Film 🎥: Religious Controversy: Elmer Gantry (1960)

Spirituality should be a desirable, positive, and uplifting quality of our existence. That sense of being greater than ourselves has a great deal to do with containment of ego and pride. It is a sad state of affairs that spirituality is too often smothered and kicked to the curb by humans in favor of religion. While spiritual progress should make a person more selfless and altruistic, religion often seems to make people veer off in the opposite direction by promoting avarice and arrogance instead.

These negative, destructive qualities are played out to memorable effect in Elmer Gantry, a forceful drama of a conman and an evangelist commodifying religion in rural America. Based on a novel by Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry is the most searing portrait of of how evangelism makes a mockery of Christianity than just about any film to broach the subject. The parallels between the evangelist Sharon Falconer (played by Jean Simmons) in Elmer Gantry and real-life 1920s evangelist preacher Aimee Semple McPherson could not be more clear. The scandal surrounding McPherson is well documented from many sources, particularly in the 1976 TV movie The Disappearance Of Aimee discussed in a previous “Religious Controversies” post.

In the case of Elmer Gantry though, the focus is more on the con man of the title (played by Burt Lancaster) with a great deal of over-the-top histrionics and scenery chewing that might be a bit much for 2022 viewers. Nevertheless, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1960 for his bombastic effort. While the self-deluded Falconer tries to radiate sincerity in her quests to bring sinners to the comfort of the Lord’s forgiveness, Gantry terrifies them with fears of eternal hellfire and damnation if they don’t express forgiveness for their so-called sins – – during the very same tent-revival gatherings!

While all of this may appear baffling to many people watching stories of this type, Elmer Gantry sharply illustrates the creeping, insidious methods evangelists used (and continue to use!) to gain emotional and psychological control over their adherents. What is specifically disturbing in the narrative is how Gantry takes center stage in manipulating Falconer, becoming her stage-manager and later drawing in the religious leaders of mainstream churches in the fictional city of Zenith to facilitate his own drive to gain power, money, and self-glorification.

How distasteful this drive to snare converts and keep those already captive into the “fold”cannot be over exaggerated. While it was fairly easy to beguile the simpletons in the sticks with dazzling tent revivals, Falconer was warned against bringing her ministry to the presumably more wary and sophisticated city dwellers. Yet, Elmer Gantry illustrates how religious leaders of “respectable” mainstream churches could be persuaded, conned, (despite their initial reluctance) or blackmailed into using their influence to turn religion into a money-grubbing, carnival freak show. The posturing of religious leaders instigated by Gantry to pressure Zenith into more rigorous enforcement of laws against speakeasies, brothels, and gambling dens quickly exposes Gantry’s own tawdry past and hypocrisy.

Despite the best efforts of an investigative journalist (cooly underplayed by reliable character actor Arthur Kennedy) to expose Gantry and Falconer as having no degrees in theology or other credentials to be religious leaders, they are allowed to plow ahead with their fake ministry which ultimately leads to tragedy. What a present day viewer might think about most after watching Elmer Gantry is why there is no government oversight to protect a vulnerable public from religious cults and evangelical hucksterism? Apparently there are no such protections.

Nonetheless, Christianity should be minding its own house by focusing on its adherents spiritual needs rather than grasping for financial windfalls! It is plainly apparent that the so-called Christians of Elmer Gantry and of our real-life era have consistently denied the wishes of Jesus himself. One of the most memorable narratives of the New Testament is when Jesus entered Jerusalem with his disciples for Passover and angrily expelled all of the merchants and money changers from the temple. He was justifiably appalled that it was being reduced to “a den of thieves” and “a house of trade.” It seems not much has changed during the past 2,000 years.