Interview: Manson on Religion

Aug. 17 -- Marilyn Manson recently discussed his religious beliefs with Beliefnet.com, a Web site the focuses on religion and spirituality. Here is an excerpt of the interview. You can access the entire interview by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.

What was your religious upbringing?My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism.

At the same time I was going to a nondenominational Christian school, where I was taught a very underhanded form of Christianity. For example, my Bible teacher would ask the class, "Is there anyone in the room that's Catholic?? or "Is there anyone that's Jewish?" If there was no response, she would talk about how wrong those other religions interpreted the Bible. So at an early age, Christians already started to appear to me as people who believed that their interpretation of God was the only one that was right.

Then I started to learn about Revelations, and they pumped a lot of fear about the end of the world into us. I used to have nightmares about the Antichrist — what would happen, where it would come from, and who it would be. The Christians also created this myth about the rapture, which if you look through the Bible, doesn't exist. There is a verse in the Bible that mentions that when Christ returns, he'll come like a thief in the night. So there was a movie they would play for us about the rapture called Thief in the Night. It was about everyone who fell prey to the lure of the Antichrist and got the mark of the beast would be left behind during the rapture. Cars would be abandoned, and people would be starving and killing each other. Everyone else would float up into heaven.

When I turned about 14, I developed a friendship with this guy whose mom was the secretary to Ernest Angley, the faith healer, who's very popular in the Midwest. He had a television show, and he was sort of like Liberace mixed with Jerry Falwell — very glitzy, very high-tech. He had a gold cathedral, one of the most decadent places I'd seen, until recently when I went to the Vatican — that outdid it! But whenever I spent the weekend with my friend, I would have to go to these Friday night services that began at midnight.