"Elmer Gantry" review

The protagonist of the Sinclair Lewis novel, “Elmer Gantry,” is a sham preacher who uses the church pulpit to advance his insatiable lust for power and self-glorification. Pugnacious, provincial and unscrupulous, he’s a character many would recognize – the burly, baritone-voiced pastor, always seeking publicity for his “moral crusades.”

Lewis’s book is picaresque in its portrayal of a rogue character going from one adventure to the next, never finding redemption. Part of the fun in reading the book is finding out what despicable thing Elmer Gantry is going to do next.

At times, the book lags as the story transitions to Elmer’s next adventure, but overall it keeps the reader engaged. The book’s most page turning appeal is in its portrayal of the cozy relationship between church and commerce. Church life is depicted as affectation – rotarianism in the guise of devout worship. The backroom politics, in-fighting and rivalries of the church business are a world in which the self-aggrandizing Elmer thrives.

In this respect, “Elmer Gantry” follows the vein of Lewis’s earlier novels, “Main Street” and “Babbitt.” Written in the 1920s, the books are a social critique of post-World War I mainstream America, portrayed as vapid, soulless and with an unthinking drive toward affluence. In “Elmer Gantry,” the white-bred Protestant church is an arm of the Establishment, preserving the status quo. The novel reflects a trend of the era – propagated in best-selling books like Bruce Barton’s “The Man Nobody Knows” – of equating Christianity with capitalism, a forerunner of the recent “prosperity theology” trend.

With “Elmer Gantry,” Lewis responded to several trends and news events of his era, which sound strangely contemporary. Elmer is a fundamentalist preacher who denounces the Godless teaching of evolution – an issue that first arose out of the Scopes trial. He rides to fame by attacking immorality. If Elmer Gantry were around today, he would be lashing out against gay marriage, abortion and fighting the “culture wars.” In the novel, he rails against alcohol and other forms of vice like gambling, tobacco and prostitution – the political footballs of his day. Like many clergymen of recent years, Elmer indulges in the same illicit pleasures he condemns from the pulpit. He is an incessant womanizer and carries on extra-marital affairs.

The novel begins around 1902 when Elmer is a college football star at a Baptist school in rural Kansas. Nicknamed “Hellcat,” he is rebellious, irreverent and disdains piety. He is revealed in the first few paragraphs to be a drunkard and bully. One night, he picks a fight with men heckling a proselytizing fellow classmate and his actions are misinterpreted to be a public conversion to the Christian faith.

Initially, Elmer vacillates between trying to please his atheist roommate, Jim Lefferts, and those trying to bring him into the fold. But Elmer has a sonorous voice that buttresses his powers of elocution. His ability to command an audience can yield him the dominance and adoration he desires. The ministry seems a perfect fit for his inexorable narcism so Elmer Gantry becomes a Christian.

Privately, Elmer is indifferent to the ideas he espouses so bombastically from the pulpit. He feels there may be something to this Christianity, but essentially he neither believes nor disbelieves. Extremely shallow, it’s as if he lacks the most fundamental introspection needed to comprehend spiritual matters. Elmer is drawn to the business side of church, pulpit orotund, officiating over the various components of church beauracracy and using sales and marketing techniques to publicize his churches – and himself. He is described at various points with words like “commercial” and “ward politician.”

The book follows Elmer through seminary school and his ministerial career as he advances to the helm of bigger and wealthier congregations. He progresses from backwater country churches ultimately to a large metropolitan church in the fictional city and state of Zenith, Winemac, the same setting as the novel “Babbitt.” Everywhere Elmer goes, he leaves behind scandal and shattered lives, while he emerges unscathed. Under the scrutiny of today’s aggressive media, he would be exposed as has been the case with many modern Gantrys. Towards the end of the book, however, there is a question about whether this Teflon preacher’s luck has run out.

Lewis appears to have fun with this character, mocking him with a sense of humor. He sets up scenes in which it appears that Elmer will finally show a shred of compassion, then hits the reader by having him do something cruel. In the final chapters, however, his ambitions and rising power grow pernicious, foreshadowing disturbing trends of the coming decades. He becomes the head of an organization, NAPAP (National Association for the Purification of the Arts and Press), which sounds uncannily similar to such future operations as the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family. He appears alarmist, fear-mongering and McCarthy-esque, when addressing a meeting of clergymen and running down a list of saloons and brothels, and proclaiming that they be shut down. He convinces the police to make him a lieutenant leading a vice squad.

In the most chilling scene of the book, a young woman is humming “Onward Christian Soldiers” when Gantry’s posse forces its way into her home like the Gestapo. Then they barge into the bedroom of her half-dressed roommate and a man, bent on arresting them for the crime of pre-marital sex.

