Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

January 21, 2020

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

For Elmer Gantry, religion is strictly a racket.  During his college years studying law (and barely passing his classes), he realizes that his voice is his most powerful tool (or weapon).  After raising hell in college, getting kicked out of the seminary, and working as a successful traveling salesman, Elmer meets up with a charismatic woman evangelist, Sister Sharon Falconer, and becomes an insincere, hypocritical, yet very effective evangelist, treating it like just another scam he can use to fool the rubes.

In stark contrast to Elmer is his seminary classmate Frank Shallard.  Not only does Frank strive to live a godly life, he has doubts about his faith, his calling, and the existence of God almost from his seminary days.  He contemplates a different calling for himself, wanting to explore aspects of current thought such as evolution.  Frank is scandalized by Elmer’s actions, especially his inflammatory preaching.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to read a classic every month.  I started with Lewis’ Elmer Gantry because it happened to be available through the library.  Sinclair Lewis’ novel satirizes religion, evangelism, and small town attitudes long before the days and downfall of televangelists like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (couldn’t you just see Elmer as a televangelist?).  Elmer Gantry isn’t technically historical fiction since it is a story set in the 1920’s and written in the 1920’s.  The novel differs significantly from the film version of the story.

Overall, Elmer is the definition of smarmy, a bull-shitter of the first magnitude.  He is desperately ambitious to BE someone, to be envied and revered, looked up to, a man of wealth and substance, but he doesn’t want to work for it.  The fire scene in the revival tent is a physical embodiment of Elmer’s morals:  he actually climbs over the fallen to get out of the burning tent, not caring that he is stepping on others.  He mistreats his wife and children, looks down on everyone else, lies and cheats.  He is often hurtful to others, even when he thinks he is being funny.  As a pastor, he advocates for a crackdown on vice, while being careful to hide his own adulterous activities.  Elmer Gantry is like a train wreck – he’s awful, but you just can’t look away.