Nightwish vocalist Floor Jansen has shared her thoughts on organized religion, sharing in the process that she finds a bit of the backstory on Christianity “disgusting.”
The topic came up as part of a larger discussion with Brocade (seen below) on having higher sensitivity that there might be a power overseeing our lives that we don’t fully understand.
What Issue Does Floor Jansen Have With Christianity?
While she does not call out Christianity by name, the points she calls out lean to the fundamentals of the religion.
She explains that religion has been something that has permeated her life throughout, but it’s also something that she’s found “much contradiction” in.
“On one hand, they say that God is about love and you come into church and the first thing you see is a dead man nailed to a cross that has suffered tremendously,” she explains. “And if that is not horrible enough, it’s done because of your sins. So you’re even supposed to feel guilty for it. I’m sorry — where is this love? Then I need to eat his body, drink his blood. I think it’s fucking disgusting — pardon my French.”
Jansen says there is also issue that comes from interpretations. She shares, “I think I took the whole thing way too literal because the whole story behind it was so far away from the image that that man and the sins and the horror of hell and the threat, the constant threat that you have to believe. The more I learned about religion, the more I came to feel, like, okay, so we’re basing certain wisdom on a book written by someone thousands of years ago, [with] interpretation after interpretation, for some people taking completely literal, leading to all kinds of trouble.”
She adds, “Not to mention organized religion, which is just causing the worst genocides and most horrible situations in the history of mankind.”
READ MORE: The 25 Best Metal Songs of the Last 25 Years
“There is no love. And if that is the higher power, then I think it’s maybe a manmade desire to control,” Floor added. “And it has nothing to do with the previous conversation where there might be a power that we do not really understand yet. But I do think in general, whether you’re highly sensitive or not, whether you live now or throughout all history, we have the tendency to want to believe there’s something more than we are. And where that comes from, I haven’t really gotten an answer to that, but I do believe there is something out there that we just haven’t understood yet.”
“The organized religious interpretations has thus far only scared the hell out of me.”
What Other Issues Does Floor Jansen Find With Organized Religion?
The Nightwish singer goes on to share that she views religion as a vessel for “social control.”
She adds, “It’s wonderful if you feel like you’re connected to something. I think we desperately need that as a species. But that doesn’t mean you need to be dominated by it. So thinking for yourself, why should that be, God forbid, something that you shouldn’t do?”
Jansen continues, “And [there’s] the fact that women have always had a lower position in many of these organized religions since they’re manmade, I kind of have a hard time with that, too. But in that sense it has nothing to do with love. It has nothing to do with a higher being that is there for everybody on Earth, except for when you’re a woman of course.”
Nightwish’s Floor Jansen Shares Her Thoughts on Religion With Brocade
The Best Album by 11 Symphonic Metal Bands
Here are the best albums by 11 symphonic metal bands!
Gallery Credit: Jillian Drachman