Elmer’s ego grows dangerously delusional in the final chapters of the book as he imagines becoming “super-president” and “emperor of America.” While Elmer is one-dimensional, other characters provide the depth that gives the book its substance – particularly the characters Jim Lefferts and Frank Schallard. They are counter-weights to Elmer.

While Elmer is domineering over everyone else, he is the subordinate one in his friendship with Lefferts, whose approval he is always seeking. The best of friends, the two are opposites. Elmer is crude, uncultured and eschews books. Jim is elegant, scholarly and possesses a personal library. While Elmer “swallows ideas whole,” Jim is contemplative, deliberate. Even their positions on the football team denote their differences. Elmer plays tackle, a supplier of brute force; Jim is quarterback, the team strategist. (Elmer is only strategic in dreaming up his own PR.)

Frank is a fellow student at the seminary where Elmer trains for the ministry. Scholarly, pensive, empathetic, he is everything Elmer is not. The son of a Baptist minister, he is tortured by doubts that go against his religious training. Still, he feels a responsibility toward the people to whom he is ministering.

The characters, Jim and Frank, juxtaposed with Elmer illustrate one of the book’s most prevailing themes: provincialism versus intellectualism, or “Fundamentalism” versus “Higher Criticism,” terms which recur throughout the book. Fundamentalism first came to prominence in the 1920s. The conservative Christian movement promoting literal interpretation of scripture was a response to Higher Criticism, a school of thought that originated in Europe during the 1870s and spread to America at the turn of the century. Higher Criticism did not accept the Bible as literal or infallible and judged it by the same standards as other literary and historical works.

Lewis’s book piques interest in early 20th century history with quick mentions of the Four Minute Man movement (a PR campaign to drum up support for World War I), the Klu Klux Klan (at the peak of its popularity in the 1920s) and violent labor strikes. These passing references place in concrete terms the intolerant ideas Elmer and other well-heeled church leaders perpetuate: prejudice, nativism and paternalism. Church is depicted as a social mechanism for the affluent to keep the common people in their place, an idea Lewis first introduced in “Babbitt.” Today, with declining attendance, churches probably don’t wield that much social control, but it is interesting to examine their cultural role 80 to 100 years ago.

Along with references to such forgotten trends as “muscular Christianity” and the “New Thought” movement, “Elmer Gantry” makes allusions to famous people of the time, obscure today. Some say Elmer’s character was inspired by Billy Sunday, the vitriolic, two-fisted professional baseball player-turned-evangelist. Interestingly, Sunday was accused of plagiarizing the writings of agnostic Robert Ingersoll into his sermons, something Elmer does repeatedly throughout the novel.

The character Sharon Falconer is a dead ringer for Aime Sempe McPherson, a renowned evangelist of the ‘20s. McPherson, a self-styled “phrophetess,” and “faith healer” was a shrewd businesswoman who pioneered the concepts of Christian enterprise, megachurches and the use of glitzy showbiz theatrics in church services. She was known to be difficult to work for and to have had several lovers -- all characteristics that Sharon has in spades.

Sharon is the female counterpart to Elmer, but much more compelling. The only true love of Elmer’s life, she is sensual, passionate and delusional, believing in the cult of her own marketed image. Under her tutelage, Elmer cuts his teeth in the religion business. Like no other character in the book, she is the quintessence of the gimmickry and tacky commercialization of Christianity today. When Lewis describes the ostentatious cross revolving iridescently above Sharon’s just constructed dream temple, one can see it vividly. Sharon is Joan of Arc-like in the most climactic scene in the book. A few of the side characters in “Elmer Gantry” are worthy of being protagonists in their own novels, but none more than Sharon. In the most eldritch scene of the book, she and Elmer make love before a pagan altar – a scene that seems over the top until one learns that it mirrors an account told by a man who claimed to be a former lover of McPherson’s.

Most of the material for “Elmer Gantry,” however, was gleaned from Lewis’s direct observations of regular, everyday people – more interesting than the celebrity references. Lewis modeled Elmer’s character much more on the Kansas clergymen he observed than he did on Sunday. He attended several church services in the Kansas City-Overland Park area, became acquainted with several clergymen and took part in Bible studies. Lewis did his research; he brilliantly captures vernacular and colloquialisms of the early 20th century Kansas. He evokes images of the prairie, small village life and the rustic sounding names he gives his fictional towns are irresistible. It has been speculated that Terwilinger College where Elmer attends is based on Ottawa University, a Baptist school in northeast Kansas and that Thorvilsen College, Tewillinger’s rival is modeled on Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas.

