More popular than Jesus Cleave's article mentioned that Lennon was "reading extensively about religion", and quoted a comment he made: Cleave's interview with Lennon was published in the "Evening Standard" in March 1966 and provoked no public reaction in the UK. Church attendance there was in decline and the Christian churches were making no secret of the need to transform their image into something more relevant to modern times. Music historian Jonathan Gould wrote, "The satire comedians had had a field day with the increasingly desperate attempts of the Church to make itself seem more relevant ('Don't call me vicar, call me "Dick" ...')."
Jesus in Islam the Quranic palm tree. Ali ibn al-Athir (d. 1233), an Arab or Kurdish historian and biographer, reported in "The Perfection of History (al-Kamil)", a work which became a standard for later Muslims, that Joseph the carpenter had a more prominent role, but is not mentioned as a relative or husband of Mary. Al-Athir writes about how Jesus as a young boy helped to detect a thief and bringing a boy back to life which Jesus was accused of having killed. That work mentions a version of the birth narrative having taken place in Egypt without mention of a manger under