Greg Graffin: Oh man, you gotta remember, we were just a bunch of rebellious fifteen-year-old punks. We wanted to stir up some trouble and get under the skin of parents, teachers, and anyone in authority. Anything that would make them squirm was fair game for us. And hey, we also wanted a cool name that would look awesome on stickers and T-shirts. We came up with a bunch of names, some of them pretty gross like Smegma, Vaginal Discharge, and Head Cheese. They would’ve made killer logos, but they didn’t really represent our music. We also played around with names that had “bad” in them, like Bad Family Planning and Bad Politics. But when we landed on Bad Religion, it just felt perfect. It was 1980, and televangelists like Jimmy Swaggert and Pat Robertson were becoming big deals. Jerry Falwell had started the Moral Majority, which was making waves in the presidential election. Religion was a hot topic, and those TV preachers seemed like the perfect target for us. We didn’t think they’d last long, but we knew their followers would be super offended by our name – and that was a major plus for us! And then Brett came up with a logo that perfectly represented our beliefs. We felt like we had it all figured out.
Greg: You know, even small interest groups can be like bad religions in a way. They have their own ways of thinking and can be pretty dogmatic. I mean, I’m a member of Greenpeace, but I still think of it as a bad religion sometimes.
References:
^ Anarchy Evolution (2010)
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