Lennon's Brief Conversion

In a comment to my post on the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death, Bookworm said she'd heard that John Lennon became a Christian at the end of his life.

I hadn't heard anything about it, but it's apparently true.

Two Lennon biographers, Robert Rosen (Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon) and Geoffrey Giuliano (Lennon in America) both say that early during Lennon's reclusive years at the Dakota in New York, Lennon accepted Christ as his savior -- in a big way. Says Christianity Today:

"One day [Lennon] had an epiphany—he allowed himself to be touched by the love of Jesus Christ, and it drove him to tears of joy and ecstacy," writes Rosen, a New York journalist briefly employed by Ono. "He drew a picture of a crucifix; he was born again, and the experience was such a kick that he had to share it with Yoko."

Giuliano, who has written extensively about the Beatles, pinpoints the conversion to a Palm Sunday and says that Lennon was so moved by a series about Jesus broadcast on Robertson's CBN that he broke down in tears. In the following weeks, he attended church services and took his son, Sean, to a Christian theater performance. He even called The 700 Club help line to request prayer for his health and troubled marriage. "He prayed for forgiveness when he stepped on insects or snapped at the maid," Giuliano writes. "He became convinced that Jesus was personally protecting Sean."

This did not sit well with Ono, whose first husband converted to Christianity against her wishes, and who was deeply involved in spiritualism. Unfortunately, as was so often the case, her will overwhelmed his, and in the months before he was killed, he wrote, "Imagine there's no heaven / It's easy if you try." By then, according to his biographers, he was absorbed with astrologers, numerologists, clairvoyants, psychics, herbalists, and tarot-card readers.

But Lenon was complex, and Christ is powerful. The Christianity Today article concludes:

In his final interviews, carried out just weeks before his death in December 1980, Lennon said his beliefs could be described as "Zen Christian, Zen pagan, Zen Marxist" or nothing at all.

Speaking to Newsweek's Barbara Graustark, however, Lennon revealed that he still read the Bible. "Some of [Christ's parables] are only making sense to me now, after a whole life of sitting in church or school," he told her. "It was just moany, moany, moany for years, and then I hear it again and I think, God, that's what he means."

Finally, consider what many think was Lennon's final rough cut at a song. It's dated Nov. 14, 1980, just three weeks before his death. Never recorded, it was called You Saved My Soul:

When I was lonely and scared,
I nearly fell for a TV preacher
In a hotel room in Tokyo.
Oh, you truly saved me from that suicide
Because all the things, I die along with you.

Remember the time
When I went to jump out of that apartment window
On the west side of town of ol' New York.
Oh, you saved me from that suicide
Because of all my foolish pride.
Well, if I could thank you, thank you
For saving my soul with your true love.

Clearly, even in the end, John talked from his soul to his Savior.