Two songs stand out to mark English punk’s assault on religion, released almost simultaneously in 1978–79. The first, by Public Image Ltd (PiL), was written by John Lydon whilst still using his Johnny Rotten moniker in the Sex Pistols. According to Lydon, he prepared the lyric during the band’s ill-fated American tour of January 1978, with a brief run-through taking place at a soundcheck in Dallas.²Barry Cain, ‘Images of Public Image’, Record Mirror, 4 November 1978, pp. 20–22; John Lydon ‘Sleevenotes’, to PiL, Plastic Box (Virgin, 1999); Lee Wood, Sex Pistols: Day By Day (London: Omnibus Press, 1988). The song was provisionally called ‘Sod in Heaven’ at this point. As is well-known, the Sex Pistols effectively split up four days later on stage in San Francisco, leaving ‘Religion’ to appear subsequently on PiL’s debut album – Public Image: First Issue – in December 1978.

The second ‘song’, ‘Asylum’ by Crass, eventually came out in mid-1979 having also been due to appear in late 1978 on the band’s debut EP The Feeding of the Five Thousand. As it was, the pressing plant scheduled to make the record refused to do so until the track was removed, delaying its release into 1979. Two minutes of silence, ‘The Sound of Free Speech’, opened the EP in its stead, leaving the more frantic ‘So What’ to introduce the band’s anti-religious protest to those keen later to kindle a recognisably anarcho-punk culture. A stand-alone single, ‘Reality Asylum’, was produced on Crass’ own record label in the summer of 1979. ‘Asylum’, as originally recorded, eventually came out in 1980 on a repressed ‘second sitting’ of The Feeding of the 5000 [sic].

Of course, these were not the first English songs to protest the dynamics of religion or the oppressive/exploitative power structures of religious institutions. Arguably, however, their tone and focus appear harsher and harder when placed within the broader context of English protest song history.

The earliest protest songs relating to religion tended to be aimed at atheism or antinomianism. Singing any kind of secular song was deemed potentially ungodly in the seventeenth century, especially once puritanism began to take hold. For many radical puritans and Presbyterians, even harmonic church music was thought to be inherently ‘papist’, intended to lure Protestants into the clutches of the ‘antichrist’ (i.e. the Pope).⁶‘Alas Said the Papist’ (1640). The ‘punks’ of the mid-seventeenth century were the antinomians, who declared that anything that felt good was godly, and that god dwelt in every ‘creature’ on earth. It was said they sang shocking songs encouraging all kinds of wicked excess and a few were printed in pamphlets written by people claiming to have heard them.⁷'The Ranters Ranting' (1650). As a result, fear of God’s retribution prompted songs that not only protested against the behaviour of such sects but also demanded action from government.⁸‘The Downfall of Women Preachers’ (1650). This, in turn, helped convince the republican parliament to pass the first Act against Blasphemy in 1650.

Fast forward to the nineteenth century, and the rise of Chartism and socialism in England tended to align protest with – rather than against – religious faith.¹¹Malcolm Chase, Chartism: A New History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); Jacqui Turner, The Labour Church: Religion and Politics in Britain, 1880–1914 (London: IB Tauris, 2018). And although secular societies emerged through the 1800s, their ‘hymns’ were overwhelmingly positive in tone and sentiment, revolving around questions of fellowship and self-help. Only occasionally might a semi-veiled critique of organised religion find lyrical outlet, recommending ‘faith not pent up in a book, or buried in a creed’.¹²Hymn no. 16 in the Leicester Secular Society, Hymns of Modern Thought (1882). Dig deeper and a comic lampoon of religious dogma might surface, such as the 1837 ballad ‘St Peter’s Holiday’ that sought instead a virtuous, ecumenical piety. But these were rare indeed.

In between the English Civil War and the onset of secularisation, sectarian songs – anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish – recurred over the 1700s, surfacing again through the mid-eighteenth century. Pro-Jacobin songs from the 1790s, too, might take a sideswipe at the priestcraft, though such concerns were never the principal point or purpose.¹⁴See, for example, Robert Thompson, A Tribute to Liberty (1793). For songs relating to the Catholic Emancipation controversy in the mid-nineteenth century, see the ballads collected online at the Bodleian Library. Religion per se, let alone the notion of God or the figure of Christ, remained beyond the realm of dissent.

