May-June 1997
Up Close and Personal with Pat Boone
Journey of Faith
by Sheila Graham
We were escorted past a wall decorated with gold and platinum records to Pat Boone's office. It wasn't a large office, but the memories it held were many.
The family photos were there, of course. Boone with his wife, Shirley. Their four daughters as children, dressed alike in cowboy hats and fringed checkered shirts.
A Daniel Boone print (Daniel Boone is a distant relative) was prominent on one wall. On a bookcase on the opposite wall, among his golfing trophies, were a signed photo of the original astronauts and a collection of Will Rogers' newspaper articles.
Opposite his desk a wood sculpture of the Last Supper set on top a small console piano.
As he walked in, he looked much younger than 62 in his blue sweat pants and long-sleeved white knit shirt. Yes, he had on white shoes, but they were jogging shoes, not patent leather.
Boone is facing heat from the Christian community regarding his abandonment of patent leather for heavy metal. His weekly TBN show, Gospel America, was canceled in February because of disgruntled viewers.
But Boone faces this controversy, like many other difficulties in his life, with the conviction that he must go wherever God wants him to go with the gospel message.
I spoke with him about his lifelong journey of faith.
Plain Truth: You're an entertainer who didn't have to come out of the closet as a Christian. Right?
Pat Boone: That was a big blessing because from the very start all the fan magazines and columnists knew that not only was I a churchgoing Christian, but that I made my career decisions based on my conscience as it had been educated in the church I grew up in.
When I was doing my own television show and on the Arthur Godfrey Show in New York and going to school at Columbia University, I was also the regular song leader at the Church of Christ on 48 East 80th in Manhattan, and taught Sunday school.
Everybody knew right from the start that Christianity was a serious part of my life. It was part of my persona, my public image.
Q. What were the influences behind your decision to become a Christian?
A. Definitely being raised in a home with Christian parents who didn't just say, "Kids, you ought to go to Sunday school." They took us to Sunday school, and we always sat on the first or second row.
My folks, and we children when we were old enough, would participate in family devotionals at night. Daddy was a building contractor, so he worked hard and long. But whenever we could, we had these family devotionals.
I remember Daddy getting up at the crack of dawn to spend an hour or so studying the Bible for a young adult Sunday school class he taught for many years.
I grew up knowing who God is and believing in the Bible. I grew up believing that Christian principles were valid--that we were to live by them--because I saw my mom and dad and all our friends attempting to live by them.
I knew I wasn't automatically a Christian because I was raised in a Christian home anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car. So when I got to be about 12, I was doing some Bible study for myself.
I knew this was an important decision I would make, and a life-shaping, life-changing moment.
Mama and Daddy didn't force it on us. They would ask me, "Aren't you about ready to make your confession of faith and be baptized?" And I'd say, "Well, I'd like to do a little more studying myself."
I didn't want to be baptized just because it was expected of me. I don't think it was rebellion. It was not wanting it to be form or ritual.
Then I came across what Jesus said, if any man confesses me
before his brethren, I'll confess him before my Father. If he's
not confessing me before his brethren, then I will have to deny him before my Father (Matthew 10:32-33).
I saw me standing, still a young boy, in this vast sea of people on the Day of Judgment, and way up in the front, Jesus was separating the sheep from the goats. A big crowd was going off to the left weeping and wailing, and a relative few, as the Bible describes it, were going off to the right, and Jesus was saying, "These are mine."
And I realized, all that's ever going to matter in my existence is whether I hear Jesus say to his Father, "This one's mine, because he claimed me while he had the opportunity. I wrote his name in my book, and he belongs to me."
I saw myself literally on tip-toe trying to jump up, looking over the crowd, saying: "Jesus, remember me, Pat Boone? Remember, I claimed you?"
So, I went down an aisle on Sunday morning. I confessed my faith in Jesus publicly and was baptized at age 13. It's a fearsome thing for any kid. You do it on your own. The call was from the Lord through the ex-ample of my parents, through his Word, and finally through my own study and desire to fulfill my own purpose on the planet.
Q. How did your music fit into your purpose? You obviously had that ability early on?
A. My mom had taught my brother and me to sing harmony to two or three songs. Nobody in our family read music or played an instrument, except Mama played some ukulele.
She taught us some ukulele chords so we could accompany. I learned how to make those four or five chords fit almost any song.
From the time I was about 14, I was asked to lead congregational singing, occasionally in our big congregation, but more often at little country churches--100 members or so.
I went way out in the country to a little town called Pegram Station, Tennessee. I led singing morning and night, and then later graduated to a much bigger suburban church, Trinity Lane congregation of 1,500 or so. And I would stand up there and beat the time and lead the singing for a big congregation.
It was all a cappella. We didn't believe in a piano or organ or anything. It was the greatest vocal training I could have had, though I didn't know it at the time.
At that time, Julius Larosa was on the Arthur Godfrey Show. He'd come out of nowhere--from the Navy--and he was having hit records. He was singing every day on the Godfrey show and making appearances on the weekends.
