“Plastic Jesus” is a satirical folk song written in the late 1950s by Ed Rush and George Cromarty, then teenagers in Fresno, California. It plays off an older religious refrain — “I don’t care if it rains or freezes” — and was inspired by radio advertisements selling cheap plastic religious statues for car dashboards.
The song’s gentle mockery is aimed not at faith itself but at the cheapening of religious feeling into kitsch and trinkets. Rush and Cromarty recorded it in 1962 as the Goldcoast Singers, and it gained lasting fame when a fragment of it was sung by Paul Newman’s character in the 1967 film “Cool Hand Luke.”
The song has been recorded by many folk and country artists drawn to its wry humor.
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