Rating: 
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: The slang is dated, and today's technology isn't foreseen, but the human nature is exactly the same. You can envision Jimmy Swaggert, James Bakker, Paula White or any of the other innumerable other TV evangelist charlatans in a hot second, when you read about Elmer's true nature as a womanizing, conniving, deceptive hypocrite. Of course, Elmer would have been unfrocked a bit sooner by today's prying media, or would he? Look at Swaggert, whose sins are like Elmer's, and whose "repentance" absolutely mirrors Elmer's at the end of the book. He still fills up the churches like Elmer did. What "Elmer Gantry" really proves is that the American mind is still fertile ground for would-be messiahs, no matter how base and hypocritical they are in real life. Indeed, the book makes you wonder if all religion hasn't always been thus. Today's Catholic child abuse scandals, the Taliban destruction of art, and Pat Robertson's political ambitions surely argue that "Elmer Gantry" is not some simple, anti-religious tract. In that respect, the book is ultimately useful. Indeed, this book may be one of the most valuable books of the 20th Century in that it helped thwart the American recurring tendency toward theocracy. Where is the book's kind today?
Rating:
Summary: Was Elmer Gantry the model for the televangelists?
Review: The timing of "Elmer Gantry" (1927) is consistent with its being a fictionalization of the careers of Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson. But parallels with real-world history played little part in the book's success. At a time when a large majority of believers were repulsed by the antics of flamboyant "hot gospel" evangelists, "Elmer Gantry" touched a lot of receptive nerves. ...
When the movie, "Elmer Gantry," was released, the suggestion was raised that Gantry was modeled after Billy Graham. Since Graham was still a child when the book was written, the suggestion was nonsense. But it probably sold a lot of tickets.
Ultimately, the identification of Gantry and Falconer as real people is peripheral, even irrelevant, to the book's appeal. Lewis portrayed barnstorming preachers as lying humbugs, and every time a Jimmy Swaggart or a Jim Bakker is exposed as exactly that, persons tempted to write a book on such a subject are reminded that it has already been done - incomparably. While Lewis portrayed all religion as something less than a force for good, he did so in a low-key manner that enabled moderate believers to rationalize that the book's target was only extremist, flamboyant religions, not their own conservative sects. Lewis won a Nobel Prize for his literature, and "Elmer Gantry" leaves little doubt that it was well deserved.
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