Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry is the story of a charismatic, hard-drinking college football star who discovers that the pulpit offers better rewards than any other career open to a man of his limited scruples. Rising from small-town tent revivals to the leadership of a large urban church, Gantry lies, seduces, and bullies his way to the top of American religious life, all while preaching virtue to his congregations.

Sinclair Lewis published the novel in 1927, two years after Arrowsmith and three years before he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book provoked furious controversy — it was banned in Boston, denounced from pulpits across the country, and Lewis reportedly received death threats. Yet the portrait of religious hypocrisy struck a nerve with readers, and it became one of the bestselling novels of the decade.

Lewis drew on extensive research, including weeks spent observing revival meetings and interviewing clergymen, to create a satire that is both broadly comic and uncomfortably specific. The novel remains a sharp examination of the gap between public piety and private behavior in American life.