What Happened
The Datebook cover on which John Lennon's quote was republished. (Quote in purple box)
It started on the morning of March 4,1966. Maureen Cleave of the London Evening Standard was doing a four-part interview on the lives of the Beatles. When john Lennon's turn approached, he made an offhanded remark about religion:
Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him: not that his mind is closed, but it's closed round whatever he believes at the time. "Christianity will go," he said. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first-rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." He is reading extensively about religion.
The article was published and no one thought anything of the quote. That is, until an American magazine, Datebook, picked up the quote and published it.
Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him: not that his mind is closed, but it's closed round whatever he believes at the time. "Christianity will go," he said. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first-rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." He is reading extensively about religion.
The article was published and no one thought anything of the quote. That is, until an American magazine, Datebook, picked up the quote and published it.
