Beatles and Jesus

It is Palm Sunday, and on Palm Sunday Jesus was a huge hit with the crowds.

Jesus as a populist or popular person somehow does not seem to be what the gospel is all about. A generation ago, John Lennon of the Beatles thought Jesus was a popular fellow. Then in 1966, he infamously proclaimed that he and his Beatle mates were even “more popular than Jesus.” I was only 14 at the time. I would not be unique in my generation to say that they were my favorite band. I was attending a church in Austin, MN at the time. His statement made some uncomfortable times for me. It gave ammunition to adults who did not like the music or appearance of the Beatles. I am not sure if I just overlooked it or forgave John for it, but they remained my favorite band. They are still a favorite, although I liked much of their work after the band broke up. I had the privilege of being present when Paul McCartney was in Indianapolis, a gift from my two sons. After the Beatles, he led a band called Wings. I recall someone of the generation of Wings saying that he really liked Wings, but who are these “Beatles”? Fame is a fleeting thing.

In any case, I recall that the claim set off a storm of protest in a then more conservative post-war United States. Problem was that whether you were looking at things from Lennon’s perspective or from that of, say, the average churchgoer, there really was not a way to check the facts of the claim. Lennon was looking at packs of screaming fans every day, while hordes of teens did not overrun churches rabidly wanting to be close to Jesus.

Lennon’s comment, taken in context, was really more directed as a slap at Christianity than at Jesus himself (“Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”), but in the midst of all the hubbub nobody seemed to want to verify empirically if what he said was actually true or not.

These days, no rocker could pop off with such a statement without Gallup and a host of bloggers and pundits running the actual numbers. In fact, Internet search-engine giant Google offers a quick way for anyone to compare the relative popularity (or at least the number of Internet searches and news stories) between two celebrities or entities, called Google Trends. Type in “Jesus” and the “Beatles” in the Trends search engine and out comes a graph that compares the Google search history of both in the form of a graph. While we do not know what the graph might have looked like in pre-Internet 1966, as of 2012, in article by Nathan Smith in the Houston Press, Jesus has four times the number of web page hits as do the Beatles, who have a little over 200 million. Just speculating here, but it could be the result of the fact that the Beatles have not cut an album in decades and half its members have passed on, while Jesus is still the main subject of the world’s number one best-selling book and, according to Christians, is still alive and at work.

In the midst of his comments to The London Evening Standard on March 4, 1966, Lennon also said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right … I don’t know which will go first — rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.” Well, according to Google Trends, Christianity and rock ’n’ roll are both still around and, interestingly, running about dead even in search popularity.

If you type in “Jesus vs. the Beatles”, you can find out much more. While I find it amazing that the popularity of the Beatles remains as strong as it has been, I find it more amazing that the carpenter and rabbi from Galilee, after all these centuries, remains so high in web pages and web searches. Popularity is not everything. Most people probably have less problem with Jesus than they do with Christianity or church. In one way of looking at this, that is all right with me. I would much rather have people reflecting upon how God works in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. You see, that is the focus of the church as well. As important as the church may be to me and to many others, it exists to point people to Jesus.

Here is a five minute video, a short life of Jesus. It is worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5-x-FWarNY