Christian Web News - On Sunday, May 17th, hundreds of people gathered outside the Anglican Cathedral in John Lennon’s hometown of Liverpool to hear the bells ring out his famous ant-religious anthem “Imagine.”
The former Beatle who was murdered in New York in 1980 described the song, which begins saying “Imagine there's no heaven,” as "anti-religious, anti-conventional and anti-capitalistic".
Twenty-three year old Sam Austin, a student at Manchester's Royal Northern College of Music and Cathedral ringer, led the performance.
A team of six ringers used 11 bells for three performances, which were staged at 12pm, 12.30pm and 1pm.
They rehearsed by playing the melody on hand-bells before moving on to the Cathedral's legendary bells, which are the highest and heaviest ringing peal bells in the world.
A spokesman for the Anglican Cathedral said: "The Cathedral feels this performance has inspired many to think about their relationship with God."
Truly, this is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. I don’t have anything against the Beatles or John Lennon, so all you fans out there can stop foaming at the mouth. John Lennon’s song doesn’t irk me as much as a church promoting John Lennon’s song in order to “evangelize.” Promoting something that is ant-God to try to get people to turn to God is insanity.
Notice that that the spokesman said they wanted to inspire people to think about their relationship with God. The church’s mission is not to inspire people and simply thinking about having a relationship with God isn’t good enough. The church’s mission is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, moving people from death to life so that they may forever be in heaven with Jesus. And somehow asking people to imaging there’s no heaven is supposed to accomplish this?
I think the problem here is that the church has become a little too focused on relating to popular culture. Should the church try to relate to popular culture? Yes, but not so much that the Message gets lost in the shuffle. The thing is, the Bible is still relevant today. Jesus is still relevant today. We don’t have so hard to relate to the world, because the world needs what WE have. Not the other way around.
Christian Web News - Jesus has a way of getting right to the point, doesn't He? There was certainly no mincing of words, He came right out and said, "why are you fearful?" and then went on to say, "O you of little faith." You don't have to read between the lines to see what He was saying, they had little faith.
Christian Web News - Galatians 3:13-14. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree''), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Christian Web News - On Sunday, May 17th, hundreds of people gathered outside the Anglican Cathedral in John Lennon’s hometown of Liverpool to hear the bells ring out his famous ant-religious anthem “Imagine.”
