ELMER GANTRY by SINCLAIR LEWIS

[NanaCat]

5. I've always been aware of the issues Sinclair Lewis addressed

In that book. After all, I have first-hand experience with the Elmer Gantry types out there. A friend of mine and I had a famous televangelist proposition both of us for a three-way. At a bar. Did I mention that he was 50 and we were both 18? He got booted from his church eventually for his philandering ways.

Oh--and before that lovely encounter, a close friend's uncle was the minister of the biggest Methodist church in town...until it came out that he was having an affair with the church organist. And the church secretary. And--oh yeah--what got the ball rolling? The 16 year old parishioner he impregnated--one of our classmates, no less! I got to watch that Peyton Place episode unfold, up close and personal. Especially how the first reaction of that church was to blame those XXs for being sluts and foul temptresses, excommunicated all three, and even tried to run them out of town in shame. Oh their man of the lawd couldn't have done anything like that, he's too good, too holy for that! Well, until the tide turned, and he, too, got the boot.

By the way, despite leaving their flocks in disgrace, both ministers had new churches within a year, and their new churches became as big or bigger than the old ones. My televangelist even got booted from his new church after getting caught--again! And he got a whole new batch of cultists at his new church yet again! It never stopped with him!

So Elmer Gantry can't teach me anything about Christian hypocrisy, or the hypocrisies of the undeserving privileged, that I haven't known for over 45 years now.