On July 29, 1966 the American DATEbook magazine published an excerpt of an interview John Lennon had given to Maureen Cleave in the London Evening Standard some months earlier. In the interview Lennon stated the following;
"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
This led to anti -Beatle campaigns in the USA.