest and sociologist, said Springsteen spoke to “the meaning of life out of the (perhaps) unselfconscious images” of his “Catholic heritage.” More recently, in a 2020 documentary, Springsteen said, “We all have our own ways of praying. I restricted my prayers to three minutes and a 45-rpm record….”
And now, in the age of Trump, Bruce Springsteen may be the most influential political theologian at work today. In their work Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, David Gushee and Glenn Stassen write, “Telling the truth is a human obligation under God’s sovereignty emerging in our various covenantal relations with others, sharpened considerably for those committed to participation in the dawning reign of God.” Springsteen is a truth-teller. He is doing Kingdom work.
The Boss’s house of guitars is a metaphor for resistance.
Springsteen has spent half a century preaching ideas at the intersection of the American founding and the Kingdom of God. On May 14, 2025, he opened the Land of Hope and Dreams tour in Manchester, England with these words: “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,” he continued, “we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”
Springsteen repeated these words at every stop on the short tour, from Manchester to Milan.
One of the songs Springsteen featured—he played it every night of the Land of Hope and Dreams tour—is “House of a Thousand Guitars.” The Boss worked on this song for over a decade before the track appeared on his 2020 album Letter to You. Before this tour, he had only performed it four times. But anyone who listens to the first few lines will understand why he has added it to his set list:
The criminal clown has stolen the throne
He steals what he can never own
May the truth ring out from every small-town bar
We’ll light up the house of a thousand guitars
In his Manchester introduction to “House of a Thousand Guitars,” Springsteen told the crowd: “The last check…on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me. It’s in the union of people around a common set of values—now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other.”
Elsewhere, Springsteen described the song similarly: “We have been given the tools and the property of the soul to be attended to and accountable for, and that takes work—work that we might build on the principles of love, liberty, fraternity. Ancient ideas that still form the basis of a good life and a humane society. What happens in this house matters.”
The Boss’s house of guitars is a metaphor for resistance.
Springsteen may have had Chilean folk singer Victor Jara in mind as he wrote “House of a Thousand Guitars.” Jara was a poet, songwriter, former Catholic seminarian, and political activist. He and other musicians wrote and sang songs embedded with political themes celebrating Chilean farmers and workers. Their witness spread through Latin America as part of the Chilean New Song movement.
Jara performed his songs in support of Chile’s democratic socialist president, Salvador Allende, and in opposition to Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military overthrow of socialist Allende’s administration. (The United States supported Pinochet.)
Pinochet’s troops captured the 40-year-old artist, imprisoned him in Chile Stadium, tortured him, and shot him to death. The Netflix documentary Massacre at the Stadium tells Jara’s story.
Today, Chileans celebrate the folk singer’s life with an annual festival in Santiago called “Mil Guiltarras para Victor Jara” (“A Thousand Guitars for Victor Jara”).
In a 2013 concert in Santiago, the fortieth anniversary of Jara’s death and the first “Mil Guiltarras para Victor Jara” festival, Springsteen paid tribute to Jara and his activism with a performance of “Manifesto,” the last song he wrote before his murder:
Yes, my guitar is a worker
shining and smelling of spring
my guitar is not for killers
greedy for money and power
but for the people who labour
so that the future may flower.
For a song takes on a meaning
when its own heart beat is strong
sung by a man who will die singing
truthfully singing his song.
In his review of Letter to You, Rolling Stone writer Brian Hiatt describes Springsteen’s “House of a Thousand Guitars” as a song that paints “a beguiling picture of a rock & roll heaven on Earth, a place ‘where the music never ends’ and fellowship reigns, a destination not far from [Springsteen’s] ‘Land of Hope and Dreams.’”
Springsteen told Hiatt that “House of a Thousand Guitars” is “about this entire spiritual world that I wanted to build for myself…and give to my audience and experience with my band. It’s like that gospel song ‘I’m Working on a Building.’”
I’m a working on building
I’m a working on building
I’m a working on building
For my lord for my lord
It’s a holy ghost building
It’s a holy ghost building
“House of a Thousand Guitars” preaches a politics of hope. Springsteen’s building is the home of a community that speaks power to the “criminal clown” who has “stolen the throne.” It houses a prophetic brotherhood and sisterhood defined by friendship, fellowship, beauty, art, and the things that bind us. The Boss urges us to announce this fellowship of hope from the “stadiums and the small-town bars,” or wherever we have a platform or a voice.
Christians wait for a time when the music will never end. But until that day comes, we testify, we prophesy, we form communities that call the powers of this world to account.
The Jersey Shore poet calls us to solidarity around time-honored virtues—Christian ideals—such as truth, mercy, and justice. There is a “now” but “not yet” quality to the song, not unlike the way Christians understand the Kingdom of God. (Springsteen ends his 2016 memoir, Born to Run, with the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”)
Christians wait for a time when the music will never end. But until that day comes, we testify, we prophesy, we form communities that call the powers of this world to account, and we use our gifts and talents to remind our modern-day Pontius Pilates (John 18:36) that the Kingdom has arrived.
Soon, “all souls from near and far” will “meet at the house of a thousand guitars.”
