More popular than Jesus he was "very big on Christ. I've always fancied him. He was right." In 1978, he thanked Jesus for an end to the Beatles' touring, saying "if I hadn't said [that] and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus." In 1993, Michael Medved wrote in "The Sunday Times" that "today, comments like Lennon's could never cause controversy; a contemptuous attitude to religion is all but expected from all mainstream pop performers." In 1997, Noel Gallagher claimed that his band Oasis
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