by Daniel Mann
One of Johnny Cash’s closest friends referred to him as a “walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,” and a cursory exploration of his life proves this statement.[1] Cash spent his early years as a son and soldier before embarking on a musical career as a performer and poet. Off stage, he was an addict and adulterer while seeking to maintain his religious persona as a Christian. No wonder his only son called him a “complicated man.”[2] Cash’s legacy continues to impact many segments of American culture, including Evangelicalism. His long friendship with Billy Graham is well documented,[3] and his continued influence is observed in a recent tribute by Greg Laurie.[4]
Although much has been written about the Man in Black, there is still a need to examine his life and legacy with discernment. In this essay, I briefly explore the early years, musical career, and private life of Johnny Cash. I then turn to Cash’s Christian profession and spiritual legacy. I propose that Cash’s spiritual instability is a cautionary tale about the importance of church membership, even for celebrities.
Early Years, Musical Career, and Private Life
Early Years: Son and Soldier
Cash grew up in a small town in Arkansas where his mother imparted her love for gospel music to him.[5] His family attended the local Baptist church three times a week, and Cash made a profession of faith in Jesus following the tragic death of his older brother, Jack.[6] Cash recounted the experience, “I answered a call to come down the aisle [in church] and shook the preacher’s hand and I accepted Jesus Christ as savior that next Sunday.”[7]
The pain of losing his brother was compounded by Cash’s poor relationship with his father, who once told him, “Too bad it wasn’t you instead of Jack.”[8] After high school, Cash joined the Air Force where he rose to the rank of staff sergeant.[9] Four years later, he declined to reenlist so that he could pursue his dream of becoming a musician.[10] Cash’s father scolded him for his love of music, calling it an enormous waste of time,[11] but his mother believed he would serve Christ with his musical gifts.[12]
Musical Career: Performer and Poet
In the military, Cash used his downtime to hone his musical abilities and to write several songs that would become top hits, such as “Hey Porter”[13] and “Folsom Prison Blues.”[14] After being discharged, Cash married his long-time girlfriend, Vivian, and started a band where the “sound of Johnny Cash was born.”[15] Songs such as “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk The Line” catapulted him to extraordinary fame, but Cash felt unfulfilled; he wanted to record gospel songs, too.[16]
Cash’s musical career is certainly an enigma. The same man who sang about shooting a man just to watch him die in “Folsom Prison Blues” might turn around with “Rock of Ages” as the very next song (!).[17] He performed at clubs in front of women who adored him, at prisons before convicts who identified with him, and at Billy Graham Crusades to Christians who respected him. Laurie asks, “Who else could play a large Las Vegas showroom and a Billy Graham Crusade in the same week?”[18] He rose to prominence from obscurity, yet his career was nearly ruined multiple times due to his reckless lifestyle.
Private Life: Addict and Adulterer
Cash’s career was filled with highs and lows. In 1957, he took his first amphetamine pills, which would prove to be a life-altering moment.[19] One person said it was “like a bolt of lightning was crackling through his giant frame.”[20] His sister said that Cash exhibited an “addictive personality” when he was ten and began smoking all the time.[21] By 1959, he was taking fifteen or more pills a day.[22]
Besides drug addiction, Cash had other problems. He was known for “outlandish stunts” such as the “time Johnny bought five hundred baby chickens and turned them loose in an Omaha hotel.”[23] Some suggest he was the pioneer of rock bands trashing hotel rooms.[24] His behavior was so reckless that he was rarely permitted to stay in the same hotel twice. Cash’s conduct included sawing and stacking hotel furniture like firewood, destroying antique chandeliers, ruining a picture of the Mona Lisa, and firing a signal cannon down a hallway.[25]
Cash was arrested in El Paso after smuggling drugs from Mexico. The shame from this experience combined with the breakup of his marriage prompted him to enter the Nickajack Cave near Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he contemplated suicide. He believed the absence of light in that cave portrayed how far he felt from God.[26] Cash seemed to emerge from the cave having experienced a “spiritual rededication,” but his sobriety was relatively short-lived, and his addictions remained unconquered.[27] He described himself as having an “affair with pills,” but that was far from his only affair.[28] His life of fornication began at an early age,[29] and as a successful musician, he found it difficult to resist attractive women who threw themselves at country singers.[30] Of course, his adulterous relationship with June Carter is infamous, leading Vivian to divorce him. His lengthy track record of addiction and adultery would seem to challenge his Christian profession. How did he reconcile his sinful lifestyle with his religious beliefs?
