One of the free downloads offered today in the iTunes music store is an interview with Jack and Meg White of the White Stripes. They were guests of Terry Gross on Fresh Air on June 9, 2005 and spoke about their new album, Get Behind Me Satan.

Here’s an exchange between Jack and Terry on religion:

TG: …Were you brought up with religion?

JW: Oh yes, heavy duty. But not to the point of speaking in tongues or anything, but it was in the air, for sure. I appreciate it as well, you know. I like looking at life through that at times. I wouldn’t consider myself soft of [trails off…]. I just like being in touch with God. I think that’s sort of important. I think when you’re a creative person in any kind of art form once you finally admit to yourself that you can’t create like God creates, it humbles you and then you can be free to explore the beauty of that creativity. I think when you look at it with God in the picture as well it sort of frees you up, I think.

TG: Do you see your musical abilities as some kind of gift that you are given?

JW: I suppose it’s more of an opportunity to me that a lot of my friends have at being musicians, you know you all have that opportunity and I suppose what you do with it is to me seems to be always out of respect for the people who came before me and of course God who came before everybody. And it’s just the idea that when you look at the creation of the world or the universe or anything like that I mean anything a human being can create seems to just pale parison. It feels like you know out of respect you have to be humble about it.

TG: So what church was it that you grew up in?

JW: The Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church.

“Fresh Air with Terry Gross, is produced in Philadelphia by WHYY”

In an interview earlier this year, Jack White admitted that his plans to e a priest got sidetracked. “I’d got accepted to the seminary in Wisconsin, and I was gonna e a priest, but the last second I thought, ‘I’ll just go to public school’,” says White.

The reason he didn’t go: “I had just gotten a new amplifier in my bedroom, and I didn’t think I was allowed to take it with me,” he says.