Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry is a novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 (published in 1927) that satirically represents aspects of the religious activity of America within fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. This ferocious satire by Lewis deals with fanatical religiosity and hypocrisy in the United States during the 1920s by presenting a preacher (the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry) who starts by preferring booze, easy money (though eventually renouncing tobacco and alcohol) and chasing women. After various forays into evangelism, he becomes a successful Methodist minister despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.

Elmer Gantry was first published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927 and was dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken.

Background

Lewis performed research for 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 (not Burris Jenkins), pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them 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 a large Episcopal parish, Grace and Holy Trinity Church, which is now the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri.