Elmer Gantry

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Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry and Shirley Jones as Lulu Bains in Richard Brooks's 1960 film adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry.

View Elmer Gantry testifying in the tent meeting scene in a film adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel of the same name

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Elmer Gantry

novel by Lewis

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Elmer Gantry, novel by Sinclair Lewis, a satiric indictment of fundamentalist religion that caused an uproar upon its publication in 1927.

The title character of Elmer Gantry starts out as a greedy, shallow, philandering Baptist minister, turns to evangelism, and eventually becomes the leader of a large Methodist congregation. Throughout the novel Gantry encounters fellow religious hypocrites, including Mrs. Evans Riddle, Judson Roberts, and Sharon Falconer, with whom he becomes romantically involved. Although he is often exposed as a fraud, Gantry is never fully discredited.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.