Haste The Day fire guitarist & embrace Jesus

21 July 2008 | 5:48 pm | Staff Writer
Originally Appeared In

"We love Jason and it pains us all to not be on the road with one of our closest..."

Haste The Day guitarist Jason Barnes has been kicked out off the band

due to his religious disbeliefs. The band posted the following

statment...



"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.



"We love Jason and it pains us all to not be on the

road with one of our closest friends. It has also been a miserable

experience for Jason to not be a part of something that he has been a

part of for so long. We are all working on mending the tear in our

relationship with Jason and are hoping to be able to continue to call

him friend. We will not be replacing Jason with a new guitar player.

Our friend, Dave Krysl, will be our full time touring guitar player.

The four of us (Stephen, Devin, Brennan, Michael) all wrote our new

album which will be called "Dreamer."



"We appreciate all the

thoughts and prayers you can send toward us and Jason. Thanks for

listening and as always, we will see you on the road!"