A Christian rock band, Haste the Day, has kicked out one of its guitarists, Jason Barnes.
Why?
Jason now says he’s an atheist.
In a statement, the band writes:
Hey Everyone,
This is going to come as a shock to many of you. After much prayer and thought given to the matter, we asked Jason Barnes to step down from his involvement with Haste the Day. For a while Jason has been searching and searching for real meaning in his existence. After several months of reading literature and talking with friends, Jason had determined that he felt there was no God and certainly no Jesus. We as a band do not have problem with those that do not believe in Jesus, nor do we cast judgement on those that do not believe in Jesus. We just want to love on people like Jesus would and hopefully share a little bit about what he’s done and doing in our lives. We would call ourselves a Christian band and for that reason, we felt we couldn’t have someone in the band who didn’t agree with the band’s foundational drive.. Jason’s new found disbelief in what the rest of us have committed our lives to began to cause disunity within the band and as a result, we prayed and talked about it and felt like God was saying it wasn’t time for Haste the Day to come to an end. Thusly, We asked Jason to leave.
We love Jason and it pains us all to not be on the road with one of our closest friends. It has also been a miserable experience for Jason to not be a part of something that he has been a part of for so long. We are all working on mending the tear in our relationship with Jason and are hoping to be able to continue to call him friend. We will not be replacing Jason with a new guitar player. Our friend, Dave Krysl, will be our full time touring guitar player. The 4 of us (Stephen, Devin, Brennan, Michael) all wrote our new album which will be called “Dreamer.”
We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers you can send toward us and Jason. Thanks for listening and as always, we will see you on the road!
We don’t get to hear Jason’s point of view so I don’t know what he thought about being asked to step down.
Though a Christian band with an atheist member presumably won’t sell as many albums so I’m not sure I’d place a lot of blame on the band for doing what they felt they had to do.
The question I have is what prompted Jason’s abandoning of the faith. The band says he read some books and talked to friends… I’m really curious which books they were! And what made him want to read those in the first place?
Jason, come visit us and answer those questions!
We’ll take you in and make you feel welcome!
Plus, this website could use an in-house guitarist.
(via The Gauntlet)