By RAY WADDLE

This week I played my favorite hymn to Elvis, "Graceland" by Paul Simon, and perused again the most irreverent book I own, The Two Kings: Jesus-Elvis. (The book catalogs "sacred" coincidences between them, like "Jesus was a Capricorn. Elvis was a Capricorn," and "Jesus entourage, the Apostles, had twelve members. Elvis entourage, the Memphis Mafia, had twelve members.")

The religion of Generation E began as a fascinating thing, but at the 30-year mark of the death of Presley this week, the devotion wears thin.

"Graceland" came out in 1986, nine years after Elvis died. It spoke to millions of us. When Simon sang, "I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland," it forced me for the first time to notice a dimension of grace in the nameplate of the Elvis estate. When Simon crooned, "For reasons I cannot explain theres some part of me wants to see Graceland," I savored the paradox of a Jewish New Yorker rescuing the Southern tenderness of the Elvis memory from the tawdry story of his latter-day jumpsuit-bloated decline.

By the 1990s, Elvis worship — solemn commentary on pilgrimages, impersonators, sightings — was a full-blown phenomenon. Scholars talked of a rising world-spiritual movement, an Elvis faith. Folklorists organized conferences to ponder devotees who build Elvis shrines at home and weep before his comely image in photos. Even "churches of Elvis" surfaced.

But Elvis devotion never had anything to do with long-haul religion. Levelheaded fans politely pointed out that Elvis himself was a Christian who would be offended at such mutant piety in his name.

Instead, Elvis "theology" was an exuberant exercise in speculation about a changing, pluralistic spiritual scene, where traditional churchgoing no longer spoke to every personal dream or defeat.

Elvis theory stood on stronger ground when it grappled with the psychological turbulence he stirred without declaring him a sacred archetype. One argument said Elvis aroused nameless feelings of homesickness, a longing for deliverance from life contradictions. Elvis furiously embodied contradiction — teen rebellion, innocence, manliness, androgyny, Bible Belt religion, sexual liberation, poor boy, rich kid, Tupelo, Vegas, Southern honor and Hollywood excess, all at once. His sudden death, at 42, left mourners stranded in their quest for weightless release; their longing continues.

Elvis spirituality paled after 9/11. The dangerous public world suddenly pressed in. The conferences dried up. Heady predictions 10 years ago that Elvis worship would mature into a post-Protestant spiritual choice ring hollow now. It was very 1997 — a peacetime luxury — to imagine Elvis, not religious terrorism, as the cutting edge of future religion.

Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to report that the sweetness of the Paul Simon homage to Elvis, or to a land of grace, still comes through. Elvis — the name, the memory, not the god — still haunts
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