May 17, 2009
Church of England's self loathing hits new high
Anxious to curry favor with atheists, celebrities and the terminally snarky (but then I repeat myself), the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool played John Lennon's Imagine on its bells.
According to the Daily Mail (U.K.):
It's the last place you’d expect to hear John Lennon’s anti-religion anthem Imagine, but the tune rang out yesterday from the bells of an Anglican cathedral.
Churchmen in Liverpool say they carefully considered ‘sensitivities’ surrounding the lyrical content of the former Beatle’s 1971 hit – which begins ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven’ – before allowing the performance at the city’s cathedral, which boasts the highest and heaviest ringing peal bells in the world.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the cathedral to hear the tune, which Lennon, who was murdered in New York in 1980, described as ‘anti-religious, anti-conventional and anti-capitalistic’.
A cathedral spokesman said: ‘We feel this performance has inspired many people to think about their relationship with God in their lives. From what we have heard, it’s been received really well. It sounded absolutely fantastic.’
The idea to ring out Imagine on church bells came from artist Cleo Evans, who was commissioned by arts and music festival Futuresonic to develop a ‘concept’ with the cathedral in the city where Lennon was born.
Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, said on her Facebook page that the idea was ‘so beautiful, it made me choke up’.
Well, it may have made Ono choke up, but it made me gag. Let's take a look at the lyrics, shall we?
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for todayImagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peaceYou may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as oneImagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the worldYou may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Lennon's song is a monumentally idiotic piece of drivel, whose lyrics describe an awful world, a drab, transnational monocultural workers' paradise, where everyone is equal -- equally miserable, I should say. No religion, no heaven or hell, with people living an explicitly hedonistic existence, "Living for today," a recipe for civilizational disaster.
That a Christian cathedral would allow a paean to atheism and Marxism -- one that unambiguously denigrates religion's role in the world -- to peal from its bells is stupidity on steroids. It's also a graphic demonstration of what ails the Anglican church and other weak-kneed Western denominations, afraid to defend their beliefs against the sneers of the too-hip unbelievers and multiculti relativists.
Pathetic.
Posted by Mike Lief at May 17, 2009 01:56 PM
| TrackBack