Don’t Believe in God, Get the Boot.
That’s what happened to guitarist Jason Barnes of the Christian rock band Haste The Day. He lost his faith along the way, and got fired for it as a result.
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Here is a statement from the band on what they decided to do: 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.
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Well it sounds very much like they are casting judgment, for firing someone who technically did nothing wrong is pretty harsh if they aren’t. And that “discord” they were talking about didn’t seem to be coming from Jason. It all seemed to be coming from their own personal bigotry against atheists. It would have been far more honest if they’d just left out the nonsense about discord and said they only wanted believers in the band. Considering it’s a Christian band I suppose that would even be legal since you can get away with hiring and firing people for any reason so long as you can chalk it up to your “deeply held religious beliefs”.
