It's taken 40 years, but Jesus is finally having the last laugh. John Lennon's 1966 assertion that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" angered many American Christians, who responded by burning the band's records. Now, the headteacher of a school in Exeter may have delivered the unkindest cut. Pupils at St Leonard's C of E Primary have been banned from singing Lennon's Imagine on the grounds that it's "anti-religious".
The offending lines are, "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try/ No hell below us, above us only sky...Nothing to kill or die for/ And no religion too" - the unequivocal tone makes it difficult to argue with headteacher Geoff Williams's decision to drop it from St Leonard's end-of-term show. It may seem petty and an over-reaction to a song that's so tediously familiar it's part of the furniture, but a C of E head shouldn't be expected to countenance a song whose message is so antithetical to the school's own.
The kids, who had "practised it four times", were disappointed, but apparently that had less to do with Williams's views than with their wasted effort. But if their teacher had wanted them to understand his point of view, he should have sat them down and discussed the song's lyric. Not the "no religion" bit, but the closing lines, where Lennon proposes his alternative to religion: "No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man / Imagine all the people sharing all the world / You 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."
Tell a kid that concepts like heaven and hell should be replaced by a blobby, amorphous "oneness", and he/she will wonder what you're on about. Say that somethingness (which heaven and hell certainly are) has been cancelled out by nothingness (in the shape of a vague "brotherhood of man") and he or she will, with unerring kid logic, think it's ridiculous. Maybe, sensible kids, they'd have refused to sing it of their own accord. If any junior Vultures happen to be reading this, perhaps they can post their own views.