Anti-clericalism was another matter, with a roll-call of songs taking aim at disreputable clergy dating back through the early modern and medieval periods. ‘The Vicar of Bray’ (circa 1714) may prove the archetypal example, depicting a sycophant to power willing to change his allegiance to retain wealth and status. In the medieval period, the most likely religious figures to be attacked in ballads were monks and nuns, their sexual indiscretions providing a source for disdain and, in another context, bawdy humour.

Things changed amidst the pre-civil war furore of the late 1630s–40s, when hundreds of people marched in London demanding that bishops be removed from the church. Such protests could be devastating, railing against ‘fat belli'd priests’ and ‘base bishops’, as in the fiercely abusive 'VOX POPVLI. IN PLAINE ENGLISH' (1642). Again, however, neither religion nor God provided the focus of lyrical ire.

Punk, of course, must be set in the context of rock ‘n’ roll and post-war popular music. In so doing, we begin to find modern precursors to the blasphemous assaults of PiL and Crass. Most obviously, perhaps, rueful reflections on religion repeat through the work of The Beatles and John Lennon in particular.¹⁸Think ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or, for Lennon, ‘God’ and even ‘Imagine’. (Indeed, Lennon’s ‘bigger than Jesus’ quote from 1966 came with a prediction of Christianity’s demise, though it caused little controversy in the UK at the time (unlike in the US.))¹⁹Evening Standard, 4 March 1966. By the 1970s, the likes of Jethro Tull, Ten Years After and The Animals’ Eric Burden had fired broadsides at religious beliefs and institutions.²⁰‘Religion’ by Ten Years After (1970); ‘My God’ by Jethro Tull (1971); ‘Sky Pilot’ by Eric Burden and The Animals. See also ‘God’ by Ian Hunter (1976).

Even the embrace of satanic imagery by the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath and others might be seen as an oblique protest against the strictures of Christian morality. Certainly, left-leaning folk artists, be it Leon Rosselson standing up for Judas or Roy Harper dismissing God as ‘nothing’, rued in song the false consciousness of religion. More generally, the countercultural quest for new spiritualities brought with it implicit and explicit critiques of established religions and those who claimed to represent them.

As for punk itself, early English punk songs typically concentrated on more material concerns, be they teenage frustrations or disaffection at the state of things. Nevertheless, the Sex Pistols’ first recorded work – ‘Anarchy in the UK’ (1976) – introduced the band with Rotten as an ‘antichrist’, a portent of chaos and destruction. To reinforce the point, upturned crucifixes decorated the ‘Destroy’ muslins designed by Malcolm McLaren and modelled by Rotten in 1977 to be sold to punk’s legions from Seditionaries on the King’s Road, Chelsea. Religion, set beside swastikas and a decapitated Queen, signified one of the oppressive pillars of morality and power that punk turned its hate against. Earlier, in September 1976, Siouxsie and the Banshees debuted at the 100 Club performing a desecration of the Lord’s Prayer, puncturing its verses with excerpts from ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ and various iconic rock standards. Comb though the multitude of punk-infused songs written in 1976–77 and religious critiques can be found in humorous (Arthur Comix’s ‘Isgodaman’), oblique (The Adverts’ ‘New Church’) and shrewd (Penetration’s ‘Vision’) form.

‘Religion’ and ‘[Reality] Asylum’ pushed further though. They both spoke directly to the Church; their blasphemy came soaked in bile. Interestingly, they both broke from any preconceived template to offer spoken-word dissections of religious pretensions over experimental scores that bore no regard for either pop music or punk’s short-sharp-rock. Both pieces come as a pair: an unaccompanied version (‘Religion I’, ‘Asylum’) and a musical adaptation (‘Religion II’, ‘Reality Asylum’).

Both songs are relatively long. ‘Religion’ lasts almost seven-and-a-half minutes, its second part a relentless pounding dirge. Though ‘Asylum’ was scheduled for just two minutes, ‘Reality Asylum’ comprises a six minute soundscape of found-sounds and foreboding textures. Both drew comment, not just in reviews of their respective records but in interviews and, as the delayed Crass EP demonstrates, from those who heard it beyond the expected punk milieu. The two ‘songs’ were integral to the artistic and philosophical vision of their authors, albeit for different reasons and articulated in different ways. They were, perhaps, more of an attack than a protest: deliberately offensive, boldly transgressive, critically cutting in a way designed to settle scores rather than achieve any recognisable aim. More than punky provocations, ‘Religion’ and ‘Reality Asylum’ were heartfelt and brutal.

