Google Trends proves that Jesus, year in and year out, is more popular of a search term than "Beatles" -- about 2 1/2 times more popular, in fact. However, during the remastered albums release in September 2009, the Beatles did spike in search popularity, becoming more popular than Jesus for about a week.
For one thing, 72 percent of Americans and 76 percent of Britons self-identify as Christians, the same number would probably claim to be Beatle fans. 600 million Beatles albums have been sold worldwide, but the number of Bibles sold, while impossible to know exactly, is probably above that.
Even in the time and place John was speaking from -- mid-60s Britain -- Jesus probably had a higher approval rating. Assuming of course, you included adults, most of whom still loathed all forms of rock, in that figure.
However, John's comment about Christianity being on the wane appears to have been correct: in both the UK and the US, numbers of Christians have been on a steady decline since the 1950s.