I thought, If I were an entertainer like Julius Larosa appearing on the Godfrey show--it only takes an hour and a half a day--I could go to an Ivy League college, I could make records, I could do appearances.
Then, at age 19, Shirley and I eloped and moved to Texas. I went on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Show and won it. I went on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and won that nationally. I made a record.
By the time I was 21, I was on the Godfrey show regularly, and I was in Columbia University.
While still in college, I wrote my first book, Twixt Twelve and Twenty. All the proceeds went to establish a Christian college on the East Coast--Northeastern Institute for Christian Education. The big building on the campus is Boone Hall, and it has been since the late '50s.
I've been the chairman of the Easter Seal Telethon for 16 years, and we've raised a half billion dollars for medical research.
Medicine, education, a number of books--it's just incredible the way God honored a young boy's desires to make his life count somehow and in the most improbably unbelievable ways. He's answered every prayer.
Q. Did your job as an entertainer ever become a problem for you and your family?
A. Oh, yes. In the late '60s, our lives were coming apart. We were trying to be a good Christian family with only occasional church
attendance. But slowly our relationship unraveled, and I really felt we were facing divorce.
The only thing that kept us together was the sense of responsibility. We both felt that we made commitments to God, not just to each other. We didn't want our children to just be passed back and forth like all of their friends between divorced parents.
So we hung on against all hope. I mean there was nothing. When we got past the angry arguing stages, we were just coolly polite.
This hung on day after day for a couple of years. Then Shirley made a new commitment for life.
She was so earnest about want-ing to keep her family together that she said, "Lord, I don't know if I love Pat anymore, but you do, so love him through me."
She asked at that time for the Lord to fill her with the Spirit. I saw a change in Shirley after she made this private commitment. I was envious and a little miffed because I was supposed to be the leader of this family, and my wife had moved ahead of me spiritually.
More and more I realized I was not fulfilling my responsibility to my kids or my wife. And my daughters have only got one chance in this world to have the kind of father and the kind of home life that they deserved and that we wanted them to have. And the only way they were going to get it was if I were willing to let God change me again. I was so fearful. I asked God to fill me with his Spirit and be Lord of my life, not just Savior, but Lord.
I thought, This will probably be the end of my career. I don't know where he's going to lead me, but he's probably through with me as an entertainer.
In the months that followed,
my whole life and perspective changed. God showed me: No, I put you here. I want you in this business, but I want you to let
me make the decisions for and through you, not just you doing what you think is right.
Shirley and I fell in love again. The kids saw Mom and Dad holding hands and not just for show. We prayed together as a family and made it through their teen years when they were exposed to drugs, sex and every other kind of thing.
We sang as a family for seven years during a lot of those teenage years, so Daddy had his eye on them all the time. But when they started dating seriously, they had to make their own choices.
But I kept saying, better make sure you're willing to pay the price. You can rest assured it will come due when you're not ready for it.
I've always felt my greatest responsibility on this earth, charged by God, is to be a good husband and a good father. No matter what else I did in my life, whatever success I might have in any other area, if I failed there I would answer to him for that.
Though I've made plenty of mistakes, grievous mistakes, he helped me overcome and helped my girls understand that they had a flawed dad, and mom too for that matter, but that we were trying to do things God's way. And they also saw a lot of the consequences of doing it the other way in the lives of their friends.
They made good choices. And I don't mind telling the readers of The Plain Truth that it was God, not Shirley and me.
Q. As you know, The Plain Truth has had a struggle with legalism. You've had some experience with legalism and exclusivism as well?
A. Oh, yes. My former church used to really be critical of Baptists, Methodists and others because they couldn't find the name of their churches in the Bible. We were that legalistic.
In fact, I was disfellowshiped. We didn't have an established hierarchy or board. Each congregation is independent and separate. But we were declared no longer members of the largest congregation on the West Coast, and many sister congregations across the nation considered us no longer members.
Not because of moral indiscretion or anything like that, but because of what they considered doctrinal fallacy, because we had moved into what the Bible says in Galatians is the fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, longsuffering.
We grieved as much as they did over the separation, but over the years, so many ministers and elders in that church around the country have themselves opened up to newer understanding and shed a lot of that legalistic doctrine.
And I so empathize with and applaud your leadership because I know how soul wrenching it is to say maybe we haven't understood everything perfectly, or maybe we've even understood and taught error in some ways.
Which of us is perfect? Who can say we understand it all?
That's what I came to, that's what helped me. I realized God has to be patient and merciful toward us because none of us understands perfectly. Even Paul said we see through a glass darkly. We only understand and know in part.
God puts up with incomplete understanding. And if we are all incomplete, if even Paul said he didn't understand it all, how can we think we do and judge others because they don't agree with us on all the points of doctrine?
When little ladies and men come up and ask, "When are you going to come back, son?", I reply:
"Come back to what? Come back to the church? I've never left. We've always taught that there's only one church, isn't there? It's the body of believers. I haven't left by any means, and I haven't cut myself off from anybody."
