by By Peter Barry Chowka
I was surprised, if not shocked, when two A-list celebrities, country singers Garth Brooks and his wife Trisha Yearwood, took the microphones at the State Funeral for Jimmy Carter yesterday and began performing “Imagine,” written by former Beatle John Lennon in 1971. The song is widely described as an “atheistic anthem” and incredibly is said to be one of the late 39th president’s favorite songs.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us
Above us, only sky. . .
Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Ah
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
To me, it sounds like a globalist woke anthem, as well. As Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies at Pitzer College, wrote in 2021, the 50th anniversary of “Imagine:”
It is purposely and powerfully irreligious. From its opening lyric, ‘Imagine there’s no heaven,’ to the refrain, ‘And no religion too,’ Lennon sets out what is, to many, a clear atheistic message.
Not only atheistic. Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to the song, the biggest selling single record of Lennon’s post-Beatle solo career and one of the most widely-adopted and influential songs of all time. The footnotes in the excerpt below link to a credible primary source for Lennon’s quotes about the song which he co-wrote with his wife and muse Yoko Ono, John Blaney’s 2007 book Lennon & McCartney: Together Alone – A Critical Discography of the Solo Work:
Lennon stated: “‘Imagine’, which says: ‘Imagine that there was no more religion, no more country, no more politics,’ is virtually The Communist Manifesto, even though I’m not particularly a Communist and I do not belong to any movement.’ [10] He told NME: “There is no real Communist state in the world; you must realise that. The Socialism I speak about … [is] not the way some daft Russian might do it, or the Chinese might do it. That might suit them. Us, we should have a nice … British socialism.” [10]
It was bad enough again this year when I observed the song performed as the last one in the minutes before the iconic ball drop at Times Square in New York City heralding the start of the New Year. Since 2005, “Imagine” has been the song of choice at that widely broadcast event every December 31st at 11:57 PM EST. But now, it’s been included with prominence in the solemn traditional funeral service for a dead president at Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral with an audience that included all four living former presidents (including one about to be inaugurated for his second term in ten days) as well as the current occupant of the Oval Office.
The singing of “Imagine” at Jimmy Carter’s funeral was not a one-off, either. The Brooks-Yearwood duo performed the same song at Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in November 2023.
Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood perform “Imagine” at the State Funeral for Jimmy Carter, Washington, D.C. January 9, 2025 Screenshot from streaming broadcast
The employment of, in my opinion, this questionable song as the coda of the Carters’ careers is a fitting close of the circle to what I have known about Jimmy Carter since very early on. As I detailed in my blog published at American Thinker on December 30, 2024, the day after Jimmy Carter died, I covered Carter’s campaign for the White House in 1976 and his inauguration as the president of the United States in 1977. In those early years before the hagiography surrounding his presidency and his decades as an ex-president was firmly established, I saw and photographed Carter on many different occasions, public and private. More often than not, he came across as an angry, arrogant, and condescending man, contemptuous of his staff and reporters – not at all like the media’s portrayal of him as a “grinning Georgian” deeply imbued with Christian values.
Jimmy Carter arriving at a meeting with a union boss in Washington, D.C. May 1976 Photo © by Peter Barry Chowka
One would hope that a less biased and more fair and balanced history in the future will be able to more accurately evaluate the nation’s 39th president in light of the complete record.