The lyric to ‘Religion’ is directed at the hypocrisy and wealth of the Catholic Church. Neither God nor Jesus Christ is denied, though the Bible is declared to be ‘full of libels’ and pronouncements from the altar are dismissed as lies. Instead, Lydon takes us into the church and surveys what’s before him: stained glass windows, statues, a congregation ‘blind’ to truth and praying not for ‘one world’ but for personal gain. Before them, a ‘fat pig priest’ with a ‘sanctimonious smile’ offers unfaltering sermons that home in on sin with the intention of accruing donations as a warped sense of penance. Abuses are implied, with hosts sucked and money taken from those who can least afford it. Empty promises of redemption are met by empty declarations of faith to a god so inverted as to become ‘a bitch spelled backward is dog’. In short, Catholicism is presented as a con and a scam. ‘He takes the money / you take the lies’. If this is religion, then there’s a ‘sod in heaven’ – a blasphemy designed to upset and expose those who perpetuate the fraud.

Lydon’s view of religion stemmed from his Anglo-Catholic childhood. Made to attend mass and Catholic schools where ‘vicious’ nuns and disciplinarian teachers beat and abused pupils, Lydon began to:

question everything, particularly in the religious classes … They weren’t teaching religion, they were indoctrinating and brainwashing us.²⁸John Lydon, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (London: Plexus, 1994), p. 21; John Lydon, Anger is an Energy (London: Simon & Schuster, 2014), p. 17.

As a result, he grew up without any ‘godlike epiphanies’, disbelieving that ‘God had anything to do with this dismal occurrence called life’.²⁹Lydon, Rotten, p. 19. ‘All religion to me is fundamentally wrong’, he insisted in his first autobiography, a breeding ground for ‘intolerance … and selfishness’.³⁰Lydon, Rotten, p. 314. And Catholicism, he later emphasised, was ‘the most serious demon of them all’.³¹Lydon, Anger is an Energy, p. 206.

As it was, ‘Religion’ provoked comment but no real controversy.³²E.g. ZigZag, December 1978; Melody Maker, 28 October 1978; In the City, 9 (1979). Lydon’s distinctive voice always imbued his words with invective. Syllables were spat out and phrases stretched into discordant wails that seared their subject. For ‘Religion’, he mimicked a sermon by lecturing the listener about the Church’s ills: ‘Isn’t that what they do to us? … Sometimes you just turn the gun around’.³³Lydon, Anger is an Energy, p. 205.

Even so, reviewers wondered aloud about so fierce an attack on such a ‘hollow target as religion’. ‘Only a lapsed Catholic’, Sounds’ Pete Silverton commented, would be moved to produce a lyric that he regarded as ‘immature … sixth-form poetry’.³⁴Sounds, December 1978. Compared to the 1976–77 scandal surrounding Gay News’ publishing a poem describing a centurion’s having sex with Jesus on the cross, PiL’s ‘Religion’ served as catharsis for Lydon but failed to provoke England’s moral censors into action.

‘Asylum’ had a greater impact, not just in terms of being briefly suppressed but because countless anarcho-punk bands and fanzines subsequently formulated similar critiques of religion into the 1980s.³⁸For example, Alternative’s ‘Anti-Christ’ or Subhumans’ ‘Religious Wars’ or Flux of Pink Indians’ ‘Is There Anybody There?’ Written initially as a prose piece by Penny Rimbaud (Jeremy Ratter) in 1977, the words to ‘Asylum’ first appeared in a home-printed booklet tilted Christ’s Reality Asylum and Les Pommes de Printemps.

According to Rimbaud, he sold a few copies via Poole’s bookshop in London and was warned by the publisher Marion Boyers that he might face prosecution.³⁹Penny Rimbaud, Shibboleth: My Revolting Life (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1998), pp. 87–93. Certainly, the profanities of ‘Asylum’ outstrip ‘Religion’, with Rimbaud channelling the grief felt through the loss of a close friend (Wally Hope) to forge a damning critique of Christianity. ‘Catharsis’, in fact, was also a term used by Rimbaud to describe the gestation and expression of the text.⁴⁰Quoted in Berger, The Story of Crass, p. 70.