In fact, I feel I have been ushered out into the larger fellowship of believers who recognize that we may understand differently and imperfectly, but we accept we're all trying to serve the same God and trying to obey the same Bible.
We have to allow for each other's doctrinal differences, but agree on the basics.
That's where I stand, and why I identify so much with The Plain Truth.
After the release
of his album In a Metal Mood/No More Mr. Nice
Guy and his outlandish appearance on the American Music Awards, Pat Boone
felt the heat of Christian censure.
Pat Boone Talks Back...on judging others Those of us who are trying to follow the Lord and imitate him are going to find ourselves frequently at odds, not only with the world, but also with other Christians--those who don't realize that unless we're going to be flexible and relate to the culture we're in, we're going to be written off by that culture and have no effect at all. This experience of being critically judged by other Christians is not new to me--I was disfellowshiped from my church because I embraced the Charismatics. I became a spiritual leper, and it's come back again as a result of this album release. My daughter Laury said to me on the phone the other day, "Daddy, I don't mean this disrespectfully, but you are getting a taste of your own medicine, aren't you?" I chuckled because I had been openly critical not only of the whole metal scene, but of some of the prime artists like Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica. I saw them as folks who were exerting terrible influences on young people with their angry, rebellious, dissonant clammer. I'm not backing off of my criticism of anything that would promote drug usage or anarchy or dehumanization in people's relationships, but I was wrong in not trying to find out if there was something to commend in all of this as well as to condemn. The pharisaical notion that we are OK and everybody else is not is something that God has to deal with over and over in us because it's such a human tendency. ...on his American Music Awards attire The reason I made that appearance on the American Music Awards was because Dick Clark had proposed that Alice Cooper and I present an award together and swap images. It was all a joke, but I don't think most people understand that. Alice was supposed to come out in white bucks and golf clothes and look real square, and I was supposed to come out looking bizarre and metal-like. At the last minute Alice backed out. I jokingly said, "I think he put on white buck shoes, looked down and got nauseous." That was not his image of himself, and he didn't want it to be anybody else's either. If he had done that, it would have been easier for people to get the joke. ...on Trinity dropping his TV show Paul Crouch made the decision to take the show off the air until we can have an on-air discussion about what I'm doing, what my motives are and whether or not people have reason to be alarmed at what I've done. Paul and Jan Crouch have built a network based totally on viewer support. They get thousands of calls from sweet little old ladies who probably didn't watch the awards show but saw some clip on the news or pictures in the paper, and have no idea that "No More Mr. Nice Guy" is actually a song by a guy named Alice Cooper. They think I'm declaring that I'm through being a nice guy, and I'm going to be a heavy metal performer. So, they've put the pressure on Paul and Jan. The only tactical error I think was that they should have said upfront: "Hey, we're going to get Pat on the air and discuss this. If we think he's done something indefensible, we'll take the show off. But let's at least hear him out. He's been doing the show for five years and appearing with us and helping us build this network for over 20 years. So, let's at least hear him out, he is a brother." Paul wants Jack Hayford to be on with us. Jack Hayford believes this is all for good and he rejoices in it. It's going to build toward a big audience in which we can say things to a secular audience who normally wouldn't be watching us. We're going to show how Christians resolve our differences and misunderstandings. We've been judgmental and harsh toward each other and toward the world without trying to find some good that we can commend as well as the evil that we so readily point out. ...reasons for the album I established rapport with a vast part of our young population who don't think we have anything they want. We've written them off so completely--their music, their culture, the stuff they like, we've just rejected out of hand. So they reject us. I'm trying to build a bridge here. When people began to act so oddly to the prerelease publicity about me doing a supposedly heavy metal album (this is not a heavy metal album, it's a big band album of heavy metal songs), I began to see that God might be in this. He might give me an opportunity to share some valid things with kids a lot younger than me. What I found is that there are some good songs underneath all this angry and distorted noise. I discovered that some of the darkest heavy metal songs sounded like Jeremiah the prophet pronouncing doom on a corrupt society. They're not condoning anything. They're saying the bill is coming due. They are warning about the price you're going to pay for dabbling in drugs and breaking all the rules. I'm not endorsing songs that glorify promiscuity and drunkenness by any means. But if we can find something good in everybody, as Jesus did, and be willing to be associated with them, then there's a basis for communication. Jesus took heat from the Pharisees by socializing with the social rejects of his day. He was happy to go in among them because he not only loved them in a spiritual way, he enjoyed their company. He didn't change in that mixing and mingling, they did, because they were attracted to the power of God in him. Jesus said, "I don't come to judge the world, but to save it." I judged most of these metal folks out of hand, so once I appeared to join them in some way, even jokingly, I'm being judged with the very same judgment. But I think out of this little tempest is going to come some growth. We have a chance to acknowledge that as Christians we have been too harshly critical. If we can humble ourselves together in the eyes of the world, they may be attracted to the Jesus we know. --Susan Stewart |