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
More popular than Jesus voted to cancel it rather than have "municipal facilities be used as a forum to ridicule anyone's religion", and also saying, "the Beatles are not welcome in Memphis". The Ku Klux Klan nailed a Beatles album to a wooden cross, vowing "vengeance", with conservative groups staging further public burnings of Beatles records. The Reverend Jimmy Stroad stated that a Christian rally in Memphis "would give the youth of the mid-South an opportunity to show Jesus Christ is more popular than the Beatles". The Memphis shows did take place, on 19 August; the afternoon show went as planned, but there was