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CHAPTER 6 The Bible Tells Me So Christianity in the Careers of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans In the late 1940s Christianity became an important part of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans's professional lives. Shortly after their marriage in 1947, Dale experienced a profound religious reawakening that significantly affected the personal and professional lives of the two western stars. Following this experience, the couple openly professed their Christianity and incorporated it into their public performances. While both Rogers and Evans grew up in Christian homes and held basic Judeo-Christian beliefs, the focus of their lives in the 1930s and early 1940s centered on success in the entertainment business; religion played a secondary role to their professional careers. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as a renewed interest in religion swept the country, coinciding with a national economic boom and the tensions of the cold war, Rogers and Evans began using Christian themes, references, and music in their films, radio and television programs, and recordings. In addition, Evans's strong religious commitment revealed itself in the inspirational books that she began to write in the early 1950s. From this period through the 1990s, Christianity became an important part of their public performances. Indeed, in the three decades following 1970, Evans's career focused on religious concerts, appearances on Christian television programs, and a weekly religious television talk show, A Date with Dale. An understanding of this aspect of Rogers and Evans's personal and professionallives begins with their childhood religious experiences. Rogers grew up in a Christian home and occasionally attended church and religious revivals in rural Ohio. He once told an interviewer, "We were brought up with integrity. My dad said a man who didn't have integrity wasn't worth killing. And I've kind of used that as a rule of thumb in determining what I should and shouldn't do down through the years. As a boy, I went to church, but I never accepted Christ as my Savior. Never even thought about it until Dale and I got married."1 Nevertheless, in Rogers's early years, religion influenced his thinking and outlook on life. As he grew older, he became a religious skeptic and questioned Christianity in at least two ways. First, he puzzled over churchgoers who proclaimed their faith and received baptism at every revival. He thought the truly faithful needed only one immersion. Even more disturbing to him was the fact that some of the individuals returned to their more human habits once the revival ended. He also wondered why God would permit children to become orphaned 104 Copyrighted Material Christianity in the Careers of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans 105 or crippled. But despite this skepticism, the basic Judeo-Christian beliefs that permeated American society and culture shaped his spiritual outlook. When Rogers moved from Ohio to California in the early 1930s, the focus of his life became work and music, giving him little time for religious activities as he struggled economically and professionally. He performed on Los Angeles area radio stations, organized the Sons of the Pioneers, made recordings, did bit parts in movies, and eventually, in 1938, became a Western star for Republic Pictures.2 Rogers's film career advanced rapidly , especially in the early 1940s when he became Republic's top Western star. As his fame and popularity increased, Rogers maintained his skepticism about Christianity, and during this period religion seemed to have little influence on his professional career. In a discussion on the movie set one day in the mid-1940s, Dale Evans asked the cowboy star if he believed in Christ and also if he was he taking his daughters to Sunday school. Rogers replied no and indicated that Sunday was his day to relax. He socialized on Saturday evenings, he said, and slept late on Sunday mornings. ''I'm not sold on this business about God and Christianity," he told Evans, explaining that his reservations centered on the hypocrisy of Christians and on the hospitalized children he had seen while performing. "If there is a God, I cannot understand how an innocent child can be born with a bad heart or with cancer or crippled legs when he hasn't done anything wrong. Why does God let that happen? Maybe His eye is on the sparrows, like the Book says, but sometimes I think that it isn't on those poor kids. If you can tell me how God can let innocent children suffer...

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