“Too unreflective 
ever to know himself,
too incapable of thought ever to be really a hypocrite, Elmer is honored and
beloved of those with whom he comes in contact because he is made of the same
coarse clay as they, because no learning, no integrity and no spirituality sets
him apart from those to whom he is paid to minister. He is the type most fit to
occupy the pulpits supported by materialists like himself to whom the church is
half the defender of petty privileges against subversive forces and half the
instrument through which a nominal respect may be paid to virtues inconvenient
to practice; and to Elmer himself the pulpit is quite as useful as he is to it
since … he is enabled not only to taste the intoxication of an orator’s power
but to enjoy an income and a position which the mediocrity of his will, the
fundamental meanness of his character and the shallowness of his brain could
not have earned him by any other means.”
ever to know himself,
too incapable of thought ever to be really a hypocrite, Elmer is honored and
beloved of those with whom he comes in contact because he is made of the same
coarse clay as they, because no learning, no integrity and no spirituality sets
him apart from those to whom he is paid to minister. He is the type most fit to
occupy the pulpits supported by materialists like himself to whom the church is
half the defender of petty privileges against subversive forces and half the
instrument through which a nominal respect may be paid to virtues inconvenient
to practice; and to Elmer himself the pulpit is quite as useful as he is to it
since … he is enabled not only to taste the intoxication of an orator’s power
but to enjoy an income and a position which the mediocrity of his will, the
fundamental meanness of his character and the shallowness of his brain could
not have earned him by any other means.”
— Joseph Wood Krutch,
describing Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry.
And if you ever
wondered where in hell the Christians who support Trump came from, here you go.
This is the location in hell where they feel right at home.
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