Dr. Bruno Zechlin is Professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Old Testament Exegesis at Mizpah Theological Seminary. Blessed Virgin, Mother Hera, Mother Frigga, Mother Ishtar, Mother Isis, dread Mother Astarte of the weaving arms, it is thy priestess… .” They read from the Song of Solomon. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. At the start of the novel Elmer is a college football player so little given to piety that he is known as “Hell-cat.” At the end of the book he is Dr. Gantry, minister of the large Wellspring Methodist Church in Zenith, with hopes of becoming the head of a national moral-rearmament organization, the National Association for the Purification of the Arts and the Press (Napap). Schorer also says that, while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that: "He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." While working for the Daily Courier in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1908, he wrote an editorial about fraudulent evangelists, which suggests that the seeds of Elmer Gantry were already being sown. He is treasurer of the Congregational church, but Elmer succeeds in getting him to support the Methodists instead. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? And when his hero joins the Methodist Church, Lewis takes full advantage of the opportunity to satirize another sect. He urges Elmer to become a minister. Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth century literature. Elmer cheats, he boasts, he lies, he deceives. Another famous name was Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944), a female evangelist who clearly resembled the fictional Sharon Falconer. . The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. He marries Cleo but gets bored with her and resents her lack of sexual passion.

He begins a course of home study, in a brief episode which must play ironically against Benjamin Franklin’s self-education. Elmer, after all, is not an idealist; though he ventures forth, he does not do so in the name of chivalry; and, finally, he does not practice the transmuting powers of fancy. Especially ironic is the way he champions love, an emotion he seems incapable of, in his sermons, preaches against ambition, when he himself is so patently ambitious, and organizes crusades against (mainly sexual) immorality, when he has difficulty resisting sexual temptation himself. It is the Morning and the Evening Star.

The novel spawned two separate film adaptations, Mantrap (1926), and Untamed (1940).

Its hero makes his way, with the help of native cunning and oratorical ability, through almost the whole domain of religion in the United States. The purpose of Napap is “to make life conform to the ideals agreed upon by the principal Christian Protestant denominations.” This would be accomplished by combining into one association all the moral organizations in America—the Anti-Saloon League, the Lord’s Day Alliance, the Watch and Ward Society, and the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals—and then lobbying for legislated morality. SYNOPSIS … Don’t be afraid! Eddie Fislinger is a student at Terwillinger College and the president of the Y.M.C.A. Novels for Students. How would you describe his demeanor? “Did he come to bring peace or more war? Cleo Benham is the high-minded daughter of Nathaniel Benham. He is a worldly man and gives Elmer some shrewd advice about how to build up the church. 117–44.

I love the big ones—murder, lust, cruelty, ambition!” She invites Elmer to visit the old Falconer place in Virginia, but when they arrive, she confesses that she is really just Katie Jonas, born in Utica, whose father worked in a brickyard. 14, Twayne, 1962, pp. "Religion and Sports: Three Muscular Christians in American Literature". The Allegory of Lov…, Lewis, Sinclair