Idioma 47 years ago today, a U.S. teen magazine

called Datebook, reprinted a quote out of context from John Lennon and used it as part of a front page covery story.

On March 4, 1966, this quote of John's was printed in an interview by reporter (and friend of John's) Maureen Cleave in the London Evening Standard:

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with 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 was, as she reported, reading extensively about religion at the time. It was a small part of the article. No one took notice of it in Britain.

But in America, radio stations in the south banned Beatles music. There were rallies of boys and girls stomping on their records and bonfires of Beatles material. John recieved death threats, and the KKK protestsed a Beatle concert in Alabama (because, apparently, it seemed like the Christian thing to do).

This statement, hardly noticed in the UK, was completely taken out of context and the bible belt of the hypocritical southern states was used to beat Lennon and The Beatles in a very unfair and very non-Christian way. John was not comparing the Beatles to Christ or god or religion. The quote as it appears here, IN CONTEXT, is just John being John and using things he knew about in a way he naturally spoke to a friend/reporter. The Jesus lovers, acting in their best Christ-like behaviour, threatened to kill John.

Is Jesuschrist2 greater than the beatles?

Hambition you.