The most common criticism leveled against “Elmer Gantry” – and a legitimate one -- is its one-sidedness. From the tone of the book, it would be easy to conclude that Lewis was atheist or agnostic, but the record of his personal views is opaque. While some of his early writings attack religious hypocrisy, in his youth, Lewis considered becoming a missionary. One could speculate that he was afflicted with an inner conflict of faith versus doubt like Frank – the character he would create. One might also surmise that he turned his back on religion and became an atheist like Jim. However, Jim had polish and Lewis was awkward and gangly. There is another interesting possibility. Eddie Fislinger, a somewhat dim-witted college student, is something of a pest with his constant declarations of religious piety. As a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, Lewis was known to drive fellow classmates crazy with his persistent religiosity. So perhaps Eddie is a version of the youthful Lewis. Maybe all three characters possess components of Lewis’s personality. Lewis’s own comment on Elmer does nothing to clear the ambiguity: “I kind of like that guy.”

The concepts of faith and belief are explored in an exchange between Frank and a theology professor Bruno Zechlin. In the most penetrating dialogue of the book, the older man confides that he’s an atheist. Their conversation introduces the most thought provoking theme to appear in the book: Is religion, even if proven false, a good thing because it brings hope to peoples’ lives?

Lewis squanders an excellent opportunity to produce a counter-argument from the perspective of belief and spiritual authenticity. Andrew Pengilly, an old Civil War veteran turned Methodist minister, is the only truly virtuous and genuine clergyman in the book. At one point, he and Elmer meet and the old man asks him, “Mr. Gantry, why don’t you believe in God?” There is a thud as the chapter ends. Lewis could have produced lively dialogue, exploring the theme of sincere religion versus churchy pretensions, but he lets the opportunity slip by.

Lewis also makes some disappointing decisions in the development of certain characters late in the book, mostly with Frank. He turns this likable character into a whining crybaby as he launches on a tirade about his fellow ministers and loss of faith. Clearly, Lewis was casting Frank’s intellectualism as effeminate in contrast to Elmer’s simple-mindedness in connection with virility, but it’s not worth it. This was the sad waste of a good character.

Also, Lewis’s treatment of two female characters -- Lulu (Elmer’s mistress) and Cleo (his wife) -- late in the book is unrealistic. They remain obsequious to him despite the emotional abuse he heaps on them. In reality, Cleo probably would be servile to Elmer, but more out of resignation or fear, than love, which is what she does in the book. Also, early in the book, Elmer gets Lulu in trouble and deserts her. How likely is it that she is going to show up years later and throw herself at his feet? Or did he really get her pregnant? She tearfully gives every indication that she’s in the family way, yet when she reappears years later, married with two kids, there is no mention of whether one of them might be Elmer’s child. So what happened? Did he knock her up or what?

This is the only flaw in the plot development, but it’s a bothersome one. The problems with plot and character keep “Elmer Gantry” from being a great book, but it is very good, well worth reading and definitely a classic.

“Elmer Gantry” was written at a time when people were more naïve and apt to put blind faith in their ministers. No doubt, that mindset contributed to the controversy the book provoked. Sunday called Lewis one of “Satan’s cohorts.” The book was banned, Lewis was threatened with jail and lynch mobs wanted to get hold of him, ironically the same kind of violence intolerant thugs resorted to in “Elmer Gantry.”

Today, after so many evangelists have been exposed as frauds, Elmer Gantry appears a familiar character. In our era of megachurches marketing “hip” services, “Intelligent Design” controversies, court battles over church and state boundaries and the mega-hot-button issue of gay marriage, “Elmer Gantry” is timely.

Best line: “Oh, I hate the little vices – smoking, swearing, scandal, drinking just enough to be silly. I like the big ones – murder, lust, cruelty, ambition!” – Sharon Falconer

Gateway literature: “White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement” by Allan J. Lichtman. This book traces the origin of the Christian conservative movement to the 1920s.

“In His Steps” by Charles Sheldon. This book, written in 1896 by a Kansas minister, introduced the phrase, “What would Jesus do?” Although the phrase has been adopted by conservative evangelicals, Sheldon was a liberal pioneer of the “social gospel” movement. If not his book, one would do well to at least read Timothy Miller’s essay on Sheldon in the book, “John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History.”

“Oil” by Upton Sinclair. A character in the novel is based on Aimee Sempe McPherson.

“The Scarlett Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This classic novel gets a mention in “Elmer Gantry and if you haven’t read it, you should.

Outside the Box literature: “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. At one point in “Elmer Gantry,” the cynical, worldly attorney and church deacon T.J. Rigg describes his role with the church as a “hobby.” He takes a paternalistic tone that reminds me of Mr. Norton, a minor character in the “Invisible Man” who uses his trusteeship of a black college to boost his ego.