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Partridge is lead singer of XTC.
The song ["Dear God"] fulfilled a dream of [Andy] Partridge's, that of a pop song with an innocent air but biting lyrics, polemical and strong; it fulfilled the dream well, even if its impossible-to-please author thought that "it failed in part, because it wasn't as caustic as I would've liked it to be. It should've been a nail in throat of the public, but instead some took it as a declaration of faith when I wanted to make it clear that I don't believe in God - and that even if there is a He or a She they have nothing to do with organized religion." -- from the essay "The Ballad of the Pumpkinheads: A Stratosphearic History of the Dukes of Swindon", by Riccardo Bertoncelli
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From an interview with Partridge in the The Limelight Annual, 1987 [1]...
LL: Do you reckon that "Dear God" will get any feed back?
Andy: I hope so. I'm sure people will write and say of course there's a God, how can you think there's not one? We get a lot of letters like that in any case. We seem to attract irate Christians. And I'm sure we'll get a few saying, "How good, 'cos I've always thought that as well."
Basically I don't believe in God. I don't think there's a stately British actor in a white sheet looking down on us all and deciding that you're going to get run over, and you're going to win the pool...
LL: But this verse (from "Season Cycle"), "I really get confused on who would make all this/is there a God in Heaven?/Everybody says join our religion get to Heaven/I say no thanks why bless my soul/I'm already there!" - could God not be something that is already there?
Andy: Heaven is your state of mind, so is Hell. Any why people took things so literally... it's obviously metaphorical for a state of mind.
I don't believe the Bible. I believe most of the Bible is not lies, but fantasy based on a tiny thread of something maybe not so fantastic after all.
You gotta be a good person and that's all. If you can create Heaven for yourself without creating Hell for somebody else, fine. That's a good enough code. Try and create Heaven for somebody else as well, but don't create Hell for anyone 'cos that's less than animal.
The thing about religions is that they are killers. And they are there for power. The Catholic Church, for example, could end poverty overnight just with some of the ludicrous gold artefacts that they have amassed and the wealth they have in banks and land. They could use the power of that money to end world poverty. You could get more use out of one corner of one room in the Vatican than the whole of Band Aid put together. And then they come on and get all sanctimonious about people striking.
Most religions have phenomenal power and it's what they exist for. It's why churches were built so big and glorious. The rest of us lived in mud huts and what a swell fellow God was 'cos he had such a nice house.