Bruce Springsteen was facing an identity crisis in the early 80s, writes Eboo Patel, and the rocker turned away from stardom, focusing on authenticity. Above, Springsteen performs with the E Street Band in Berlin earlier this year. AP

What is your work at this moment? That is the central question posed by the new Bruce Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere.

The movie begins as Springsteen is coming off his sold-out tour for The River album. He’s facing an identity crisis, desperately trying to figure out what kind of artist he is — and what kind of man. The record company executives’ position is clear: Springsteen is a star, and they want a new album that will appeal to the masses, make him a megastar, and make them extremely rich.

The most startling reveal in the film is that Springsteen has actually written that megastar material — half the songs for what would become 1984’s blockbuster Born in the U.S.A. album, including the title track and other surefire hits such as “Glory Days.”

But in 1981, facing his particular identity crisis, singing rock anthems about beer and romance wasn’t the work Springsteen wanted to perform. His spirit was in a different place.

Unbeknownst to virtually everyone in his circle, Springsteen had been recording a coterie of haunting acoustic songs that explored the underbelly of America — bad cops, mass murderers, laid off factory workers who lost their minds — on personal equipment in his spare bedroom. In a move that left the record company executives speechless, Springsteen decided to shelve the rocket ship to superstardom that was Born in the U.S.A. and release the darker material.

The very title of the album — Nebraska — screamed “I am not a rock star!” Springsteen refused any additional studio production on the album, insisting the songs sound just like he had recorded them at home. Also, he would do no promotion, no press interviews, and no tour.

That was the work Springsteen did to chart his way out of his personal crisis.

Lessons in Facing Crisis

There are, of course, a million differences between the crisis our nation is facing and the identity crisis Springsteen went through in 1981. But there are also powerful commonalities. Every crisis requires a reckoning, and forces action.

The national crisis is like a volcano erupting and destroying everything in its path: important fields of work laid to waste; major institutions destroyed; countless lives ruined. Not far from my Chicago home, federal agents recently detained the father of a 16-year-old girl who has stage-four cancer. The cruelty is unbearable.

What is your work in this crisis?

Perhaps it’s dampening the eruptions by filing lawsuits or raising awareness and building solidarity by organizing protests. It might be trying to protect targeted populations by teaching “Know Your Rights” workshops and coordinating grocery deliveries to people too scared to leave their homes. I’m watching this happen in inspiring ways in Chicago

Others may want to continue their work of bringing people from diverse backgrounds together to cooperate across differences and lift each other up. And still others may decide to focus on the future and start planning for the next generation of civic institutions.

Fertile Ground

Back in the mid-1990s, I visited the site of Mount St. Helens and discovered something interesting about erupting volcanoes: They destroy everything in their path, but when the lava cools, they create remarkably fertile ground. I was amazed by what I saw growing there. I pray that the same might happen in our civic life.

None of us can do it all. Like Springsteen, you might need to shelve one set of songs to play another. Whatever route you decide to take, I think there are three other things to learn from Springsteen.

Number one: authenticity is key. People ask a simple gut-level question of both artists and civic leaders: “Do I believe you?” Springsteen knew that he would not be authentic singing “Glory Days” in his emotional state at the time. And so he didn’t try.

In this homogenizing age of TikTok trends and AI insights, nothing matters more for artists and leaders than being real and establishing a human connection.

Number two: Do your best to develop a sympathetic understanding of as wide a variety of people as possible, including those you disagree with profoundly. I was talking to a campus leader recently who told me, “I know we need to get better at engaging with conservative students, but I just find it so hard to work with people who have hateful views.”

Is it any wonder that conservative students don’t go anywhere near those campus programs, and may well develop an aggressively oppositional attitude toward them?

I’ve had Springsteen’s Nebraska album on repeat since seeing the film. I find myself constantly marveling at how he seeks to emotionally understand every one of his characters: the cop who lets his criminal brother go free; the child who visits his abusive father; the couple who goes on a murder spree across the plains. “Mister,” he sings, “there’s just a meanness in this world.”

Today’s opponent might be tomorrow’s ally. Doing your best to understand them is key to building a new order once this era of cruelty passes.

Finally, as Springsteen sings in the last song on Nebraska, try to give people a “Reason to Believe” — at least to the extent that it’s authentic for you. Telling people racist America is just being racist America provides little inspiration to work for better days.

At a recent stop in Manchester, England, Springsteen gave a specific account of the cruelties of this era: the abandonment of the world’s poorest children, the rolling back of civil rights legislation, the persecution of dissidents, the defunding of universities. But he also called America a beacon of liberty for 250 years and expressed confidence that the nation’s better angels would band together and return the nation to our highest ideals. Then he sang “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

That’s the work Springsteen is called to do now. Each of us needs to consider the work we are called to do at a moment when so much is needed.