On the surface a ferocious "roast" of the Fundamentalist preacher, Elmer Gantry is also a nuanced analysis of the contradictions that inevitably arise when religion becomes a profession. Lewis' characterization of the Protestant minister as "professional good man" may not apply so well anymore, but there is still a lot there that does. What makes the book great is that it includes in its sweeping study not only the successful ministers (such as the bumbling, overbearing and always-falling-on-his-feet Elmer), but also a handful of unsuccessful ones; some who are able to manage the paradoxical nature of their profession, and some who are not, and at least one who is destroyed by it.
Quotes:
He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.
He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.
He had almost as much satisfaction out of denouncing liquor as other collegians had out of drinking it.
"There wasn't any fake about it! I really did repent all these darn' fool sins. Even smoking--I'm going to cut it out. I did feel the--the peace of God.
They say it's all this gab that gets 'em going and drags in the sinners, but don't you believe it--it's the music. Say, I can get more damn' sinners weeping on a E-flat cornet than nine gospel-artists all shooting off their faces at once!
Cecil Aylston was a good deal of a mystic, a good deal of a ritualist, a bit of a rogue, something of a scholar, frequently a drunkard, more frequently an ascetic, always a gentleman, and always an adventurer.
"Yes-sir, like the hymn says, the hell of our fathers is good enough for me."
Suddenly he was kneeling at the window, and for the first time since he had forsaken Jim Lefferts and football and joyous ribaldry, his soul was free of all the wickedness which had daubed it--oratorical ambitions, emotional orgasm, dead sayings of dull seers, dogmas, and piety. The golden winding river drew him, the sky uplifted him, and with outflung arms he prayed for deliverance from prayer.
People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three or four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.
Sharon christened it "The Waters of Jordan Tabernacle," added more and redder paint, more golden gold, and erected an enormous revolving cross, lighted at night with yellow and ruby electric bulbs.
He prayed briefly--he was weary of prayers in which the priest ramblingly explained to God that God really was God.
He could hear ten thousand Methodist elders croaking, "Avoid the vurry appearance of evil."
They were not all of them leonine and actor-like, these staff officers. No few were gaunt, or small, wiry, spectacled, and earnest; but they were all admirable politicians, long in memory of names, quick to find flattering answers. They believed that the Lord rules everything, but that it was only friendly to help him out; and that the enrollment of political allies helped almost as much as prayer in becoming known as suitable material for lucrative pastorates.
"Now that's what I'd vote for," said Rigg. "That's what gets 'em. Nothing like a good juicy vice sermon to bring in the crowds. Yes, sir! Fearless attack on all this drinking and this awful sex immorality that's getting so prevalent."
He had made one discovery superb in its simple genius--the best way to get money was to ask for it, hard enough and often enough.
The new Ku Klux Klan, an organization of the fathers, younger brothers, and employees of the men who had succeeded and became Rotarians
"Mr. Gantry," said Andrew Pengilly, "why don't you believe in God?"
What a joke that a minister, who's supposed to have such divine authority that he can threaten people with hell, is also supposed to be such an office-boy that he can be cussed out and fired if he dares to criticize capitalists or his fellow ministers!
"Oh, tut, tut, Frank; trouble with you is," Philip McGarry yawned, "trouble with you is, you like arguing more than you do patiently working out the spiritual problems of some poor, dumb, infinitely piteous human being that comes to you for help, and that doesn't care a hoot whether you advocate Zoroastrianism or Seventh-day Adventism, so long as he feels that you love him and that you can bring him strength from a power higher than himself.
I know that if you could lose your intellectual pride, if you could forget that you have to make a new world, better'n the Creator's, right away tonight--you and Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis (Lord, how that book of Lewis', 'Main Street,' did bore me, as much of it as I read; it just rambled on forever, and all he could see was that some of the Gopher Prairie hicks didn't go to literary teas quite as often as he does!--that was all he could see among those splendid heroic pioneers)! Well, as I was saying, if instead of starting in where your congregation has left off, because they never had your chance, you could draw them along with you--"
For over a year now I've never addressed a prayer to any definite deity. I say something like 'Let us in meditation, forgetting the worries of daily life, join our spirits in longing for the coming of perpetual peace'--something like that." "Well, it sounds like a pretty punk prayer to me, Frankie! The only trouble with you is, you feel you're called on to rewrite the Lord's Prayer for him!"
A meeting of the church body had been called to decide on Frank's worthiness, and the members had been informed by Styles that Frank was attacking all religion. Instantly a number of the adherents who had been quite unalarmed by what they themselves had heard in the pulpit perceived that Frank was a dangerous fellow and more than likely to injure omnipotent God.
"But," he pondered, "isn't it possible that the whole thing is so gorgeous a fairy-tale that to criticize it would be like trying to prove that Jack did not kill the giant? No sane priest could expect a man of some education to think that saying masses had any effect on souls in Purgatory; they'd expect him to take the whole thing as one takes a symphony. And, oh, I am lonely for the fellowship of the church!"
The building was of cheerful brick, trimmed with limestone. It had Gothic windows, a carillon in the square stone tower, dozens of Sunday School rooms, a gymnasium, a social room with a stage and a motion-picture booth, an electric range in the kitchen, and over it all a revolving electric cross and a debt.
Dear Lord, thy work is but begun! We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!"
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