Religious Persona: Saint, Sinner, or Both?
Cash’s lifestyle has been described as “Saturday night sinnin’, Sunday morning salvation.”[31] Cash admitted to singing “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord” while he was stoned. He also acknowledged the duplicity he felt while singing the praises of the Lord in such a condition.[32] He sang at his first Billy Graham Crusade in 1970.[33] Graham initially reached out to Cash to impress his son Franklin[34] and to get advice about how to connect with his rebellious son.[35] Graham never judged Cash for his sinful behavior.[36] Cash’s religious journey was like a spiritual roller-coaster. He made a second profession of faith by walking the aisle at an Assembly of God church in 1971.[37] Interestingly, “Cash was baptized three times in the ’70s,” and it was “as though he regarded each immersion in holy water as a protective force-field which would only last so long before it needed to be renewed in order to continue warding off evil spirits.”[38]
Cash was ordained through the Christian International Ministerial Association,[39] and he participated in a wide array of Christian ventures.[40] Graham commented that Cash was a “preacher” through his music and testimony.[41] Cash’s son referred to him as a man of God and a tool in God’s work. [42] Given these disparate biographical details, what was Cash’s understanding of the gospel? There are occasions where Cash seemed to have a good grasp of Christ’s atoning work on the cross, but his statement that “God looked through a lot of sins to find the goodness in my heart” betrays a deficient view of salvation.[43]
Graeme Thompson states bluntly that “Cash had conducted a long-running, on-and-off, occasionally passionate but ultimately rather casual affair with religion since childhood. . . . religion existed in an easily accessible part of his heart where it could be dusted down to provide comfort, but there was no real commitment in thought, and certainly not in deed.”[44] Richard Beck writes that Cash tried his entire career to be “both an outlaw and a saint. . . . one minute he’s cussing on the stage at Folsom Prison, the next he’s singing a gospel song about Jesus. One minute he’s flipping you the finger, the next he’s quoting the Bible.”[45] Considering such paradoxical actions and beliefs, we are left to wrestle with how Cash should be remembered.
Lasting Legacy: Lessons To Be Learned
The word redemption is often used about Johnny Cash, and many evangelicals view him as a true believer, though his “testimony is a mixed bag.”[46] Thomas Kidd wisely urges Christians to beware of elevating celebrities who profess faith in Christ, especially if their lives do not exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.[47] Undoubtedly, we want to avoid being judgmental or thinking we can perfectly identify who is a Christian or not. Nevertheless, the life and legacy of Johnny Cash at the very least gives us reason for pause (1 John 3:4–9), and there is no warrant for upholding him as an example to follow.
One of the most overlooked lessons that the legacy of Johnny Cash teaches is the need for committed church membership in a healthy, biblically sound church. Amazingly, Cash was a part of two Baptist churches, a non-denominational church, and a Church of God congregation. He even considered joining the Roman Catholic Church while dating Vivian.[48] His relationship with the local church was incredibly unstable and a large part of his own instability. Tragically, it does not appear that any congregation disciplined him when he fell into sin. He seemed to boast that he was a non-judgmental Christian,[49] and apparently, he sought out such churches to attend.[50] Yet this pattern did not bode well for his spiritual health. His story is a cautionary tale about the importance of the local church, highlighting that celebrities should not be exempt from church discipline when necessary.
In conclusion, Johnny Cash led a complicated, contradictory life. It is easy to have pity for someone who lost a brother at the age of twelve and grew up with a father who never once told him that he loved him.[51] Cash was surely describing himself when he wrote the poem “The Walking Wounded.”[52] Nonetheless, compassion does not negate the church’s responsibility to exercise discipline and discernment towards professing believers who walk in sin. In fact, discipline is an act of grace-filled compassion toward the straying Christian who is in danger of making shipwreck of his or her faith. Johnny Cash is an American icon, but he desperately needed a faithful church family that was not too enamored with his stardom to call him to repent.
