Ed Parker<\/a>, Elvis’ karate teacher was a member of the Church. He trained Elvis up to the black belt level. He also was Elvis’ body guard in his final years. “Both Ed Parker and the Osmonds gave copies of the Book of Mormon to Elvis and reported discussing the text with him. To date, every claim of an active full-time missionary teaching Elvis has turned out to be false\u2014the missionary did not serve in the right mission, or served in the right mission at the wrong time, or the missionary name did not even exist.” <\/p>\nEd Parker knew Elvis quite well and had warned people of reading too much into Elvis’ comments on the Church. “Elvis ‘often told people what he thought they wanted to hear; not in attempt to be dishonest, but simply in an attempt to be accommodating.’\u201d While he did discussion the Church a bit with the Osmonds and Parker, that doesn’t mean he was necessarily that interested.<\/p>\n
While Elvis was given Book of Mormons, we don’t really know what he thought of it. Further the oft told story is itself an urban legend. It tells more about members wanting it to be true than being true. We find lots of other urban legends like this such as the oft told story of Steve Martin being baptized at one time. There definitely are famous ex-Mormons who have been successful in Hollywood. A much smaller number have made careers in Hollywood yet remained faithful members. The desire to connect to the entertainment elites remains with us culturally though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Starting at the end of the 80’s a story came to be told of a Book of Mormon written in by Elvis Presley. Over the years people retold the tale, including in the pages of newspapers, inspirational speaking and the like. Even the Osmonds got into the tale, telling people of the King’s interest in the Church. The tale frequently grew in the telling. Elvis was investigating the Church during a period of unease in his life. His book was given by the Osmonds. He was taking the discussions. He investigated on an off for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":39265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Elvis.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39268,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39264\/revisions\/39268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Starting at the end of the 80’s a story came to be told of a Book of Mormon written in by Elvis Presley. Over the years people retold the tale, including in the pages of newspapers, inspirational speaking and the like. Even the Osmonds got into the tale, telling people of the King’s interest in the Church. The tale frequently grew in the telling. Elvis was investigating the Church during a period of unease in his life. His book was given by the Osmonds. He was taking the discussions. He investigated on an off for years.