Elmer Gantry

On the surface, this appears to be a tale of a malevolent individual. His actions are compounded by his use of the name of God to deceive people and elevate himself for public adulation. He is truly the epitome of a wolf in sheep's clothing.

However, this is not a book that can be simply skimmed and forgotten. Elmer Gantry is not a one-dimensional villain. In fact, it is his very humanity that makes his story both repugnant and captivating. We see in his hypocrisy our own tendency to aspire to be better than we actually are. You can only loathe him to the extent that you loathe yourself. And oh, did I despise him. Especially the way he treated his long-suffering wife and children. I longed to strike him in the face.

This book delves far deeper than just the actions of the titular character. It explores themes of religion and prejudice. It reveals the uncomfortable truth that in real life, evil is not always punished and good is not always rewarded. It holds up a mirror to our self-righteous behavior; the way we loudly condemn vice in its blatant forms, yet overlook our own more harmful, un-Christian-like treatment of others. It also serves as a reminder that those we place our trust and faith in are not always worthy of that trust.

I wish I had the time and mental acuity to review this book in its entirety. There is truly a wealth of content within its pages. But it suffices to say that while reading this book was not exactly entertaining (aside from the remarkable prose), it was undeniably beneficial.

Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry stands as perhaps the angriest novel he ever penned, and that's quite an accomplishment for the author of Babbitt and It Can't Happen Here.

The eponymous character ascends from being an aimless, backslapping college student to an equally aimless, backslapping preacher, driven solely by a potent mix of ambition and base appetites. He drinks (though reluctantly giving up the habit when Prohibition becomes the law of the land), chases women, plagiarizes sermons from atheist tracts, and jumps from one congregation to another, bullying and cajoling his way to the heart of religious power, all while proclaiming the goal of "making America a moral nation!"

Gantry is the quintessential pious hypocrite, demanding an unattainable moral standard from others while wallowing in every conceivable vice. Moreover, even threats to expose his shortcomings only serve to strengthen his grip on his followers.

Frankly, the book becomes tiring as Gantry has no redeeming qualities and few, if any, of his supporting characters are much more appealing. We encounter priests who don't believe in God, bigots who attack Catholics and Jews, bombastic female faith healers who transform into infantile sex kittens in private, scheming ex-lovers, and a few ineffective, tongue-wagging liberals whose protests earn them scorn or violent rebukes.

If Elmer Gantry isn't a pleasant read, it's unfortunately evergreen in its portrayal of evangelical religion as more of a business than a church, choosing campaigns against vice, immorality, and minorities based on what attracts attention, money, and power rather than any true devotion to God. It's all too easy to see modern-day echoes of Lewis in every religious charlatan and political demagogue who can betray their stated principles, even commit crimes, and emerge unscathed because their followers reject any morality beyond their idol's caprices.

The 1960 film with Burt Lancaster is heavily sanitized, covering only about 100 pages of the book (primarily the subplot with Sister Sharon Falconer, the aforementioned faith-healer), smoothing over the novel's rough edges and reassuring us, with a Hays Code-enforced disclaimer, that the story doesn't represent most Christians. True enough, but it represents enough of their leaders to remain deeply disturbing.

Just before the 4th of July, I completed Elmer Gantry. It emerged as one of the greatest novels I've ever read. Elmer Gantry, published in 1927, was far more intricate, its description of the worst aspects of the American psyche more scathing and chilling, and it was more timeless than I could have ever imagined. I had anticipated a comic-book like story with dated prose. Instead, I was greeted with vivid characters and lines of text that I found myself rereading due to their beautiful structure and perfect descriptions.

This book isn't just what it's typically and simply described as: the adventures of a silver-tongued evangelist leading a life of hypocrisy and self-indulgence. Nor is it a novel whose sole purpose is to attack the clergy. Elmer Gantry is a searingly accurate portrayal of the USA, one that still holds true so many years later. After finishing the book, I sat staring out the window for 10 minutes, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

What's disheartening about this book, for me, is as noted in the afterword by Mark Schorer. He said, "The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality." Frank Shallard is defeated. So is Jim Lefferts. All the good people go down.

