Mikey B.'s Reviews> Elmer Gantry

A truly delightful novel. Lewis takes obvious pleasure from poking fun at religion – and he takes on the various church denominations and destroys them with attacks from multiple positions. He exposes hypocrisy through Elmer Gantry – who supposedly is a protector of morality while enhancing his career by vapid publicity, name-calling and disdaining the women who fall in love with him. He also ignores his family while pursuing his goals.

This book exposes the lust for power behind the evangelical movements and more traditional churches. It is also about the cult of personality – in this case Elmer Gantry. This is even more abundantly clear with the Sharon Falconer episode. Actually the book looses some of the momentum, I feel, after the sudden death (dubious at that) of Sharon midway through the story. Nevertheless what follows is Elmer’s continuing journey through the religion business. Elmer switches convictions whenever there is opportunity for his advancement. There are a host of colourful characters. Most of the religious ones are portrayed as extremely flawed. It is interesting that towards the end of the book Elmer’s crusade has the look of an attack on liberalism – against the teaching of science in schools, for prohibition – the keeping of “moral values”.