Elmer Gantry

Meet Elmer Gantry: a man utterly unsuited for the law, who stumbles into the ministry and discovers his true calling. Lewis charts Gantry's meteoric rise through the Baptist and Methodist hierarchies, his dabblings in revivalism and New Thought, and his forays into politics—all while navigating a life of drinking, womanizing, and scandal. Each misstep, rather than derailing him, seems to propel him further up the ladder, exposing the astonishing elasticity of institutional religion in the face of human frailty and outright charlatanism.