Maybe you have to have been raised in the South or Midwest of the USA, and brought up Baptist or Methodist, to truly understand all the layers of Elmer Gantry, all the hidden humor, all the razor-sharp and at times incredibly subtle criticism and commentary. If you've never been to a church supper where someone claims to have traced their lineage back to Adam and Eve, if your school board or local city council has never heard arguments about banning certain books from schools or local libraries, if a significant number of your family wouldn't boycott your wedding if you served alcohol, if you've never heard Catholics called "Papists" from a pulpit, if school friends haven't told you they'll pray for you because of your questions and intellect, if you haven't heard "Christians" rationalize actions that conflict with the Bible, I'm not sure you can truly get this book. But I could be wrong (I often am).

Of course, all you need to have done is lived in the USA and paid attention to the actions of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the Christian Coalition to be chilled by the last line of the novel. And don't read it before you've read the entire book. Part of me is ashamed to have only read Sinclair Lewis when I'm already past 40. And part of me wonders if I could have understood this book on the level I feel I do had I not been this age.

And don't look for these characters or this story in the movie version. The events in the movie are less than 100 pages of the book and are incredibly sanitized in comparison. The novel's Sharon Falconer is nothing like the celluloid version. I love the movie, but it's a completely different story.

Sinclair Lewis is quoted as saying, "I love America, but I don't like it" and "when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." My sentiments exactly.

**The Revival of the Revival**

Donald Trump's political rallies have always struck me as being little more than evangelical tent meetings. These gatherings are a uniquely American institution that dates back to before the Revolution. They seem to follow cycles of popularity, approximately every fifty years from the middle of the 18th century. What Trump has achieved, aside from any political upheaval, is the latest revival of the Revival. "Elmer Gantry" serves as a how-to manual for this kind of work and has aged remarkably well since it was written a century ago. Even if Donald Trump has never read it (which is likely), he has surely learned how to embody it and exploit its presence in the American cultural DNA.

The central figure in a tent meeting is, of course, the preacher. What he preaches about is far less important than how he does it. He is a showman, and his audience expects a good performance. Those who participate in a revival do so not to learn or consider, much less to argue, but to believe in something, anything really, with others they perceive as tribal members.

America is a Christian nation in at least one important respect: believing is belonging. Belonging has historically been of great value to a people on the edge of civilization, living among others - other refugees, Native Americans, Black slaves - with nothing in common except their location and a constant fear of betrayal or attack. Revivalism has always been inherently racist and super (that is, anti) natural. Even at the beginning of the 19th century, it could attract as many as 20,000 people in what was still largely the wilderness of Kentucky.

The revival creates community by giving people something to believe in and others who are ready to believe. Historically, revivalists have believed in rather outrageous things, from the imminence of the Second Coming to the peculiar holiness of the American Republic, to the superiority of Northern European culture. The questionable nature of such beliefs, aside from generating feelings of spiritual camaraderie, is irrelevant to the participants. Their desire to believe in order to belong is overwhelming. It is no accident that the most notorious cults, both secular and religious, are the product of this aspect of American culture. The historical matrix of these intensely believing, intensely belonging groups is the revival.

It is remarkable how the grifting personality of Lewis's protagonist captures the social essence of Trump. Elmer was never really liked. He was supposed to be the most popular man in college; everyone believed that everyone else adored him, but none of them wanted to be with him. They were all a bit afraid, a bit uncomfortable, and more than a bit resentful. Elmer assumed that he was the center of the universe and that the rest of the system was valuable only as it afforded him help and pleasure.

Elmer's electoral and clerical shenanigans are Trumpian in their shameless determination to dominate. But also in their obvious plea for acceptance. He desperately needs his audience as he plays on their need for belonging. The greatest urge was his memory of holding his audience, playing on them. To move people - Golly! He wanted to be addressing somebody on something right now and being applauded.

