Elmer Gantry

“The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.””

— Sinclair Lewis

“He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason””

— Sinclair Lewis

“He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons.””

— Sinclair Lewis

“And though he had almost flunked in Greek, his thesis on 'Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt' had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical Theology.””

— Sinclair Lewis

“And when Elmer was about to slip out to the kitchen with her to make lemonade, Benham held him by demanding, 'What do you think of John Wesley's doctrine of perfection?''Oh, it's absolutely sound and proven,' admitted Elmer, wondering what the devil Mr. Wesley's doctrine of perfection might be.””

— Sinclair Lewis

“The Reverend Elmer Gantry was reading an illustrated pink periodical devoted to prize fighters and chorus girls in his room at Elizabeth J. Schmutz Hall late of an afternoon when two large men walked in without knocking."Why, good evening, Brother Bains”

— Sinclair Lewis

“(There is a Northern and Southern convention of this distinguished denomination, because before the Civil War the Northern Baptists proved by the Bible, unanswerably, that slavery was wrong; and the Southern Baptists proved by the Bible, irrefutably, that slavery was the will of God.)””

— Sinclair Lewis

“It was not an esthetic room. Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to regard them as worldly, and to content himself with art which 'presented a message,' to regard 'Les Miserables' as superior because the bishop was a kind man, and 'The Scarlet Letter' as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind.””

— Sinclair Lewis

“Well, he'd get help from the Bible. It was all inspired, every word, no matter what scoffers like Jim said. He'd take the first text he turned to and talk on that.He opened on: 'Now THEREFORE, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which ARE beyond the river, be ye far from thence,' an injunction spirited but not at present helpful.””

— Sinclair Lewis