About the Author: Daniel D. Mann is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, but now resides in Skokie, Illinois, with his wife Melissa and their four children: Carlie, Colby, Charlotte, and Thomas. Daniel serves as the lead pastor of Living Hope Free Will Baptist Church. He holds degrees from Southeastern Free Will Baptist Bible College (B.A., Bible) and Maranatha Baptist Seminary (M.A., Biblical Studies), and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Biblical Exposition from Liberty University. In his spare time, Daniel enjoys spending time with his family, coaching basketball, and watching his favorite sports teams: the Chicago Cubs and the Oklahoma Sooners.
[1] John Carter Cash, House of Cash: The Legacies of My Father, Johnny Cash (San Rafael, CA: Insight, 2011), 11.
[2] Cash, House of Cash, 11.
[3] Johnny Cash, Man in White: A Novel about the Apostle Paul (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Kindle Version, 2008), location 4 of 3707.
[4] Prominent evangelist Greg Laurie wrote extensively about the impact that Johnny Cash had on him. See Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon (Washington, DC: Salem, 2019).
[5] Robert Hilburn, Johnny Cash: The Life (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013), 9.
[6] Hilburn, Life, 12.
[7] Hilburn, Life, 15–16.
[8] Michael Streissguth, Johnny Cash: The Biography (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2006), 25.
[9] Streissguth, Biography, 37–38.
[10] Hilburn, Life, 51–52.
[11] Laurie, Redemption, 43.
[12] Hilburn, Life, 23.
[13] Hilburn, Life, 51–52.
[14] Cash, House of Cash, 34.
[15] Streissguth, Biography, 52–54.
[16] Streissguth, Biography, 71–75.
[17] Streissguth, Biography, 166.
[18] Laurie, Redemption, 7.
[19] Laurie, Redemption, 135.
[20] Graeme Thompson, The Resurrection of Johnny Cash: Hurt, Redemption, and American Recordings (London, England: Jawbone Press, Kindle Edition, 2011), location 857.
[21] Hilburn, Life, 14.
[22] Hilburn, Life, 168.
[23] Laurie, Redemption, 77.
[24] Rodney Clapp, Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, Kindle Edition, 2008), location 1418.
[25] Clapp, Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction, location 1418.
[26] Dave Urbanski, The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash (Lake Mary, FL: Relevant Media Group, 2003), 69.
[27] Hilburn, Life, 344. See also Cash, House of Cash, 37.
[28] Johnny Cash, Cash: The Autobiography (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 6.
[29] Cash, Cash, 34.
[30] Hilburn, Life, 108.
[31] Thompson, Resurrection, location 902.
[32] Laurie, Redemption, 86.
[33] Hilburn, Life, 375–76.
[34] Cash, House of Cash, 43.
[35] Laurie, Redemption, 146.
[36] See Hilburn, Life, 376, 573; Cash, House of Cash, 44.
[37] Streissguth, Biography, 179.
[38] Thompson, Resurrection, location 975.
[39] Laurie, Redemption, 184.
[40] Cash, House of Cash, 411. Cash produced a video about the life of Christ called the Gospel Road, recorded “the entire New King James Version of New Testament for a cassette package marketed by Thomas Nelson” (519–20), and wrote a novel about the apostle Paul called Man in White that was lauded by Billy Graham. See Johnny Cash, Man in White: A Novel About the Apostle Paul (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Kindle Version, 2008), location 4.
[41] Hilburn, Life, 375.
[42] Cash, House of Cash, 25, 121.
[43] Hilburn, Life, 464.
[44] Thompson, Resurrection, location 902.
[45] Richard Beck, Trains, Jesus, and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2019), 166.
[46] Russell Moore, “Real Hard Cash,” Touchstone Magazine (December 2005), accessed June 3, 2021, http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-10-018-v; Laurie, Redemption, 69.
[47] Thomas Kidd, “Johnny Cash and the Evangelical Fascination with Celebrities” The Gospel Coalition Blog (October 2017), accessed on June 3, 2021, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/johnny-cash-evangelical-fascination-celebrities/.
[48] Hilburn, Life, 46.
[49] Cash, House of Cash, 42.
[50] Hilburn, Life, 253.
[51] Laurie, Redemption, 208.
[52] Johnny Cash, Forever Words, ed. Paul Muldoon (New York: Blue Rider, 2016), 125–26.
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