Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 that presents aspects of the religious activity of the United States in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, the protagonist, is attracted by drinking, making easy money (but he eventually renounces tobacco and alcohol) and chasing women. After various forays into smaller, fringe churches, he becomes a major moral and political force in the Methodist Church despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions. Elmer Gantry was published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927, dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken. Background Lewis researched the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. He first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger, pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, including the Reverend Leon Milton Birkhead, a Unitarian and an agnostic. Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City, Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide. Other Kansas City ministers Lewis interviewed included Burris Jenkins, Earl Blackman, I. M. Hargett, Bert Fiske, and Robert Nelson Horatio Spencer, who was rector of Grace and Holy Trinity Church, which is now the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri. Lewis finished the book while mending a broken leg on Jackfish Island in Rainy Lake, Minnesota. The character of Sharon Falconer was based on events in the career of the radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who founded the Pentecostal Christian denomination known as the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1927.