More popular than Jesus don't believe in Jesus", but also sang that he did not believe in the Bible, Buddha, the "Gita", and the Beatles. Critics of Lennon's lyrics have also focused on the line "Imagine there's no heaven" from his 1971 song "Imagine". Lennon was murdered on 8 December 1980 by Mark David Chapman, who had become a born-again Christian in 1970 and was incensed by Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark, calling it blasphemy. He later stated that he was further enraged by the songs "God" and "Imagine", even singing the latter with the altered lyric: "Imagine John Lennon dead". Notes Citations
Religious views of the Beatles the "Evening Standard" that the Beatles had become "more popular than Jesus". The comment went unnoticed until in August the same year, the American magazine "Datebook" published it, inciting protests against the Beatles. The band were threatened, their records were publicly burned, and radio stations refused to play their songs. After the Beatles' 1966 US tour, Harrison broadened his interest of Indian culture to Hinduism. He and his wife Pattie Boyd went on a pilgrimage to Mumbai to meet gurus. In 1968, all four Beatles went to Rishikesh in northern India to study meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Although