Elmer, like Trump, is a creation of his audience. He had but little to do with what he said. The willing was not his but the mob's; the phrases were not his but those of the emotional preachers and hysterical worshipers whom he had heard since babyhood. The lack of originality is crucial. What he says must be familiar, resonating not with thought or reason but with forgotten emotion. It is his sense of inarticulate feelings that is the source of his power.

However, his audience little knows that they will become more and more like him, and that what that means is literally diabolical because he had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason. Elmer and Trump use religious language not because they believe it but because it is the opening to any amount of counter-factual nonsense. Why is it that it's only in religion that the things you got to believe are against all experience? This is not a query but a principle of method. Faith is impervious to experience. This is what Elmer and Trump know. Essentially, anyone who believes in the Virgin Birth, Predestination, and the absolute necessity of full immersion baptism will believe anything!

"Elmer Gantry" is not a period piece; it is an insight into the perennial American culture, a culture of inherent alienation. National (and nationalistic) mythology has never been sufficient to overcome the pervasive alienation among a country of immigrants. The line from George Whitfield in Savannah (and his advocacy for the reintroduction of slavery in Georgia) to Barton Stone at Cane Ridge (a sort of "Te Deum" for the defeat of the Native Americans in the Northwest Indian Wars) to the involvement of white evangelicalism in the Jim Crow legislation after the American Civil War, to the gentile racism of Billy Graham and other 20th-century fundamentalists leads directly to Trump. "Elmer Gantry" is not about a temporary and transient aberration in American culture but about its very constitution.

* It might seem that I am overstating the case. I am not. Tertullian, a Christian apologist of the late 2nd century, explained the intellectual attitude of the new religion quite well in his dictum "Credo quia absurdum" - "I believe because it is absurd." It is clear that this is the explanation for so much of modern life, particularly life with the internet. The more absurd the statements of Trump or QAnon or Tucker Carlson, the more they are taken as the way the world is. In short, the Christian idea of faith is central to American culture and generates its affection for salaciousness. It also goes a long way in explaining much of American advertising.

I had initially anticipated that I would have a good grasp of the basics simply by having watched the movie. However, to my great surprise, the book turned out to be completely different!

It is an excellent satire that delves deep into the world of evangelical Christians, small town America, and the rampant hypocrisy that exists within. The narration by Anthony Heald was truly outstanding, adding an extra layer of depth and authenticity to the story.

Elmer Gantry, the central character, is a blatant hypocrite, yet he seems completely oblivious to it (or perhaps only has a dim awareness). So many aspects of his character reminded me vividly of Donald Trump, to the extent that at times, it was extremely difficult for me to continue reading.

And the ending! (Here comes the spoiler.) Despite having his hypocrisy exposed to the public, Elmer, with some underhanded help, manages to bribe and threaten the witnesses and manipulate the press in such a way that he ultimately emerges as the winner. While this makes for great satire, it is truly awful when one thinks about how such things might play out in the real world.

Overall, this book is a thought-provoking and eye-opening read that forces us to confront the uncomfortable truths about our society.

BkC 56

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Today, Elmer Gantry is universally recognized as a landmark in American literature. When it was first published, it scandalized readers, leading Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and facing the threat of lynching in Virginia. The book portrays a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church. He is a supposed saver of souls but lives a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence. It is also a record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity that, without Lewis, might have left no trace. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy since Voltaire.

My Review: I grew up in a single-parent household. My mother was a pedophile, and I was her victim. She was also an extremely religious fanatic, a conservative social fascist conformist, and a cold, appearance-obsessed shrew. However, when dealing with strangers, she would present herself as a pious, charming, and lovely woman. So, for me, Elmer Gantry was not just a novel but a documentary. I read it around the age of fifteen, just after reading Babbitt, and was amazed to find my own experiences with the asshole religiosifiers who surrounded me described in a book over fifty years old! I have always hated them with a passion, then and now. Reading this book was like a soothing balm for my outraged soul: These people aren't the first! They didn't invent this idiocy! If Lewis could escape and tell his story, so can I! The rise of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and that ignorant ilk is not new. This novel shows that this kind of perverted conservative religious stupidity has always existed, and its basic small-souled evil is not unique to our times. Depending on my mood, this realization is either a comfort or a misery. But reading this classic exposé of the long-standing culture of ignorant and evil exploitive "salvation artists" always makes me feel less alone and less like I'm misinterpreting things.

