The Restless hearts of Mumford and Sons

“Serve God, love me and mend,” sang Marcus Mumford as the first words of Mumford and Sons’ first major record, Sigh no more (Dublin, 2009). Most fans probably know that Mumford, primary songwriter and lead singer of the band, is the son of the longtime national director of the Vineyard church in the UK. Mumford was born, raised and formed within this Christian church. This formation has been evident throughout his music and career, even when the emphasis has been on doubt and struggle more than on faith. Stylistically, Sigh no more had an immense musical influence on the early 2010s – for a few years, it seemed everyone loved the banjo and heavy, foot-stomping kick drum, as well as a 1930s farmhand aesthetic. That album is also full of direct Christian imagery and faith. “Awake my soul,” “Roll away your stone,” and “Sigh no more” are all examples of mainstream popular songs with a strong Christian foundation.

In later records and interviews, Mumford distanced himself publicly from association with Christianity, while also maintaining, “I really love Jesus. I always have and I always will.” It appears that his personal reckoning with faith and organized religion has been sincere and ongoing. Subsequent albums Babel, Wilder mind and Delta did not entirely leave questions of faith behind, but doubt and ambiguity took a stronger space in Mumford’s songs than the faith that filled Sigh no more.

Enter Rushmere, Mumford and Sons’ latest release. The album marks a return to a musical and public wrestling with Christianity, faith and a personal relationship with Christ.

The title track touches on two major themes that return again and again throughout the record. The first is truth and honesty versus secrets and lies. In the first verse of “Rushmere,” Mumford sings about “A truth no one can tell / And I was still a secret to myself,” and, later in the song, “There’s beauty in the pain / Don’t lie to yourself.” The truth that Mumford sings about throughout the album is rooted in an honesty with and about the self. It is fitting that the song references St Augustine’s most famous line from Confessions in a lyric about “restless hearts,” as Mumford, like Augustine, probes his past, actions and motives with a ruthless honesty. In fact, all of Rushmere feels like a Confessions of sorts, a probing of mind and memory, truth and surrender. In the song “Anchor,” Mumford echoes Augustine again: “But now I’ve got to know myself / Know I’m the one that needed help.”

This theme of honesty comes most strongly to the foreground in the song “Truth.” In a cleverly ambiguous play on words and phrasing, Mumford delivers the line “I was born to believe, the truth is all there is.” Are these two separate statements? Is he saying he was born to believe that the truth is all there is, or that he was born to believe – the implication being, born to believe in God – and then stating separately that the truth is all there is? In either case, truth is held up as of central importance and, given the statements of faith elsewhere, I think it is safe to identify this “truth” as the Truth.

The other theme introduced in Rushmere is that of reconversion and returning home. If Augustine comes to mind when the band plumbs memory and honesty, this theme of turning back home calls to mind the story of the prodigal son. This is hinted at in “Rushmere”: “Take me back to empty lawns / And nowhere else to go.” The tie to the parable here is not explicit, but it is a desire for homecoming and a return to a place where we are welcomed and belong. The album’s link to the prodigal son is more direct in the song “Anchor,” in which Mumford sings, “I can’t say I’m sorry if I’m always on the run / From the anchor.” The song seems to reference Hebrews 6:10-15, in which the author calls our hope in God an anchor for the soul, and recalls both the restless heart of Augustine and the prodigal’s running and need for return.

The song “Surrender,” too, is reminiscent of the prodigal son, a reflection on how far the narrator has strayed and the need for surrender and return:

When I came back round, I was soaked to the bone
Don’t need to say it out loud cause you already know
I’m in over my head, and the night’s getting old
Each word is a wound and excuses are cold

Defeat and surrender always feel the same to me
But what does it matter? They both bring me to my knees

Oh, break me down and put me back together
I surrender, I surrender now
And hold me in the promise of forever
I surrender, I surrender now

Later in the song, Mumford sings, “Now I’m ready to pay the debt that I owe / And it’s violent work, there’s some death on the vine / I know that I’m walking a treacherous line.” I thought of this line as I read the Guardian’s brief review of Rushmere. The kind of demanding self-reflection, confession and faith that Mumford sings so publicly is indeed a “treacherous line” to walk for such a well-known musician. The Guardian’s reviewer takes shallow hits at Mumford and Sons (“insipid,” “grating,” “self-pitying,” “miserable,” “drearily unappealing”) while offering very little in the way of substantial commentary. The reviewer seems more interested in Winston Marshall’s exit from the band to become a conservative commentator and the rest of the members hosting Jordan Peterson at their studio several years ago than in the music or lyrics themselves. (As a side note, the song “Where it belongs” does seem to be written about Marshall’s departure.) In the face of such a media, there really is a debt that Mumford and Sons are being made to pay, a certain death that comes from a public statement of faith in Christ. It is little wonder Mumford has spent so much time deflecting questions about his faith.

Still, in “Surrender” and throughout Rushmere, Mumford sings with an open sincerity and faith. The strongest statement of this faith comes on the album’s opening track, “Malibu”:

In all my doubt
In all my weakness
Can you lead?
I fall behind
But like you promise
You wait for me

And I feel a spirit move in me again
I know it’s the same spirit that still moves in you
I don’t know how it took so long to shed this skin
Live under the shadow of your wings

You are all I want
You’re all I need
I’ll find peace beneath the shadow of your wings

In this song, we see tied together the themes and movements of Rushmere: entrance into memory, into self-reflection and confession, the turn toward Christ, the surrender to God and, finally, peace. Peace found – quoting Psalm 17 – beneath the shadow of his wings.

In spite of all this, one question remains unresolved at the end of the album: Is religion necessary for faith in Christ? Is it not enough to turn to Christ on our own, with no church, in our own way of approaching him? Through all the statements of confession and faith, Mumford does not explicitly connect himself to an organized religion or church. On one hand, I would not expect him to; songwriting is personal and self-reflective and does not lend itself to singing about organized religion. On the other hand, the place where we do hear specifically “church” language comes in the last song, “Carry on” – not in a positive way.

Mumford sings, “If this is what it’s like to be unholy, man / If this is what it’s like to be lost / I will take this heresy over your hypocrisy.” The language of “heresy” only makes sense in the context of a church, an organized set of teachings and beliefs and practice; in this line, Mumford seems to align himself against some teaching, or possibly against church teachings more generally. In this final song, there seems to be a pride that is at odds with the humility of the rest of the album. After singing through defeat, surrender and faith, signs of honesty and humility, Mumford takes a stance of pride in this final verse. Rather than surrender to the church that Jesus established – and thus fully surrender to Jesus himself – Mumford seemingly surrenders to a version of Jesus that he has established for himself. The exact intention of the song remains ambiguous, and perhaps I’m taking a step too far in my interpretation. I hope I am; yet taken at its word and in the context of Mumford’s previous public statements, I cannot see this as a complete surrender to Jesus who established Christian religion.

Mumford’s willingness to be a witness of faith in a mainstream music culture that often hates him for it is impressive and inspiring, and I hope we see more artists who are able to bring such wrestling to major media. I also pray that Mumford does truly find peace beneath the shadow of God’s wings, in the fullness of truth that the Lord has revealed.