I finally read Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry, promoted as "the greatest, most vital and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since Voltaire." It was a hard slog, with the depth of a case study rather than a novel, marred by predictable plotting and undeveloped characters.
As I read, I kept wondering, why were people so angry when it was published in 1927? Gantry was more a man with ambitions and some charisma limited by poor education and small town upbringing than a dangerous demagogue. He certainly is no where near as interesting as Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker, and had none of their influence.
Billy Graham’s career is closer to Gantry’s. Both were associated early with women with greater credentials in evangelism than they. Graham married Ruth Bell, the daughter of missionaries to China. Gantry toured with a woman modeled on Aimee Simple McPherson. She died early, leaving the reader to wonder if his life would have been different had she lived.
Both changed churches. Gantry began as a Baptist, but was expelled for seducing a woman, then refusing to marry her. He joined the Methodists when they offered him new opportunities, but he continued to be haunted by the doubts of salvation planted by his mother’s church. Graham was born a Presbyterian, but changed to the Southern Baptist Convention. While he maintained that affiliation, his children were baptized as Presbyterians.
Most important, both mixed religion and politics as the pawns of more powerful men. Gantry discovered the value of politics when he supported an underdog mayoral candidate. He became friends with the movers and shakers of his community, and asked one for help when a woman tried to blackmail him. Lewis treats the relationship as one that normally arises in a small town, and only faults Gantry for his ambition when he conspires to lead the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.
Henry Luce and William Randolph Hearst promoted Graham’s first revival in New York as a deliberate attempt to scare people into anticommunist crusades. With fame, came prestige which politicians exploited by appearing with him. With time, Graham himself became seduced by them, and slowly became their spokesman. Most see him less as a grasping Gantry, than as a tragic figure caught in the consequences of his own successes.
So, what is it that separates these men, makes Graham a hero, condemns the others as hypocrites?
The obvious answer is sex. For Swaggart, sex was central to religious experience. It represented the devil that must constantly be wrestled with: sometimes faith triumphs; sometimes man weakens and must reestablished his link with God through begging for forgiveness and repentance. The struggle is as constant as breathing.
Jim Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, dramatized the choices for women born since Henry Miller and Hugh Hefner who wanted sexual freedom within the shelter of the Assemblies of God that fostered Swaggart. Unfortunately for her, Bakker’s interest could not be sustained, and her struggle for faith degenerated into progressively more ludicrous make-up.
Elmer Gantry didn’t treat women as either sirens or sources of pleasure. He preferred women who doted on him. Unlike Swaggart who frequented prostitutes, Gantry maintained long time relationships with his mistresses. He broke with them for the same reason he tired of his wife; when his social world improved, they could not change, and no longer glorified his ego.
Lewis made a mistake when he introduced infidelity into his plot if he wanted to show a truly dangerous man like his religious contemporaries, Robert Shuler and J. Frank Norris who were broadcasting racism, nativism and homophobia in Los Angeles and Dallas. Lewis wasn’t interested enough in sex to create a sensual man. But his readers were interested enough to read more into his circumspect account of adultery, and looked no deeper into Elmer’s character.
It’s also possible sex was easier for them to discuss than the fact Gantry never met a single admirable clergyman among the Baptists and Methodists who ordained him. Those with genuine faith were ineffective. Most condemned evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, but less from belief than as received wisdom of their seminary training. Most voiced platitudes without understanding, and certainly none, but the marginal, ever had doubts.
In one scene, Gantry hosts a luncheon for the clergymen of Zenith to promote a united crusade against prostitution. As the men chat, Lewis shows each refusing to join, not because posse justice was wrong, but because each was too jealous of the potential success of Gantry.
Greed or the lust for power that characterized Gantry and many of his fellow clergymen still provokes many of the biggest church scandals. A woman set out to blackmail Gantry. Methodists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attacked Bakker and took over his ministry when Jessica Hahn accused him of adultery. Another revivalist, Marvin Gorman, hired detectives to spy on Swaggart.
People are not interested in recognizing an institution has failed. When they are confronted with wide scale duplicity, they search for the one person who can redeem their faith in institutions, who can reassure them a bad person does not contaminate all they’ve lived by. Billy Graham’s website recounts the downfalls of Swaggart, Bakker, and Falwell, then trumpets his compassion when it lets us know he visited in Bakker in prison. It goes further and tells us "Graham maintained his own integrity and the sincerity of his message."
Lewis wants us to think Elmer Gantry has that ability when he asks his parishoners if they believe in the "fiendishness of my accusers," then promises to lead them in a crusade "for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land."
Lewis put too many characteristics of powerful ministers into one person to show the dangers of ambition alluded to with the luncheon. Gantry combines the weakness of Jimmy Swaggart and the fecklessness of Tammy Faye, who divorced her jailed husband, with the charisma of Graham and the media savvy of Jim Bakker. He has the opportunism of Norris and Shuler, but lacks the discipline to become Charles Coughlin.
When confronted with would-be heroes, people search for evidence of human frailty, and once that is exposed, no longer care. In real life, that concern destroys the power of men like Swaggart and Bakker. In the novel, it limits the dramatic impact to tawdry affairs. The truly dangerous man either disciplines himself to overcome his urges or sublimates them into his ambitions. One simply doesn’t worry at the end when Gantry is poised to take over napap, because one knows he’ll destroy himself.
Sources:
Graham, Billy. "Televangelist Scandals," at
unctv.org/ruthandbillygraham.
Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry, 1927; cover blurb from Literary Review on cover of 1958 Dell paperback edition.
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