Like PiL’s ‘Religion’, ‘Asylum’ builds from repetition and a series of statements that redefine and challenge the Christian church. Rimbaud’s words are more sophisticated than Lydon’s, however, imitating liturgical speech and transforming it by subverting the incantation until Christian paeans to peace and compassion become mechanisms for guilt, horror, war, repression and misogyny. The icon of Jesus, hanging ‘in glib delight upon his cross’, is raised to a symbol of power then soiled with vomit and shit. Christ’s death is dismissed as a ‘churlish suicide’; his presumptions of love and forgiveness rejected as ‘arrogance’. As a ‘flag-bearer’ for Christian nations, Jesus becomes a harbinger of war casting his shadow over the Holocaust and the Atomic bombing of Japan. It was Jesus who ‘scooped the pits of Auschwitz’, Rimbaud insisted, the ‘soil of Treblinka’ was ‘rich in your guilt’. The ‘little children’ who Jesus asked to ‘suffer … unto me’ are found among the scarred bodies of Hiroshima’s ‘incandescent flame’.

There was also a feminist critique bound to ‘Asylum’, augmented by Eve Libertine’s delivery of the text both on record and on stage for Crass. Therein, the cross becomes a phallic symbol of manhood, with Mary Magdalene’s washing of Jesus’ feet reimagined as a signal of female subservience. Logic then roams towards misogyny, male violence and repression, with Christianity serving as both a cloak for patriarchal domination and a conduit for restrictive constructs of femininity. Jesus is decried as a ‘rapist’ and a ‘life-fucker’, his Virgin mother evoked to signify the ‘body of womanhood that you defile’. From here stems the ‘ultimate pornography’ of ‘cock fear, cunt fear, woman fear, man fear’ and, in due course, ‘your fear, your fear, warfare, warfare’. ‘Jesus died for his own sins’, ‘Asylum’ concludes, ‘not mine’.

The ferocity of Crass’ religious critique became a topic of discussion in punk fanzines. In the City, for example, quizzed the band as to why Jesus – rather than ‘organised religious groups’ – was the focus of ‘Asylum’, to which Rimbaud replied:

If you remove the corner-stone, then the whole bloody building falls down, if you take the cross off the top of the steeple, then you’ve only taken the top off … the steeple.

The objective, he and others in the band clarified, was to make people question from the absolute root; to interrogate the mythology and recognise how Jesus’ existence was used to justify a whole host of church and state-driven atrocities.⁴⁴In the City, 10 (1979), pp. 23–4. See also the discussion in New Crimes, 3 (1980) and Toxic Graffiti, 3 (1979). Not dissimilarly, Aftermath felt both Crass and PiL missed ‘the point of religion’ by ‘attacking it unmercifully’ rather than targeting ‘corrupt church officials’ and ‘hypocrisy’.⁴⁵Aftermath, 5 (1981), p. 8. Even so, pick up one of the countless anarcho-fanzines produced in Crass’ wake and a critical treatise on religion will no doubt appear either in written or collaged form.⁴⁶There are too many to list, but for an example see Apathy, 3 (1980).

Both ‘Religion’ and ‘Asylum’ refrained from denying God. Neither are definitively atheist. Rather, they protest the ways in which Christianity has been used and abused to oppress and exploit. The songs rage against conditioning and dogmas applied to reinforce systems of repression – be they political, cultural, socio-economic or ideological. In many ways, they expose and critique how the strictures of Christianity remain despite the apparent insignificance of religion in late twentieth century England.

Either way, by the end of 1979, punk-related songs on religion were beginning to multiply. Bands such as The Pack testified against Jesus (‘King of Kings’) and religious references appeared in the music and imagery of Joy Division. A recognisably gothic sensibility began to emerge through the likes of Bauhaus and UK Decay, both of whom set sacrilegious themes to music. Adam Ant, meanwhile, stood aghast at the size of God’s penis (‘The Day I Met God’). By the 1980s, as noted above, anarcho-punk bands inspired by Crass tended to each have at least one anti-religious song in their arsenal, while those keen to push the boundaries of heavy metal would soon be sporting ‘Jesus is a Cunt’ T-shirts courtesy of Cradle of Filth.

Through rock ‘n’ roll (broadly defined), a protest against religion found an outlet. But this was generally marginal, increasingly overblown and, more often than not, about personal disaffection (or affectation) than deep-seated protest. In England at least, God was irrelevant rather than dead – but those scarred or bemused by religion’s influence at least found an outlet. To quote The Damned, whose ‘Anti-Pope’ broke their reputedly non-political stance in 1979:

I’ve got nothing against the church, or the people who go there and show their own ignorance.⁴⁸‘Anti-Pope’ is included on Machine Gun Etiquette (Chiswick, 1979).

But to the ‘pedlars of hope’, pontificating from the pulpit and casting the first stone, punk – as always – said ‘no’.