By Andrew Wood
What started as a side gig for Kent Sanders has become a full-time job. The former St. Louis Christian College worship arts professor is now a ghostwriter, and arguably his most high-profile project thus far has been to coauthor the just-released The Faith of Elvis: A Story Only a Brother Can Tell, written with Billy Stanley, stepbrother to Elvis Presley. (Stanley is the son of Dee Stanley, who married Vernon Presley, Elvis’s father, in 1960.)
In August, when Christian Standard reviewed the summer blockbuster film Elvis (check out that review here), one of our only criticisms was that the movie did not delve deeply enough into Elvis’s spiritual life. Now, Nelson Books (an imprint of Thomas Nelson) has helped fill that gap with its Oct. 4 release of this book.
Christian Standard interviewed Sanders about his transition from college professor to writer and what he learned about the spiritual life of Elvis from his collaboration with Billy Stanley.
(We will post part 2 of this two-part article next Friday.)
CHRISTIAN STANDARD: Congratulations on your new book! Give us a little taste of what we can expect.
KENT SANDERS: Thanks! I’m really excited about it! The book shares the untold story of Elvis’s Christian faith and its deep influence on his music, films, relationships, commitment to his family and fans, and his love for the gospel. Billy Stanley, Elvis’s stepbrother, gives a firsthand account of what it was like to be taught and mentored by him. We designed the book to be a heartwarming and easy read. In fact, the No. 1 comment that early readers have shared with me is that it’s a “quick read” that simply makes people feel good.
How is it different from other biographies of “The King”?
The Faith of Elvis is not a full-fledged biography. It focuses on Elvis’s faith through the eyes of his younger stepbrother, Billy Stanley. After Elvis lost his beloved mother, Gladys, his father remarried. Billy was one of her three sons who moved to Graceland with her in 1960.
Most other books about Elvis’s life focus on his music, stardom, and his larger-than-life persona. Even though Elvis is known for being a rock and roll star, he was also committed to sharing the gospel with his family and fans. In this book, you’ll get to know the Elvis who was a big brother and spiritual mentor to Billy and his brothers.
What was it like to work with Elvis’s stepbrother?
Billy is what I would call a “dream client.” He is easygoing, supportive, funny, generous, and an amazing storyteller. It made this project so much easier because he came to it with loads of great stories about Elvis.
As a writer, many times you are pulling information out of people and trying to figure out a way to build a story around it. With this book, he gave me so much great material to work with that it became a matter of what stories to cut from the book. We have a specific word count for the book, and we bumped right up against it because there were so many great stories.
Were you able to interview Priscilla or any of the other family members for this book?
No. No other members of the Presley family were involved in this project. It’s all from Billy’s perspective. But I can’t imagine they would find anything disagreeable in the book.
How did your experience as a St. Louis Christian College professor help prepare you for this project?
I loved teaching at SLCC and will always be grateful for my time there. After about 10 or 12 years, I was getting restless and considering a career change, like a lot of people do as they start moving toward midlife. And unfortunately, I couldn’t help but notice how our enrollment was declining year-to-year and that it would be wise to start making backup plans for my future. [SLCC merged with Central Christian College of the Bible, Moberly, Mo., after the Spring 2022 semester.]
Being a pastor and a college professor are roles that require a lot of communicating, writing, storytelling, research, and organizing content. So, it was pretty natural for me to start using those skills in freelance writing, at first as a side gig, but, starting in 2021, as my full-time job.
I’ve been grateful for a pretty steady stream of clients for ghostwriting and co-writing projects. I thought at first I would be writing mainly business books, but instead I have found a lot of opportunities to work on faith-based projects.
I also train and coach writers through my Daily Writer podcast and my Daily Writer Club membership community. Being in ministry is such a people-intensive business, it can be jarring to work mainly alone at home. Constructing an online community like this has been helpful not just to the writers I mentor, but to me as well.
What are some examples of Elvis’s faith?
Elvis’s musical roots were in African-American tent revivals he attended as a child. They had a deep impression on him, and he sang a lot of gospel music during his career. Billy remembers that Elvis would sing gospel songs after his shows, sometimes all night long, to decompress.
One of the most fascinating things I learned while working on the book was that Elvis carried his Bible literally everywhere he went. In fact, Billy Stanley was part of the group known as the Wrecking Crew who assisted Elvis in lots of different ways. One of their jobs was to make sure the Bible went everywhere Elvis went. He was an avid reader of Scripture and would sometimes even act out Bible stories at home in Graceland to help Billy and his brothers remember it. He taught them to pray every day to give thanks for their blessings. He spoke a lot about God’s forgiveness. He reminded them that life is short, and they shouldn’t take it for granted.
Next week, in part 2 of this interview, Sanders will share about some of Elvis’s faith struggles and what Sanders the pastor would say to Elvis if he could sit with him today.
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The Faith of Elvis: A Story Only a Brother Can Tell by Billy Stanley with Kent Sanders (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2022) is available online (including at Amazon) and in bookstores.
Andrew Wood, a former missionary to Ukraine and associate professor at Nebraska Christian College, is a freelance writer.
Andrew, thank you for crafting this article and giving me the opportunity to share about the new book!