More popular than Jesus Doug Layton, and was immediately incensed, saying, "That does it for me. I am not going to play the Beatles any more". Charles and Layton asked for listeners' views on Lennon's comment and the response was overwhelmingly negative. Charles later stated, "We just felt it was so absurd and sacrilegious that something ought to be done to show them that they can't get away with this sort of thing". Al Benn, who was the bureau manager for United Press International News, heard the WAQY show and immediately filed a news report in New York City, culminating in a major news
More popular than Jesus In 1963, the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, John A.T. Robinson, published a controversial but popular book, "Honest to God", urging the nation to reject traditional church teachings on morality and the concept of God as an "old man in the sky", and instead embrace a universal ethic of love. Bryan R. Wilson's 1966 text "Religion in Secular Society" explained that increasing secularisation led to British churches being abandoned. However, in the US, churches remained popular. Both McCartney and Harrison had been baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, but neither of them followed Christianity. At the start of Beatlemania, the group