  



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Brothers and sisters!

I say, brothers and sisters lend me your ear! I have delved deep into the words of Mr. Sinclair Lewis as penned in the remarkable book Elmer Gantry. This author from the early 20th century launched a scathing condemnation of organized religion, with a particular focus on the Baptist Church.

His protagonist, Mr. Elmer Gantry, as the title implies, is an extremely insincere and hypocritical preacher. Insincere and hypocritical! Indeed, that is the very heart and soul of the text. It is a text of considerable length, yet it manages to vividly展示 the numerous facets of the various Christian sects.

Elmer himself flits haphazardly from one to another, much like the lowest sinner descending the infernal layers of Hell, where evil assumes countless cunning disguises. Nothing is as it appears, just as in Elmer Gantry, where even "Scotty" the golf pro is not a genuine Scot but a fraud who learned his false accent from a Liverpudlian Irishman! False deceivers, be damned!

Such is the condemnation of Sinclair Lewis, a man who himself has had aspersions cast upon him. Yes, it is true, my brothers and sisters! Although Mr. Lewis criticizes the errant ways of organized religion's leaders, he also self-condemns, literally invoking his own name within the pages through the mouth of a critic of his past works.

Despite this, upon publication, the people of the State of New Hampshire, once renowned as the "Live Free or Die" State, invited Mr. Lewis to a New Hampshire jail cell. And the people of Virginia promised to hang, yes, I said hang the esteemed author for his work.

I pose this question to you, brothers and sisters: Is this Christianity? Is this God's will?

Ageless portrayal of the rise of a hypocrite

In our days at the turn of the 21st century, a significant portion of Sinclair Lewis' works can be regarded as social history. Since the era of his major works, social mores and the overall tone of society have undergone dramatic changes. However, ELMER GANTRY still feels like a story relevant to our times. Although it spans a period approximately from 1902 to 1926, and America has been transformed since then, the novel's fundamental concept - how a selfish, ignorant, bullying man who poses as a'regular guy' can deceive most people most of the time - remains highly applicable to us.

Business was the core of America during Lewis' era, and it still is. But a career model derived from that domain can be utilized in many other aspects of life. ELMER GANTRY is about a man who exploits religion and a Protestant church to ascend socially, acquire and abuse power for his own purposes. From Elmer's evangelical college days, filled with drinking, womanizing, a complete lack of ability or interest in studies, and his lying and manipulation to obtain what he desires, to the astonishing yet realistic conclusion of the book, Lewis vividly depicts an unprincipled climber; a man who will change any opinion, betray anyone, and do anything to get ahead. If we consider the sagas of TV evangelists in our time, the difference between their exposed hypocrisies and those written by Lewis is strikingly minimal. The only difference was that in the 1920s, there was no television for Elmer Gantry to take advantage of.

Certain parts of the book are more engaging than others - it is not of consistent quality - and at times, you may wonder why Lewis inserted a particular chapter. I am especially thinking of the two chapters regarding the fate of Frank Shallard, Gantry's alter-ego. They seemed like an afterthought, and the point was forcefully made, but for what purpose other than to shock? On the other hand, Lewis' use of the colloquial language of the era and inclusion of thousands of minor details of life in that period reveal a whole world that might, in the absence of ELMER GANTRY, have vanished from our consciousness. Overall, this is a powerful novel about an unscrupulous, offensive scoundrel that still has a strong resonance in our day. Sadly, the Gantrys of this world are endless.

**I would like readers to note that I wrote this review 21 years ago. Without boasting, I would just like to ask.... "You know what I'm talkin about?"