Reverend Elmer Gantry
will answer these questions and others next Sunday morning. Gantry shoots straight from the shoulder.
Poplar Avenue Methodist Church
Follow the crowd to the beautiful times
At the beautiful church with the beautiful chimes.
III
While he was in Sparta, national prohibition arrived, with its high-colored opportunities for pulpit-orators, and in Sparta he was inspired to his greatest political campaign.
The obviously respectable candidate for mayor of Sparta was a Christian Business Man, a Presbyterian who was a manufacturer of rubber overshoes. It is true that he was accused of owning the buildings in which were several of the worst brothels and blind tigers in the city, but it had amply been explained that the unfortunate gentleman had not been able to kick out his tenants, and that he gave practically all his receipts from the property to missionary work in China.
His opponent was a man in every way objectionable to Elmer’s principles: a Jew, a radical who criticized the churches for not paying taxes, a sensational and publicity-seeking lawyer who took the cases of labor unions and negroes without fee. When he consulted them, Elmer’s Official Board agreed that the Presbyterian was the only man to support. They pointed out that the trouble with the radical Jew was that he was not only a radical but a Jew.
Yet Elmer was not satisfied. He had, possibly, less objection to houses of ill fame than one would have judged from his pulpit utterances, and he certainly approved the Presbyterian’s position that “we must not try dangerous experiments in government but adhere courageously to the proven merits and economies of the present administration.” But talking with members of his congregation, Elmer found that the Plain People—and the plain, the very plain, people did make up such a large percentage of his flock—hated the Presbyterian and had a surprised admiration for the Jew.
“He’s awful’ kind to poor folks,” said they.
Elmer had what he called a “hunch.”
“All the swells are going to support this guy McGarry, but darned if I don’t think the Yid’ll win, and anybody that roots for him’ll stand ace-high after the election,” he reasoned.
He came out boisterously for the Jew. The newspapers squealed and the Presbyterians bellowed and the rabbis softly chuckled.
Not only from his pulpit but in scattered halls Elmer campaigned and thundered. He was smeared once with rotten eggs in a hall near the red-light district, and once an illicit booze-dealer tried to punch his nose, and that was a very happy time for Elmer.
The booze-dealer, a bulbous angry man, climbed up on the stage of the hall and swayed toward Elmer, weaving with his fists, rumbling, “You damn’ lying gospel-shark, I’ll show you—”
The forgotten star of the Terwillinger team leaped into life. He was calm as in a scrimmage. He strode over, calculatingly regarded the point of the bootlegger’s jaw, and caught him on it, exact. He saw the man slumping down, but he did not stand looking; he swung back to the reading-stand and went on speaking. The whole audience rose, clamorous with applause, and Elmer Gantry had for a second become the most famous man in town.
The newspapers admitted that he was affecting the campaign, and one of them swung to his support. He was so strong on virtue and the purity of womanhood and the evils of liquor that to oppose him was to admit one’s self a debauchee.
At the business meeting of his church there was a stirring squabble over his activities. When the leading trustee, a friend of the Presbyterian candidate, declared that he was going to resign unless Elmer stopped, an aged janitor shrieked, “And all the rest of us will resign unless the Reverend keeps it up!” There was gleeful and unseemly applause, and Elmer beamed.
The campaign grew so bellicose that reporters came up from the Zenith newspapers; one of them the renowned Bill Kingdom of the Zenith Advocate-Times. Elmer loved reporters. They quoted him on everything from the Bible in the schools to the Armenian mandate. He was careful not to call them “boys” but “gentlemen,” not to slap them too often on the back; he kept excellent cigars for them; and he always said, “I’m afraid I can’t talk to you as a preacher. I get too much of that on Sunday. I’m just speaking as an ordinary citizen who longs to have a clean city in which to bring up his kiddies.”
Bill Kingdom almost liked him, and the story about “the crusading parson” which he sent up to the Zenith Advocate-Times—the Thunderer of the whole state of Winnemac—was run on the third page, with a photograph of Elmer thrusting out his fist as if to crush all the sensualists and malefactors in the world.
Sparta papers reprinted the story and spoke of it with reverence.
The Jew won the campaign.
And immediately after this—six months before the Annual Conference of 1920—Bishop Toomis sent for Elmer.
IV
“At first I was afraid,” said the bishop, “you were making a great mistake in soiling yourself in this Sparta campaign. After all, it’s our mission to preach the pure gospel and the saving blood of Jesus, and not to monkey with politics. But you’ve been so successful that I can forgive you, and the time has come—At the next Conference I shall be able to offer you at last a church here in Zenith, and a very large one, but with problems that call for heroic energy. It’s the old Wellspring Church, down here on Stanley Avenue, corner of Dodsworth, in what we call ‘Old Town.’ It used to be the most fashionable and useful Methodist church in town, but the section has run down, and the membership has declined from something
