Religious beliefs As a teenager, Lewis studied at the Southwest Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas before being thrown out for daring to play a boogie-woogie version of "My God Is Real," and that early incident foreshadowed his lifelong conflict over his faith to God and his love of playing "the devil's music." Lewis had a recorded argument with Sam Phillips during the recording session for "Great Balls of Fire," a song he initially refused to record because he considered it blasphemous ("How can...How can the devil save souls? What are you talkin' about?" he asks Phillips during one heated exchange). During the famous "Million Dollar Quartet" jam involving Lewis, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash, they performed several gospel songs. When he appeared on George Klein's Memphis Sounds program in 2011, Lewis explained that part of the reason the recording only features him and Elvis singing is because they were of the Assembly of God while Perkins and Cash were Baptists, and they didn't know the words. Lewis also endured years of condemnation from his cousin, evangelist Jimmy Lee Swaggart, who never passed up an opportunity to criticize Lewis's lifestyle. In the 1990 documentary The Jerry Lee Lewis Story, an intense Lewis, who could quote the Bible backwards and forwards, explains to the interviewer, "The Bible don't even speak of religion. No word of religion is even in the Bible. Sanctification! Are you sanctified? Have you been saved? See, I was a good preacher, I know my Bible...I find myself falling short of the glory of God." Lewis's faith was always best demonstrated through his music, and gospel music always remained part of his repertoire. After a string of hit country albums, he decided to record a proper gospel album for the first time in 1970.

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