Elvis and religion
- Viva Lord Vegas
By Christopher Reed
(Bulletin, August, 2001, Vol. 119 No. 35)
As devotees commemorate the 24th anniversary of Elvis's death, Christopher Reed reports that the cult that surrounds the King may be developing into a bona fide religion.
The faithful make their annual pilgrimage this week to the shrine of Graceland, Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, with the customary rituals and rites marking the 24th anniversary of the death of their "King", and his undying message of love. Elvis Lives! Words usually associated with religious observance are not out of place here, because we are witnessing the emergence of a new, worldwide religion. Call it Elvism, the Presleyterian church, Presleyanity, or a term yet to be coined, but it bears unmistakable signs of a cult changing into a recognisable faith. It has already passed one major hurdle, acceptance by a new generation: large numbers of the 30,000 worshippers at the aptly named Graceland are young, many born after Presley's death.
Yet the Elvis church phenomenon has gone largely unremarked by mainstream media, with only two books, one by a British author in 1992, the other by an American in 1995, and both modest sellers. One reason is we are so accustomed to a small number of "official" theistic churches, a few curious upstarts like Mormonism, and the occasional intrusion of weird authoritarian "cults" like the Moonies, or Branch Davidians, that we fail to notice how a spontaneous cult may mutate into a religion. Yet as theological scholars have noted, all religions start as cults and many have arrived and departed over the centuries. Like the eruption of a dormant volcano, we are perhaps lucky to witness in our time the origins of such a movement.
"There is no doubt this is an emerging religion," Dr Robert Price, author, biblical scholar and PhD in theology, told The Bulletin. "The parallels to early Christianity are astonishing. But Elvis worship is also peculiarly modern and American, in that it's also fun and entertaining. Its adherents accept wholeheartedly that their Christlike figure was an entertainer and a celebrity. After all, the cult of celebrity is also part of our times."
Elvis, or "E" as his "Memphis mafia" entourage (disciples?) called him, died aged 42 in 1977. He lives on as the supreme and revered figurehead for hundreds of thousands of devotees in the English-speaking world, Europe and, especially these days, Japan and South-East Asia. He is a godlike, divine being, now in heaven, who makes supernatural appearances dispensing charity and sometimes miraculous cures for his followers, who reject the word "fan". His pictures and possessions are icons and sacred relics and his Graceland tomb is the Mecca for the all-night candlelit procession marking his death on August 16, and birth on January 8, 1935, a night, his father Vernon recalled, when an eerie sky-blue light shone down on their shack in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Co-existing with the divine Elvis is the secular one, the youth who in the early 1950s borrowed - some say stole - from African-Americans a raw, throbbing music the world now knows as rock 'n' roll. After a decade in Hollywood making kitsch films, he became "fat Elvis", giving 1096 concerts in the 1970s attired in bejewelled white costumes and cloaks with high collars, remarkably similar to a priest's vestments in the Catholic mass.
He was always intensely religious, born into a Pentecostal sect that believed in expressing one's faith by uninhibited acts, such as clapping, shouting and singing. He loved and sang gospel music all his life; his three Grammy awards were for religious recordings. Above all, he believed he was sent by God on a special mission to Earth. "This is God's message and I am His channel," his spiritual adviser Larry Geller recalls him saying during the recording of How Great Thou Art in 1966. Many gospel singers, the late Mahalia Jackson for instance, believed they were delivering God's words, and Jackson even refused to sing secular music. Presley not only scandalised his elders with his youthful stage gyrations - "Elvis the Pelvis" - but was a lifelong libertine, a bloated glutton and, for years, a hopelessly addled drug addict with tacky taste, tending towards artificial zebra skin furnishings and pink monster Cadillacs. He died sitting on his lavatory reading a book about the Shroud of Turin.
Hardly the material for world religious leadership. Indeed, elite Americans despise Elvis and his fans as poor white, trailer-park trash. But as Karl Marx noted, religion is not just the opiate of the masses, but "the sigh of the oppressed". What distinguishes Presleyanity is how the King, without the structure of established churches, seems to support the dispossessed and comfort those who feel beaten by life's petty cruelties.
Devotees weep uncontrollably at the Presley tomb and their scrawled graffiti testimonials on a Graceland wall - constantly cleaned and just as quickly refilled - refer repeatedly to the solace he brings them. Two other books reporting his numerous after-death "appearances" (future Gospels?) disclose a clear theme: an apparitional Elvis dispensing acts of kindness and charity to the troubled. In real life, Presley was astonishingly generous, giving away new cars to strangers or paying off their mortgages.
This aspect allows Elvists to expunge the gross druggie and revere a gentle, munificent, loving god. With the mysticism in place, Presleyanity is acquiring churchlike trappings, as John Strausbaugh observed in his 1995 book, E: Reflections on the Birth of the Elvis Faith (Blast Books, NY). The thousands of Elvis impersonators across the world are clearly a putative priesthood, already equipped with rites and vestments based on Presley performances. The identically dressed women in each of hundreds of fan clubs resemble orders of nuns. Elvis's 700 songs, 33 films and four major concert videos provide a canon and liturgy. Thousands of Elvis shrines exist and they multiply with increasing reports of his miraculous healings (some of this week's Graceland pilgrims came in wheelchairs; the Elvis Lourdes or Fatima).
No cross or sign yet symbolises the Elvis faith. A possible image is Presley's self-made logo containing his favourite encouragement to his entourage, "Taking care of business - in a flash". The design, which he wore on his costumes, has the letters TCB arranged in an arch over a stylised bolt of lightning. Or perhaps just "E" will suffice. What does the E religion now need to become established? A theological teacher figure like St Paul? A Billy Graham? No candidate is in sight. Elvis may be all they need.
And he may even return this year. Mystic numerology adds together his death date: 16th day, eighth month, and year 1977. It equals 2001. His birth year, 1935, age at death, 42, plus eight and 16 also comes to 2001. The music that opened his concerts was the score from the film 2001. Few Elvists know it is actually Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, but ardent religionists never let such small facts bother them.
- Elvis Presley Mural Painted Over
(Excite news, August 1, 2001)
A mural intended to preserve an old band shell in a city park has been painted over because it depicted Elvis Presley surrounded by religious symbols. The artwork, which a Baptist youth group put up, appeared over the stage of the city amphitheater where Presley made his first concert appearance. It showed a likeness of Presley surrounded by a cross, a menorah and the Star of David. The religious symbols raised questions about whether the painting was appropriate on public property. Carey Hoffman, Memphis administrator of museums, said the city had not authorized a change in the Overton Park Shell's appearance. "It was decided to return it to its original form," Hoffman said. The amphitheater is maintained and informally overseen by a civic group called Save Our Shell. Group spokesman Scott Banbury said the mural was painted over Monday after city leaders complained about it. Banbury said a Baptist youth group got permission to paint the mural as a community project earlier this month. It was not clear in advance that the art would contain religious symbols, he said. Presley appeared at the shell in 1954 in a show that Slim Whitman headlined. His name was listed on the concert bill as "Ellis Presley."
- ELVIS: King of Rock, Man of God:
While white Pentecostalism shaped him, Presley absorbed the style of black Southern gospel music
By CECILE S. HOLMES
(Salt Lake Tribune, February 24, 2001)
The best of Elvis' gospel music will be released in March in Christian bookstores and retail shops through Provident Music Distribution and RCA in the USA. The CD set offers 56 recordings, many of them rare. While white Pentecostalism's rituals and behaviors shaped him, Presley crossed many traditional boundaries, also absorbing the style and ethos of Southern black gospel music. Presley's multifaceted image contributes to the adulation that has survived his death.
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